Ang Dabawenyo

Aside from having excellent (and affordable) Jamaican Blue Mountain or Kona coffee, a dream coffee shop for me would be what the Japanese call manga kissa — basically, a café with lots and lots of magazines. Such a place would have an atmosphere that, to me, would be conducive to the consumption of huge amounts of that liquid they call black gold. And it would be a comfy hangout, too.

Imagine a coffee shop with volumes of Japanese anime, novels, sci-fi anthologies, gadget magazines, and more! You’d have your mug of latté while ensconced in a cozy armchair amid an ambience of ultimate relaxation. The surroundings would be of pre-modern flair, akin to a library sans academic trappings. Imagine a place where you’d be comfortable whether you were alone or with the company of others.

An acquaintance of mine remarked, however, that such a setup would have a low turnover rate — that piece of statistic that shop owners look at everyday: how much a table earns per hour. Well, that’s why I’m calling this wishful thinking….

There are places in Metro Manila that approach what I’ve described here. One is Birdie in Salcedo Village — it’s a true-blue manga kissa; unfortunately, it already closed down. I wonder when such an establishment would open its doors in Davao City….