It’s never been this crowded, photographer Jilson Tiu notes as we make our way around Cubao Expo in Quezon City. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and it’s just rained, but the roads circling the area are packed with visitors moving between shops and cafés. Not too long ago, I also haunted the place as a college student, but even I don’t remember it having so many visitors.
There has always been a coolness associated with Cubao Expo, or “Cubao X” for some and “Expo” for others. Its stereotypical visitor is a young professional creative, a “performative man,” or a fine arts major looking to smoke between thesis grind sessions. And while the demographic has largely stayed the same, it has definitely scaled in number.
Near the entrance, groups of college kids line up to buy flowers wrapped in pastel-colored paper, then head to the next line to wait their turn to snap photos at the convex mirror. If you’re a Gen-Z working or studying — or just visiting — Manila, chances are you’ve seen the images on Instagram. My friends have jokingly dubbed this routine “attendance check.”
From there, visitors make their way to one of the many dining establishments that make up most of the commercial complex. Those looking for bar fare head to Cubao X Brewery or INT. Bar, the millennials go to Bellini’s, and the newbies line up for a table at Best of Luck, a Chinese restaurant.
“Recently may wave ng mga bagong tao dahil siguro sa social media, dahil sa TikTok,” says Paul Bularan, who with fellow artist Keeshia Felipe runs the art consignment store Favorite Edition. “Sikat dito ‘yong Habanero [Kitchen Bar] at Best of Luck. Parang sila ‘yong nagpo-pour in ng bagong tao na tuloy nae-expose ‘yong mga ganitong space ‘tulad namin, na otherwise hindi nila malalaman na nage-exist.”
Karl Pagunuran, owner of vinyl café Good Vibrations Records, similarly cites social media as a factor in Cubao Expo’s visitor boom. “It’s more accessible to all because of social media,” he says. “Maraming mga galing sa younger generation na nagpo-post about Cubao Expo, at mas maraming interested [in] what it is. ‘Yon ‘yong nagdala ng demographic.”
On Instagram and TikTok, posts about Expo are in the hundreds, and some garner as many as a million views and tens of thousands of likes. Content includes fit checks, guides, and food reviews.
“When you enter the gates of Cubao Expo, it’s like suddenly you’re transported into a different world. It’s like a small community na may barber shop, may dentist, toy store, antique shop, food, booze, coffee.”
Despite the influx of visitors and the new generation of tenants filling the space, Cubao Expo has managed to remain its own thing. There’s a sense of togetherness and community that shop owners and workers forge, ultimately granting visitors reprieve from more hyper-commercialized spaces.
While other spaces in Manila have developed to become dens for the cool kids to congregate — Makati’s Comuna comes to mind — few, if any, have yet to replicate Expo’s lived-in charm and mix of unique but also unpretentious offerings.
“It just feels like we’re the perfect set of people to do something here,” Best of Luck co-owner Vic Sebastian tells Rolling Stone Philippines. “Compared to other people na very commercial ‘yong idea, na parang ‘I just want to put up shop here.’”
Co-owner architect Ken Sy also suggests that bigger enterprises aren’t likely to set up shop in Expo, adding, “Medyo grabe ‘yong deliberation ng admin. It was like [they were] reading you.”
New Life, Same Old Spirit
There is no official written history of Cubao Expo, but there have been a few attempts to write it down. The compound called Marikina Shoe Expo rose in the 1970s as a hub for local shoemakers to sell their goods, with the country’s shoe capital, Marikina City, only a jeepney ride away. In the 2000s, more stores and bars began to fill the area as the shoe shops moved to malls, seeing notable spots like antique store Vintage Pop, cinema-restaurant Mogwai, and comic book shop Sputnik populate vacated units.
Most of Expo’s current tenants had a history with the place before setting up shop. Sy, Pagunuran, and The Brewman owner Jonathan Leung, for example, frequented the place in their college days, eventually inspiring them to put up businesses during and after the pandemic.
Leung tells me there used to be a set of stores dedicated to video games and board games. “May tinatawag silang ‘Nerd Row,’” he says. “That was a time na may board game shop doon. Mayroon pa nga’ng you could rent a PlayStation. Nandoon ako sa time na ‘yon. I hung out frequently there, and I’d bring my friends for drinks.”
Pagunuran also says that Cubao Expo has been his “go-to place” since he was a teenager. “If you have a friend na laging nandito, or kung talagang mahilig ka sa music, art, and culture, ganon ‘yong vibe ng Cubao Expo dati.”
“Hindi lang siya record store na you just buy and aalis ka na. It’s also a space for people who share my interests.”
Bularan and Felipe cite clothing brand THE’s Block Parties in the 2010s as their point of entry into Cubao Expo. The block parties held on Expo’s streets featured live art and music performances, as well as Filipino streetwear brands selling clothes between barbecue and booze, and were graced by the likes of Sandwich’s Diego Castillo and DJ duo Deuce Manila.
“Daydreaming lang kami dati, na parang, ‘Paano kaya ‘pag nagkaroon ng shop dito?’” says Bularan. “Ang cool kasi ng place. Medyo cheesy, pero dream come true.”
Bularan and Felipe got the opportunity to put up Favorite Edition when their friends, former tenants who’d owned Studio Soup Zine Library, could no longer manage the space.
Favorite Edition still sells zines, on top of merchandise such as shirts, stickers, prints, ashtrays, and other miscellanea, all crafted by local artists. The store’s regulars usually come specifically for merch made by their favorite artists, but Bularan and Felipe find that more people are wandering in just to browse and discover.
For Leung, who put The Brewman up in 2021 as the pandemic left many of Cubao Expo’s units vacant, the visitors have always been a mix of people. “May mga condo dito, offices, schools, mga babaan ng bus, the MRT,” he says. “They say Cubao is the center of the universe. Everybody stops here, and that’s what got The Brewman through the pandemic.”
The People Make The Place
Shop owners and workers are finding different ways to create and maintain communities in Cubao Expo.
In recent years, it has also turned into a space working towards social change. Silingan Coffee was started in 2021 by Redemptorist Brother Jun Santiago and Respond and Break the Silence Against the Killings (RESBAK) to provide jobs for the relatives, most of them mothers and wives, of victims of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.
Marilyn Malimban, better known to Silingan’s regulars as Ate Lyn, has worked part-time at the shop for three years, and also pursues a full-time job as a pattern-maker to support her family. Malimban tells me that the loss she experienced during the drug war was an isolating ordeal.
“Noong time na walang nag-comfort sa amin,” she says. “‘Pag lalabas [ng bahay], kami ‘yong pinag-uusapan, kasi ang pinalabas ng pulis, nanlaban, adik, magnanakaw, akyat-bahay.”
Working among other victims at Silingan helped her find community and gain support from visitors, customers, and other tenants in Cubao Expo. “Mga estudyante, mga non-government organizations, lahat ng mga kumakampi sa mga biktima ng war on drugs, nakiki-simpatiya sila sa amin. Binibigyan kami ng pagkain. Nakakalibre kami sa pambili ng uniform.”
Other tenants also say that they’ve formed communities with their customers. “We have friends na rin na customers,” Sy says, before he and Sebastian share that one of their regular customers had booked Best of Luck for a wedding in 2026.
“Daydreaming lang kami dati, na parang, ‘Paano kaya ‘pag nagkaroon ng shop dito?’ Ang cool kasi ng place. Medyo cheesy, pero dream come true.”
Leung says it was easier to organize community events at his café during the pandemic, when The Brewman saw only around 10 to 20 customers a day, and this helped customers meet new people and make friends. “We did game nights, trivia nights, movie nights, kasi ang luwag, e.”
These days, it’s more difficult to host the trivia nights and movie nights. “If I do that now, madadamay si sales, lalo na’t maliit ‘yong shop. But that didn’t hold back the community. Ngayon, since they can’t do [events] here, they do it outside na lang.”
When asked whether he sees this as a cause for expansion outside of Cubao Expo, Leung says the enclave is the exact kind of ecosystem he envisioned the coffee shop being a part of. “When you enter the gates of Cubao Expo, it’s like suddenly you’re transported into a different world. It’s like a small community na may barber shop, may dentist, toy store, antique shop, food, booze, coffee.”
During the pandemic, Pagunuran saved money from selling vinyl records on Instagram to open a physical store. He says Expo fit his vision for what became Good Vibrations. “Hindi lang siya record store na you just buy and aalis ka na,” he says. “It’s also a space for people who share my interests.”
For the Best of Luck owners, Cubao Expo has managed to retain its community because its older members haven’t really left. “The market ngayon is super diverse,” says Sebastian. “Marami kaming mga oldies na alam nilang Marikina Shoe Expo ‘to dati. And then we have the next generation that knows about the Red Horse Muziklaban events. Hindi naman nawala ‘yong culture.”
