Street-Bound

I borrowed Street-Bound: Manila on Foot by Josefina P. Manahan and it is a refreshing read even though I have done everything except one (that is visit Museo ng Maynila) that she had suggested in the book. I love to walk Manila and its environs and share its glory and gloom to my most intimate friends. I love to embrace Quiapo’s semi-proletarian noise and smell and extol Recto Avenue’s grimy streets and the people, my people, who scraps the grime for survival. I want shaking the calloused hands of the lumpen proletariats hanging out under the LRT station in front of Isetann and checking out their loots from the hoods.

Street-Bound made me miss the fish and the Kois near the Quezon Circle area and suggested that I tread again the Kamuning Road for some new old treasures stashed at the back of the antique and used stores.

Everywhere We Go

I got fucking tired reading this book about senseless violence in “Everywhere I go (behind the matchday madness)” by Dougie and Eddie Brimson. The book, however, authoritatively discussed the hooliganism prevalent in football crazy Brits and their counterparts in other European countries. 

Each chapter focused on the different aspect of football's hooliganism and how it thrives and being imitated in different parts of the world. The book does not sound apologetic to the phenomena of hooliganism but lacked in explaining the psychology behind it. But I guess it is not the intention of the book but to just to tell stories of matchday madness in the pitch, terraces, and the streets. 

Fucking "off" (the term they use for those brawls against opposing fans) they go after games in the name of their ‘reputation.’ It is a non-fiction book that will bring you to the forefront of these hooligan fights by the different ‘firms’, or football fan groups, trying to put a life into their otherwise freaking boring society. It suddenly came to me this notion that their society is so boring that they resort to such shits. But it could also be a stupid generalization that I normally resort to when I am tired of rationalizing the violence in this world. I could discuss in length though the necessity for an armed revolution in the Philippines.

I even watched the Elijah Wood starrer “Green Street Hooligans” just to check on the "off" scenes and searched the youtube for some real life “off.” It was a good film seeing the cute hobbit being battered blue by football hooligans.

It was crazy alright. And it got me interested in football. 

  

(First posted at www.bookmongers.wordpress.com February 10, 2010)