A sendoff for Victoria Plaza, ‘the Plaza for All’
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 31 December) — My generation seldom called Victoria Plaza a mall.
Mall was Gaisano Mall, or G-Mall. SM City Davao was SM, just SM. SM Lanang Premier, just SM Lanang.
It was Victoria Plaza. It was Victoria. It was Victo. And I’m sorry to my friends over at NCCC, but for kids of my generation, it was never NCCC Mall VP.
We even hoped NCCC would keep the all-capped Victoria Plaza sign outside when they took over before the pandemic. It was there for a while, but I guess they removed the signage eventually.
If there’s anything I noticed, it felt like it was the right thing to do: to send off something that was a core memory to most of those my age.
On Instagram, a batchmate called the change, the inevitable closure, “jarring,” and I felt like this word encapsulated what the place was for those of us of a certain age.
Victoria Plaza popped up right around the time when most of the people my age were in their exploratory years, in 1993.
Suddenly, there was a place that combined everything that we loved to do. Movies? A choice of six showings every week. Back then, we could repeat showings and enter cinemas mid-screening, and it wasn’t a big deal. Video games outside our home consoles? Arcade games at Sonic Boom. For me it was that helicopter and aircraft game whose title I forget now. Food? It was everywhere. My favorite was the beef brisket toppings at Tai Huat at the food court on the ground floor; it turns out, I would meet the son of the owners later in life.
Some of us were kids in elementary school, while some of us were entering high school. Do the math.
Those were the heydays of landlines, and when classmates met up for “group study,” they would set a time over the phone and stick with it. They picked a landmark, and met there. There was no opportunity to change plans. Whoever arrived late would be made fun of or, well, left to catch up at the secondary location, usually someone’s house at Juna or Dona Vicenta. Don’t ask me why we chose to meet in Bajada to all go to Matina, a horror story by today’s standards; back then, it took only minutes instead of an hour.
There was a carousel, and there was a Ferris wheel. There was a fountain and a stage. I had to make sure, but there was, apparently, a time when international boy band Code Red held a show at the mall for some reason. A guesting so random.
To kids my age, the fountain, too, was magic. It made wishes come true. We would throw a coin, and if our voices were loud enough for the fountain (and our parents) to hear, we would get what we wished for.
Behind the stage was a massive spiral staircase that led to the second floor. At the bottom of that staircase was a place where people got their leather shoes shined. We could ride a small elevator from the first floor to the second, although, truth be told, I do not know of anyone who used it for the short trip.
There was a two-floor Jollibee branch, and obviously, when we were kids, a trip to Jollibee, any Jollibee, was a shared treat during weekends after church.
On the other side was the A.S. Jamora Optical. I remember because that’s where I got diagnosed with nearsightedness and astigmatism some years later. I’m hearing that the Jamora Optical was one of the OGs, and they were there until the last days.
On another side of the second floor was Penhaus. Back then, we did not have as many bookstores around the city. Well, there was Alemar’s, but that one closed up, too. National Bookstore was not around yet. Penhaus, on the other hand, was an excuse.
“Ma/Pa, I need money to buy school supplies,” or a version thereof.
We were pre-teens, and during that time we were looking for an excuse to meet up with friends. I mean, sure, sometimes we DID need to buy a cartolina or two.
There was an Odyssey branch on the second floor. Back then, when we wanted to own a piece of the music that we love, we did one of two things: Wait for it to play on the radio, so we could record it on blank tapes, or buy the entire album. If we had money, we’d get a CD; if we didn’t, we’d save up for a tape of the album.
When we were kids, and we had a crush, it was likely that we bought a keepsake at Dream World, a stuffed animal or two, or something to remind them of us. Something our allowances could afford.
I did not appreciate this before, but Victoria Plaza’s Park ‘n Shop, one of the first large supermarkets, seemed thoughtful of their shoppers. There was a calculator attached to each of the shopping carts. As my parents pushed the cart around, I was small enough to fit in that cart and never found grocery shopping a chore.
The Department Store was also famous for its sports goods, furniture, and stuff we could only find at Victoria and nowhere else, it seemed.
One time, I was so excited to find a barong tagalog for my father, and ran to him, as he waited outside the department store entrance — but the security guard thought I was shoplifting. My father, the bank executive, fumed.
And so I got scolded (first, from the security office and later at the car ride home). My parents apologized to mall admin profusely, and explained to me later what had happened.
One of the most famous lines from the TV series Mad Men was of main character Don Draper talking about the Kodak Carousel, an iconic slide projector from the 1960s. In the episode, Don Draper pitched to fictional Kodak executives an idea for its new product, “the Wheel,” a photo projector that brought past photos to life. A Facebook, via projector, if you will.
In the episode, Draper defined nostalgia as a “pain from an old wound.”
“A twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine.”
Draper suggested calling the product by another name. “It’s not The Wheel, It’s a Carousel.”
In between photos of his own personal, intimate family photos, Don flairs and narrates: “It goes backwards, forwards, takes us to a place where we ache to go again… It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.”
True enough, the Kodak branch at the ground floor was something that Dabawenyos could hold on to, until the last day of Victoria’s operations. The Kodak Express that has been a fixture at Victoria brought lines and lines of people hoping to lock in a photobooth of themselves as keepsakes up to the last hours.
On random downtimes, decades later, I would visit Victoria Plaza and found it almost eerily looked like it did in the ’90s. It brought us back to when life was simple. Our biggest problem, back then, was when we couldn’t make it in time for the cartoons at 7 p.m.
We had a time machine. And it stopped operating on December 31, 2025, 5 p.m.
I mean, sure, Victoria had lost a lot of its magic throughout the years.
A lot of businesses closed down during the pandemic, and even before, when the other malls were growing around the city, Victoria seemed to lose its charm.
The cinemas were no longer blockbusters. The newer cinemas at other malls would eventually kill the ones at Victoria, the way Victoria’s cinemas rendered the old cinemas here obsolete.
Under old management, on one wing, where three of the six cinemas were located, the screens there somehow eventually showed lewd R-18 films; the other cinemas on the other wing were rented out to religious organizations. But there were better days in the ’90s.
In the ’90s, watching a movie at Victoria Plaza as a pre-teen was a rite of passage. I mean, sure, we eventually saw Titanic, and that sketching scene with Kate Winslet (PG-13!). But until then, movie time was family time. My family and I watched a bunch of movies there: Executive Decision, The Lost World, Independence Day. My late father had “good” taste in action movies, and so it was always a treat.
Eventually, I would turn 13 and be able to watch Twister alone, and maybe brought home some profanity along the way. But that all ended with a single loud bang on the dinner table by my father.
No words needed.
But don’t get me wrong, Victoria Plaza was a personal happy place. I would always wear slippery shoes so I could “skate” around the mall’s slippery floors (especially that ramp leading to the supermarket). It was always an exciting trip, especially to the fountain that granted your wishes. Ups and downs though, I got my heart broken there once; I got beaten up by a group of gang kids another time.
For as long as I can remember, there was always a large Christmas tree outside Victoria, as early as September, and it would signal the holiday season for the city. This year, I am told they didn’t light up the tree.
I don’t think there’s enough space to write about that entire decade’s worth of core memories. A lot of people have posted their own takes online. Photographer Jojie Alcantara co-organized a thank you event for the benefit of elderly photographers of Davao City.
Turns out, the voice of the song’s jingle, A Plaza for All, was a relative of one of my Facebook contacts (and don’t lie, if you grew up here, you know the lyrics to this song). Another friend of mine talked about their concessionaire neighbors, and who the OGs were.
Elsewhere, there are old videos that show the before and after of Victoria Plaza; the original architect even posed in front of his brainchild and posted the photos online.
My favorite posts are the ones of kids of the ’90s who have become parents along the way. Some of them took their kids to Victoria for maybe a final glimpse.
To those parents, Victoria Plaza was family. And family goodbyes are the ones that sting the most. (Yas D. Ocampo / MindaNews)
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