Days of Yore: Shopping

 "SA-PA-TOOOOOOS! SIYAY!" "BALUUUUUUT!"

These and more were a regular sound living in the Philippines. Street vendors pushed carts or carried their wares and shouted out what they were selling. If the musical Oliver! were reset in the Philippines, I imagine the above calls, along with others, would start out the song "Who Will Buy?" (For the record, the above calls translate to "Shoes! Shine!" and, well...I'll just say that balut is surprisingly delicious, considering how it looks and sounds when described. I think I'll go with "hard-boiled eggs on steroids." I would put a full description of it on a level with Scandinavian lutefisk, though the two dishes are nothing alike, aside from involving meat.)

Sari-Sari Store
Photo by Free2barredo
CC BY-SA 4.0 license

Then there were the sari-sari stores. They were neighborhood convenience stores, usually built into the ground floor of a family home. Our next-door neighbors at one house had one. They sold snacks and a bunch of other things. Many of them had fresh, steaming pandesal, or Philippine rolls topped with bread crumbs. Those are some of my favorite rolls in existence, right up there with Hawaiian rolls. Most sari-sari stores have a window where the customer asks the cashier for what they want, and then the cashier gets it and the customer pays for it. If they weren't next door, they were usually within walking distance.

Grocery stores in the Philippines were similar to the ones in the US, and some of my distaste for pop music was formed by the songs over the loudspeaker at grocery stores in the '80s... If I hear "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles (we changed the lyrics to "Do you feel insane?"), "Miss You Like Crazy" by Natalie Cole ("You're driving me craaazy!"), "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You" by George Benson, and others, one more time... Nothing against the talented singers, but I got sick of those songs that I heard over and over in the grocery stores. And now I have those songs going through my head. I have nobody to blame but myself.

They had markets where they sold produce, meat, and other things. Those markets smelled fishy. There were markets where you could buy souvenirs. We had sukis, or vendors that we would visit regularly when we needed the specific wares they sold, and we would get to know them. They often gave us great discounts as we became friends. Bargaining is an art form in the Philippines, and it was a unit in Tagalog class in school. We generally started the bargaining in English, and they would come down a bit, but they would only go so far when speaking English. Then we would switch to Tagalog. They were often surprised, and more willing to bargain further. 

National Bookstore was a large chain in the Philippines, and one of my favorite places to go, as reading filled up most of my spare time when I wasn't grounded from reading. 😀 We had a shopping mall called Greenhills where we often went. They also had some great restaurants. As malls got more popular, Robinson's opened all over the place. It's a chain of malls, like Carrefour in France and elsewhere. (In fact, I recently found out that Tum Nak Thai, the restaurant we visited in Bangkok and the largest restaurant in the world at the time, is gone, and they now have a Carrefour and a Robinson's in its place. One single restaurant was replaced by two malls.) I remember Robinson's Galleria in Manila. I have heard that they have continued to open more and larger malls in the Philippines since we left in 1991.

Coming to the US, we found grocery stores were similar. Safeway, Albertson's, Fred Meyer and QFC were everywhere in the Seattle area. (Fred Meyer and QFC are currently owned by Kroger. When I visited Utah last year, I went to Smith's, which I had never heard of, and they honored my Fred Meyer rewards card because they are also owned by Kroger.) Albertson's is now owned by Safeway, so many of the Albertson's in the area have converted to Safeway. There a few Wal-marts in the area.

There were video stores all over the place. Blockbuster was one of the largest chains. When DVDs replaced VHS, they adapted. Eventually, with Netflix and others, they were unable to compete and have mostly closed. There is only one Blockbuster left, in Oregon. Many grocery stores and electronics stores (such as Best Buy), and some surviving bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, still sell DVDs and Blu-Rays.

We had multiple malls in the Seattle area. Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood and Bell Square in Bellevue were huge. Northgate Mall in North Seattle was smaller, and was the oldest shopping mall in the US. Everett Mall in Everett was somewhere around the same size as Northgate. My grandparents used to walk there all the time. Totem Lake Mall in Kirkland was one of the smallest malls I've been to. There were others around as well. Of those, Totem Lake Mall was the first to close. For a long time, there was only one store left in the mall, and it was sad walking down the dark hallways with almost all the stores closed and nobody there. When the movie Warm Bodies came out (which involves zombies, for those who haven't seen it...basically Romeo & Juliet in reverse), I thought that mall would be a perfect place to film a sequel. It's gone now, with new developments in its place. More recently, Northgate Mall is mostly gone, replaced by a hockey rink and transit station. Last I knew, there were a few stores left, but it isn't really a mall any more. The other malls listed above are still there, but they have undergone a lot of changes over the years.

As the internet got more popular, I made more friends around the world. I was surprised to hear my friends in the Southeastern US talking about shopping buggies, as they are clearly called shopping carts. They have carts in the Philippines. They have carts in the Northwest US. They have carts in the Midwest and Southwest. They are called carts just about everywhere I had been. I had no idea people in other English-speaking regions called them something different! (Granted, they are called trolleys in the UK, if I remember right.) I always associated buggies with horse-drawn carriages.

There were several bookstore chains, such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks and others. Waldenbooks and Borders have since closed. With Kindle and other electronic means of reading and listening to books, as well as the convenience of ordering online, the demand for brick-and-mortar bookstores has decreased considerably. (I had forgotten about Waldenbooks until I watched Stranger Things recently, streaming on Netflix.)

Online merchants got more common. Amazon has been one of the largest and most enduring. There are also others, such as eBay.

Speaking of online merchants, guess what? I don't do most of my shopping at the brick-and-mortar stores any more! I do shop at them sometimes, but lately I've increasingly used...I hope you're sitting down for this...my cell phone! Many things are much more convenient to order on Amazon and other online merchants. Since COVID, I've done a lot of my grocery shopping on the Instacart app and had it delivered. I am finding more and more that shopping on Instacart also helps me to avoid the annoying habit of groceries I didn't need "magically" jumping into my cart off the shelf and making me spend money I didn't need to spend. I can blame the groceries in question because they are inanimate and can't defend themselves. 

Many stores have pickup options, which we have also used. You order and pay on the app, then drive to the store, and someone brings the groceries out to your car. (They have a part of the parking lot dedicated to this option, and you can tell them on the app which parking spot you are using.)

Shopping has changed a lot over the years. I can't speak for the Philippines, as I was last there in the '90s, but I have heard there have been a lot of changes there too. As far as I know, they still have sari-sari stores and malls and all the other stores mentioned above (at least, those mentioned in the part about the Philippines).

Days of Yore: Video Recordings

When I was in elementary in the Philippines, we had a dedicated room for watching movies and documentaries. It was called the A/V Room, or Audiovisual Room. It had several devices depending on the equipment required for what we were watching. The big reel-to-reel projector involved large spools of film (like the ones in the picture below). It involved a certain amount of threading through the machine, and it was projected on a big screen. This was also how my grandparents did their home videos when my parents were young. I don't know how they were recorded as that was before my time, but they were still in use when I was little. While playing, the reel-to-reel made a fast-paced clicking noise (best way I can think of describing it) that you could hear the whole time. We were used to it, so it wasn't that disruptive. (It's actually a nostalgic sound for me.)

Photo by Alexander Vasilyev
Adobe Stock

The other device I remember in the A/V Room was the TV on a cart. I think it may have been on that (or there may have been a projector) that we watched in horror as the Challenger exploded in 1986. It was on that TV with a VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) that we watched Back to the Future when I was in 4th grade during a sleepover that my teacher put on. We brought sleeping bags and slept on the floor.

Video cassettes, or VHS tapes (Video Home System), were similar in concept and shape to the audio cassettes, but were larger. For the most part, they were black, though they occasionally came in other colors. The film inside was very similar to the way the film in the smaller cassettes was rolled. They fit into a slot in the VCR, which was connected to a TV. Unlike their smaller cousin, they were not double-sided, so you had to rewind when you were done. Video rental stores (such as Blockbuster) often had stickers on their videos that said, "Be kind. Rewind." Failing to rewind would put a damper on watching it again, though the next user could rewind it themselves. But if you're on a schedule, it's a pain to have to wait a few minutes while the video rewinds to the beginning!

They also had Betamax cassettes (Beta for short). They were similar to VHS, but a bit smaller (though still larger than the audio cassettes). There was a special player for them. I believe our A/V room was equipped to play both kinds of video cassettes. They weren't nearly as popular as VHS, however, and went obsolete much sooner.

VHS and Beta each had their own version of the video camera. The camera made further adjustments as other formats were introduced.

Following the success of the CD in the audio format, the DVD (Digital Video Disc) was introduced. It looked almost identical to the CD, though slightly thicker and a bit more durable. Any DVD player can typically play CDs as well, but not vice versa (an audio device kind of defeats the purpose of watching a movie). Unlike videos, DVDs did not need to be rewound, and they also allowed for navigation so you could skip straight to your favorite scene, or watch extras, such as documentaries on the making of the movie, blooper reels, sing-a-longs if the movie had songs, audio commentary by the filmmakers and/or cast, and other fun stuff.

VHS and DVD were divided into regions around the world. Region 1 videos and DVDs could only play on US and Canadian players. Region 2 included the UK and other countries. I believe there were 5 regions if I remember right. When I was studying French and wanted to watch the French versions of movies on VHS, I ordered them from Amazon.ca (Canada), because France was in a different region and wouldn't play on our VCRs. When A.R. Rahman and Värttinä's musical of Lord of the Rings (not to be confused with Peter Jackson's movies) came out in London, I couldn't wait for it to come out in the US, so ordered the cast recording from Amazon.co.uk. The CD worked great, but the accompanying DVD with pictures from the production did not work in our DVD player. To watch that, I had to play it on my laptop, which had a DVD-ROM. DVD-ROM and certain region-free players could play any format.

Sometime in there, the LaserDisc was introduced. It was never as popular as its counterparts, and it didn't last very long. We watched The Abyss in high school on a LaserDisc, and that's the only movie I remember watching in that format. It looked like a giant CD, but was about the size and shape of a vinyl record.

The Blu-Ray followed the DVD. Again, it looked almost identical to the DVD, but had more space and more options for extras, as well as better picture quality. Again, the typical Blu-Ray player can play a DVD or CD, but once again, not vice versa. The Blu-Ray does not have regions like the video and DVD, so it can be played on any Blu-Ray player.

Meanwhile, as the internet picked up steam, websites like YouTube and Vimeo offered ways of watching online. Depending on the web connection, these options involved a lot of buffering at times, though that has been gradually getting better so it doesn't happen now as much as it used to. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and other social media sites have also added video-playing capability.

Netflix used to send DVDs that members could order and then mail back when they were done watching, similar to checking it out from a library. Due to the popularity of Netflix, among other factors, video stores like Blockbuster couldn't compete. There is now only one branch of Blockbuster left, in Oregon. As streaming from YouTube and other sites gained popularity, Netflix jumped on the bandwagon. Many studios have joined the fun, introducing their own streaming platforms, generally adding "Plus" or "Max" to their name. So now we have Disney+, AppleTV+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and others. Some TV shows, such as The Chosen, have their own app.

As in my post on audio recordings, I now hardly use the other formats any more, as I can watch movies streaming on my cell phone and Kindle. It also streams to the TV.