Baguio Insider

Once a year, during the Baguio Flower Festival, Session Road is closed to traffic and booths are set up in the middle of the street. Tens of thousands of visitors promenade daily and sample the current offerings of Baguio businesses, as well as those “out-of-towners” who have the get-up-and-go to join the festivities.

During the first few years, it was a pretty classy affair, with a bazaar of flower-related arts & crafts, Mr. San Pedro demonstrating his German Shepherd’s tricks for all to watch, Majestic ham sold by the gram, sidewalk cafes under umbrellas. Session Road in Bloom was, like the float & street dancing parades, a top crowd drawer of both locals and tourists, converting the road once a year into a promenade and party place.

Since 1998, it has literally turned into a marketplace attracting only the locals, mostly. Only the parades draw the tourists nowadays. But the Session Road businesses have no need to complain as the locals are there in droves the whole week! Baguio’s population is at least 250,000, not including the hundred thousand students from the lowlands and the ten thousand or so Koreans. Daily sales triple for a whole week!

As the Panagbenga draws near, Baguio businessmen decide to up their bickering. The latest news is that Edna Anton is, again, complaining about the management of “Session Road in Bloom” by the Hotel & Restaurant Association of Baguio (HRAB). She insists that Session Road restaurants like hers will lose money (”malulugi kaming lahat”) because they will not be allowed to use the sidewalks fronting their businesses, as stalls will be limited to the middle of the road. She actually complains that “HRAB’s accommodation of “foreign” participants, whom she pointed out are not taxpayers of Baguio, is in direct competition with their businesses.”

First: She and those she claims to represent should stop being so antagonistic against “outsiders.” This provincial mentality will not allow Baguio to progress as what she wants is for folks to settle for the 1980’s eatery cuisine and ambience that a lot of old Baguio restaurants offer to tourists. C’mon! They should maybe fix their places up at least once every 10 years and offer new items on the menu!

Second: The city stands to earn from the high business permits they charge for a few days of participation in the event. She probably pays about Php30,000 PER YEAR in business taxes for Sizzling Plate-Session while “Session Road in Bloom” participants are charged thousands PER DAY, so what is she talking about?

Third: Considering that “Session Road in Bloom” drives tens of thousands of customers to the area daily, way more than a regular day, no Session Road business will lose money, and Mrs. Anton knows that. In fact, the manager of a pizza joint on Session once told us that regular sales of Php50,000/day skyrockets to Php160,000/day during the event. I’m sure her sales are higher than ever on those dates, whether or not she is allowed to extend her restaurant to the sidewalk. In fact, I believe those are the days that Sizzling Plate is actually packed.

Fourth: It makes sense to free up the sidewalks and limit stalls to the middle of Session Road so that everybody enjoys full visibility and there is some freedom of movement. If she wants an al fresco stall, there nothing to stop her and others from renting a “Session in Bloom” booth.

Nine years ago, my Baguio restaurant offered an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet for just php99.00 (that price was possible because I treated the affair as a marketing event not a money making one). Ms. Anton complained loudly about that in her column in the now defunct City Digest newspaper and advocated that “Session Road in Bloom” foods should be limited to barbecue, siomai and corn on the cob. Imagine that!

The next year, that’s all that was sold, hawker foods, hardly any seats on the road anymore. Street cafes and non-Session Road restaurants were discouraged from participating, as Ms. Anton was put in charge of the event. “Session Road in Bloom” wilted and turned into what Sunstar Baguio, in the same news article, describes as:

“Through the years however, the “Session Road in Bloom”, although considered as one of the biggest crowd-drawing activities of Panagbenga aside from the street dancing and float parades, slowly turned out into a baratilyo and market place because ready-to-wear clothes, second-hand clothes, underwear, kitchen ware and street foods, among others, had been openly sold.”

Now who’s fault is that? And I ask you, is this not exactly what Session Road is on any given day anyway, thanks to the quality of products offered by the businesses currently operating there? If “Session Road in Bloom” were to limit participation to just the Session Road establishments, what would be the point of the whole affair?

Maybe Ms. Anton and the other Baguio business folks should be less narrow-minded, and understand that “Session Road in Bloom” really means “Baguio in Bloom” and Session Road is just the venue.

My suggestion: Rename the event to “Baguio in Bloom,” change the venue to maybe Harrison Road, which is nice and flat, and wider than Session Road, make it a nice Food/Street Festival. Remove the customers from Session Road, then let the Session Road businesses complain!

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More recent news: (City Councilor Perlitan Chan-) Rondez meanwhile, advised … Edna Anton to refrain from issuing statements to the media to avoid “escalating” the matter.

Ah, living in Baguio can be so entertaining! Imagine what we could do if we got our act together?

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Even more recent news:

Anthony de Leon (concurrently General Manager of the Baguio Country Club, Head of the Baguio Tourism Council, President of the Baguio Hotel & Restaurant Association and Head of the Baguio Visitor and Convention Bureau) resigns as chairman of the Baguio Tourism Council and refuses to say why, amid speculations that it had to do with the Baguio businessmen complaining about the way the Session Road in Bloom was planned. (Maybe it’s because he had taken on just about every major tourism organiztion in Baguio, an overwhelming job for just one person?)

Regarding the row: It seems that these businessmen, led by Edna Anton, wanted to use their frontages not necessarily as extensions of their businesses but, rather, they wanted the oppportunity (as was given to them in the past Panagbengas) to be able to rent these frontages out to third parties for a fee (as if they owned the sidewalk fronting their businesses!).

Aha! That’s probably why she was complaining so loudly and to the media first instead of to the organizers. As a concession, it has been agreed that they may occupy 50% of their frontages but they have to pay Php2,000/linear meter. So now we say goodbye to the Session Road sidewalks from February 26-March4 as a promenade area.

Sigh …