From My Cyberjournal 67 March 2006
Everyday a jumble of transit buses, jeepneys and pedestrians jostle one another to converge on Plaza Miranda, the nation's most famous public square fronting Quiapo church. To a die-hard Manileņo, the city's commercial heart beats here in this patch of Quiapo real estate. Quiapo's magnet is it's church, specially so on Fridays; like a beehive oozing honey, the church's parameters buzz and pulsate with shops, makeshift stalls and hawkers. No one bats an eye when confronted with anting-anting and other occult talismans and folk herbs vying with red votive candles and novena prayer books near church grounds. The raunchy hoi poloi flavor of the district hasn't changed since my teen-aged years half a century ago, though of course many physical changes have now erased the landmarks of my youth.

In those days, downtown Manila meant the Escolta -Avenida Rizal- Quiapo complex where many a street and alley specialized in specific trades and goods. Today once familiar streets like Echague, Evangelista, Carriedo, are not as I remember them at all. I feel I am now a tourist,
hardly the old Manileņo who has come home. During our pilgrimage with photo-mate Ben Razon to El Seņor Nazareno last January 9, the colorful characters that are the main component of the festivities of this patron saint of the proletariat, appeared everywhere before me on Plaza Miranda as in an artist's painterly dream: a magical kaleidoscope of fascinating faces, mystic visions, earthy images. With every step you bump into surprises among the crowd; and at every busy side artery you will chance upon the strangest, the funniest, the most wondrous doings of Quiapo folk.

Check out these few images and tell me if Quiapo is not an artist's paradise.