I’ve been going to Route for practically all of my adult life. My college friends have been going there since even before it was called Route 196. We were there when it was Inihaw Republic and Border Grill [I think] before that. We were there even before gigs were being played there.
I live extremely close to Route 196. It’s 200 meters and change away from my home in Project 4. If there’s a law I’ve violated the most, it’s crossing that stretch of Katipuan/C5 to to and from Route 196.
Because of its proximity to where I lived until 2016, Route was probably the gig place I went to the most. Though we didn’t really play there all that much, it was really close to home and many of my friends would play there regularly.
Route would also usually be the place where people would go where older defunct bands would come to play reunion gigs. I remember seeing Huh! and Backdraft in Route in the past decade. Bands that were closer to us including 13 Needles, Happy Meals, the Out of Body Special and Plane Divides the Sky would always have their reunion gigs in Route. If somebody was home from abroad, Route 196 was also the most likely place to meet up for drinks.
I remember that it was in Route during an Attraction! Reaction! gig that I felt the sting of the Walkmen’s lines in The Rat. “When I used to go out, I’d know everyone I saw. Now I go out alone if I go out at all.” It was in Route that I first felt that I had grown old, or more specifically, that I was no longer a part of the music scene that was going on then.
It was in Route that I realized that the scene in the Manila had grown so much from what it was in the aughts. Where it once felt like one huge scene where everyone knew each other, more genre-specific pockets started popping up. And I didn’t feel like I belonged in any of them anymore. It was weird at first but it was oddly liberating to feel like a spectator.
Oddly enough, even with this, Route still felt like home. There were a handful of times where I’d go to gigs alone and Route was where it felt the easiest. Even when I had moved to Pasay after I started my current job, those few times I braved Manila traffic to come back to Route made me feel like I was exhaling a long held breath.
One of my biggest fears about this pandemic was that Route would no longer be around whenever it was that I’d be able to come home to Manila. I felt this after the closure of Today x Future and Catch-272, places which meant so much to some other friends of mine. Route (and its predecessors) has been one of those places for me.
I was hoping that sometime next year when travel and attending gigs are possible again, I would be able to walk over to Route (via the long needed footbridge that now stands there) and catch some friends or even strangers playing. It’s painful to know that probably won’t be possible anymore.
So yeah. Pictures of much happier times and a video of the last time my band played at Route 196 sometime in 2015. Salamat Route 196. There’s a lot more to say about this but I’m too devastated to articulate everything.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuiZnarleHde05NaHYgeO3bPmpNOla4K6wIwtI0/
Manong Yagi 
Leave a comment