Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 12

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 12 - Crazy Country

People often want to know what the hell I am doing in what appears, from outside anyway, to be a somewhat over-dramatic backwater where calamities of one sort or another are fostered upon a stoic population that would rather party than prepare for the storm that threatens the islands. It's a good question and one that I am not sure I can answer succinctly.

There was a time I decided to buy a rather large house on a cliff overlooking a medieval village in the South of France. From the terrace you could sip chilled white wine and gaze across the river below to the distant hills bathed in shades of greens and azure in the bucolic clear light that illuminates that part of France and easily be seduced into the feeling that you were in paradise! Traffic jams were four cars backed up at a red traffic light. People paid their taxes and left their doors unlocked and there was no trash in the streets. It was clean as in CLEAN. People drove within the law and the law was liberally applied to the point that if you tried to bribe a policeman for a traffic expense you could easily end up in jail! It was a zillion miles from Manila but you know what? I MISSED THE CHAOS.

It's easy to make a list of the top ten reasons never, ever to consider living in the Philippines and people frequently make them: the corruption, the garbage, the pollution, the lack of basic infrastructure, Dairy Cream……..the list is long, but, you can LIVE over here as in LIVE. There was a time in France, shortly after I had moved there from Quezon City, when I decided to test the lighting in the garden one night. Twenty minutes later a Police Car came screaming up my driveway! A nosy neighbor had informed them as to the strange goings on in my house on the cliff. Here? In Manila? What the hell! God knows what is happening everywhere and that leaves you fairly free to get on with your life in a relaxed, unrestricted way that I really appreciate.

Even when it's bad it's funny and with the right attitude you go with the flow and emerge from the nightmare intact. Way back, in the days when I was still a newcomer to these islands I was driving extremely slowly through Pagsanjan, showing a visitor from London the delights of a small, sleepy provincial town when a lumbering wreck of a truck came out of a side road without stopping and hit my car smack in the side. Ah, but God must have been on my side as this happened right outside a police station – whereupon an oversized policeman looking somewhat annoyed, stumbled out of the building and assisted the driver of the truck (who was in such an advanced state of inebriation he couldn't walk) down from his cab where a fairly long conversation ensued. Meanwhile I was left to bake in the heat surrounded by a crowd of delighted small boys who thought it great fun. Eventually the policeman ambled over to explain how lucky I was. To be alive? No, he had informed me, that the driver of the truck wasn't going to bring charges against me for dangerous driving…well, I was in the way wasn't I?

I had laughed out loud thinking this was a great joke but the policeman didn't laugh – he was extremely serious and pointed out that things were done differently in the Philippines. I ended up having to pay through the nose for a set of photographs which were taken by another policeman who sensed he could make a killing from the bewildered looking Englishman on his doorstep. Franz Kafka would, no doubt, have found inspiration here! That happened back in the 70's when I was but a kid yet in some way I use that incident as a benchmark in an effort to explain the complete ludicrousness of it all. France was lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and yet I missed the madness of the Philippines - I actually came back.

In the early 80's I was stopped by a policeman in Manila for some minor offence like driving though a red light at 100kph but then that was par for the course. Drive and be damned because if you had actually stopped you would probably have been rear ended! Ah, life in those days – it's all getting a bit gentrified now: the roads are filled with more and more expensive cars as the stock market and relative political stability make their mark on the upwardly mobile. Policemen are generally trimmer and enforce the law, at least on the surface, with zeal. But the old days………..Having stopped me by basically throwing himself in front of my car, the policeman grinned and a long conversation ensued as to how much money I was going to have to pay rather then take a three day driving lesson somewhere in the north of Manila and have my license taken away. It took thirty minutes and in the end both of us were laughing so loudly you would have thought us old friends. I had explained that the wad of bills that has unfortunately been displayed before his eager eyes when I took out my license where, unfortunately, not for him but to pay my electricity bill that very same morning. He obviously didn't believe that and wanted to know how such a large amount could possibly be eaten up by electricity. So we took an imaginary tour around my house and counted the air conditioners and the fact that I had a swimming pool and an electric floor polisher and, and. It got quite domestic. But we laughed and THAT is what did it and that's what I liked about Manila in the good old days – however bad it got we always laughed. We smiled, we laughed and we partied until dawn even though the storm was coming. And that's why I came back from France and Europe in general. They don't laugh so much over there!


Previously: Chapter 11 - The Necklace Of The Past

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 11

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 11 - The Necklace Of The Past

Living in the Philippines was not something that was planned. It happened by accident and that happened back in the mists of 1975 when the mists could well have been tear gas. The collective feeling of a growing swell of Filipinos at that time was that the President was mining the country to his own ends and the devil be damned. And the devil was certainly damned. Every day!

I mean who but an avid adventurer prepared to take risks and perhaps pay the price would (in their right mind anyway) enter a country under the iron grip of Martial Law with the intention of living there…of starting a business there? Who but me.

I meet people now and we talk of those days with a certain amount of nostalgia and yet some of those people were imprisoned by President Marcos in Camp Crame! But that's what happens to the past – it starts to take on a rosy pink hue and people look back with a sigh for those "better" days when things were easier, cleaner, cheaper.

But it wasn't like that at all, believe me. It wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination! I remember well the day I found an apple for sale in the local supermarket. I nearly wept. A real apple. It cost the equivalent of a dollar in those days and was almost as rare as finding s diamond in your back yard. Basic necessities like a bottle of fresh milk or a decent loaf of bread were almost unheard of: fresh milk came in a can and probably no cow was ever involved in the process – bread was bleached of all goodness and served up in vaguely sweet slices of a somewhat chewy substance that I hadn't come across before but definitely not anything that a European would identify as bread.

My next door neighbor, who was also my landlady in that first house of mine, was learning Russian late at night from long playing records and would receive edgy "callers" at odd hours into her heavily curtained parlor. She too had been incarcerated in Camp Crame for telling the truth as a newspaper columnist not over enamored with the President. It was somewhat worrying as I was quite convinced the place would be raided by the police that, quite openly, kept a not so discrete eye on the property from various cars without number plates at various hours. Even my own house had been raided recently by a squad of heavily armed police who had burst through the front door, guns ready to send me to the beyond and just because they suspected I had a dead body in the trunk of my car! Imagine! Well, it WAS a gangster's car – the sort that drug dealers drove in New York B Movies: a Ford LTD with a special small back window of bullet-proof glass. It was huge and black and had plates that announced to whomever may be interested: FOR REGISTRATION. SPANISH EMBASSY. I was going to have it registered but, at that point, I would have to pay a hefty import tax and so I sort of delayed things a bit. OK, a couple of years! The trunk was by any stretch of the imagination, capacious. Yes I suppose it was capable of accommodating a corpse but normally I used it to take my two dogs for a walk in the fields of the campus of the University of the Philippines. The dogs enjoyed the walks so much they didn't mind being placed in the trunk for ten minutes and so it became a daily occurrence. A friend came with me one day. The corpse! He had decided for some reason that has become fogged in my memory to also clamber into the trunk after walking the dogs and thought it would be fun to dangle his arm loosely out of a slightly open trunk as though he really WAS a corpse. Ha ha. This was the late 70's! Manila was swarming with heavily armed police and enforcers in general who assumed everyone was, in some way or other, engaged in criminal pursuit (which they probably were). Needless to say someone called the police and amazingly, after an hour, my story was believed and we all drank beer together until they got called off to investigate a body that had been found on the side of the road near my house. Really!

Taxis were held together with sticky tape, ingenuity and a desperate desire to divest you of as much money as could be obtained without actually sticking a knife at your throat – in those days the concept of a working meter was almost a decade away still! There weren't even malls to escape into….the best you could do was hive of to Rustans in Makati and spend a lazy afternoon getting cool watching all the over-primped wives of the well-to-do who were making underhand deals on the golf course and having people killed as a measure of political or financial expediency. But most of all you had the feeling you were living in a SMALL city in a small country. There was nothing International about it. It was all about being a Filipino and having to cope with that. The rest of the world was but a blur, a distant and hazy vision where people lived by different rules and under another system. Most people wanted out. Distant vision or not you could be sure the grass was a damn sight greener than the local variety! America was the destination of choice. That's if you could actually get permission to travel, and you had the money, and the Americans would let you into their greener pastures! If. It was almost like living in East Berlin when the wall was up during the Cold War. A time when people would risk their lives to escape from the cruel hard deprivations of live under repression into the swaggering economic boom town just across the wall.

No the old days were definitely not better. Sure there were pockets, fabulous glimpses of life, that have merged and melded into an overall impression of nostalgia but that are what they were: pockets interspaced with long periods of deprivation and just plain old surviving the daily problems of dealing with the daily grind.

But what pockets they were!

The Hobbit House on La Laguna beach in Mindoro. Of course these days the beach is wall to wall lower end tourist "huts" where lower end tourists frolic with lower end bar girls appropriated from Manila in a mindless melee of alcohol, sex and lower end rock n roll. But back then the beach was white sand and the waters of the bay were home to one of the most spectacular coral reefs I had ever seen.. The Hobbit House, built in the center of the gently curved beach, rose like a bamboo castle from the Swiss Family Robinson and it was for castaways from Manila and marches and tear gas and lack of apples. Flaming torches lit up the night and diminutive waiters who were even shorter than Nora Aunor would give you wry smiles as they plied you with beer that, thank God, was amazingly cheaper than anything you could find in Europe. Music that stuck a finger in the face of all the pallid, sugary ballads so beloved of radio stations in Manila shook the rafters and it rocked. The whole place was a symbiotic expression of crazy, in your face escapism and I still miss it. It was in those days that I and a group of friends had formed the La Laguna Beach Club but I guess we all moved on to other beaches because all it is now is a distant memory. It's all about Boracay now! A friend of mine had owned a resort in the early days of Boracay when it was still ok to go, but he got murdered by those that were jealous of his success and needed his land title that they also might be successful and that sort of sums it all up. Nostalgia exists in pockets. We string them all together and wear then like a necklace we call the past. But that's not really the full picture is it.

Previously: Chapter 10 - The Moon Leopard Part 2

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Part 2 of Chapter 10

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 10 - The Moon Leopard Part Two

Having met my partner in the automobile manufacturing business over champagne in a bar in Malate and, further, having dreamt up the name MOON LEOPARD, I now found myself in the extremely unenviable position of actually having to manufacture the beast together with Nanding and his merry band of mechanics in a large tin hut somewhere near Munitinlupa Municipal Jail! Sure, it sounded like we all knew what we were doing - after all there was Renault in Paris who was going to put in a special six cylinder Alpine engine and there was me, an almost famous designer who managed to win the PBA 2nd Conference Basketball Trophy without knowing anything at all about basketball and there was Nanding himself; manufacturer of jeeps that plied the streets of Manila but would never in a million years get a certificate of road worthiness in Europe. An eclectic mixture to say the least.

I had drawn a pretty design - actually it wasn't pretty at all! It looked pretty fierce: rugged. masculine and almost, but not quite, retro. But now there I was on day one...and there was Nanding...and behind Nanding was a motley crew of workers...and they were all waiting for instructions! My erstwhile partner, Jean Guy Jules has been rushed off on a photographic assignment somewhere in the world and I was left holding a bag of assorted nuts and bolts and hoping wildly that I wouldn't be exposed for the novice I actually was.

I had one large advantage. I was white. A foreigner and, as such everybody was somewhat nervous, respectful and quite convinced I knew what I was doing even if I wasn't actually quite sure what a carburetor actually did. Dust flew, sparks skidded off partially rusty metal plates and the rain fell in buckets. A dead cat lay forlornly in a sodden heap of partial decomposition just outside the entrance and Nanding and I discussed in a manly sort of way what would be the order of the day. I sketched arcs and angles on large sheets of brown paper and welders scratched the side of their heads in the way that Filipinos do when they feel they are being painted into a corner. "No, it MUST be like this because............"Well, because that's what I wanted. And I was the designer. So there. So blessed with complete incomprehension as to what was possible and what was not I sort of forced my way through the minefield and we all entered uncharted territory...sort of feeling our way forward in the darkness. And it grew. This monster of a stainless steel sports jeep actually started to look like a vehicle. Seats arrived from Recaro upholstered in leather with contrast piping that matched the wood grain trim on the dashboard (well, I WAS a designer). Various instruments that measured things that I couldn't understand arrived from Renault in Paris and anxious and frequently expletive laced phone calls arrived from various locations abroad as Jean Guy attempted to find out how our project was progressing. For a Frenchman he sure knew a lot of English swear words!

The wonderful thing about not knowing what you are doing is that obstacles that would deter even the strongest of hearts were not even perceived and therefore one entered the minefield unaware but somehow imbued with the luck of the truly naive. What was even more amazing was seeing this monster of a gleaming stainless steel jeep growing in a scene of almost total desolation that passed for a factory. It truly was straight out of Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century...a place so basic that if you wanted to use the bathroom all you found was a fetid hole in the ground that smelled so bad.....well, you didn't. Nothing. One worked with crossed legs.

The day I drove it to the airport where it was loaded into a 747 cargo plane was an experience almost impossible to convey. The Moon Leopard didn't have the right engine in it because Renault would only install it in Paris but even with the Renegade engine in, it handled like a dream. It purred. It roared! Heads snapped back as we zoomed past...late of course...to catch the plane to Paris. I'd had a similar experience before as I had (or the Nicholas Stoodley team had anyway) won the PBA Basketball Trophy. What the hell did I know about basketball or jeeps. I just knew how to draw pretty pictures. But my days as a designer of sports jeeps - my first steps as the new Henry Ford - they were to no avail. I met a man in a bar (again in Malate) called Uli who one could discern from his thick accent was German who convinced me I was God's answers to his prayers which consisted of finding a designer for his handicraft business and that was that. Handicrafts I could understand and anyway I DID the jeep and that, I knew, was pure luck. It wouldn't always be like that!

The Moon Leopard made it to the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany and quite a few got sold. A sultan (I think from Oman) bought one and I hear they have become collectors items now. It was an adventure and I suppose that it was I really am...a vaguely insane English adventurer!

Previously: Chapter 10 - The Moon Leopard Part 1

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 10

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 10 - The Moon Leopard

The basic problem with having been born Nicholas Stoodley is that I don't seem to know any limitations; this combined with a very adventurous nature has allowed me to often stray where angels (for very good reason) fear to tread!

Jean Guy Jules was a French photographer who was in the Philippines in the early 80's looking for a flying saucer which had crashed just off the north east coast of the country....I guess this should have warned me. But it didn't of course! I had met him in a bar in Malate and discovered quite quickly that we had a common interest in drinking large quantities of red wine and it was thus, one drunken evening, that we decided that we should go into business together. We had somehow concluded that what the world needed was a four wheel drive, stainless steel. sports jeep and that we would build it in Manila. Knowing basically absolutely nothing at all about cars in general, let alone designing one, this was a pretty reckless thing to do! Mind you I had never played basketball in my life but that hadn't stopped me winning the PBA 2nd Conference! As I mentioned. No limitations.

It was amazing how quickly we had convinced ourselves as to the viability of our project but then again the wine was doing most of the speaking for us. I had come up with the name "Moon Leopard" and thus having achieved the most important part of the project, the name, we drank a bottle of Champagne to celebrate and saw in the dawn convinced that we'd make it to the Moon and back and then some! If faith alone could move mountains then we were on a roll!

Several days later I had actually designed the Moon Leopard's bodywork. It looked rather like an evil 1930's futuristic toaster on wheels! All we had to do then was manufacture a prototype! If life could be that simple! After several weeks of searching we came across "Nandings Jeeps" out near Bicutan somewhere. Manufactured in an atmosphere that lent itself to a feeling that one had somehow entered a time-warp and had been catapulted back to the times of Charles Dickens, the factory (I use the term liberally) was situated close enough to Muntinlupa Prison to cement the earnest belief that indeed THIS was where the Moon Leopard would be born. It was redolent with atmosphere and appealed to us as being such an improbable venue to manufacture what the world was waiting for that it just HAD to be the place. Bizarre how our minds worked in those days but then it was probably a direct consequence of too much wine in the blood!

A photograph taken at the cargo section of the airport where they are preparing the Moon Leopard for its trip to Frankfurt. It was a magnet for people wanting to pose in front of it (as you can see).

The floor of Nanding's factory was compacted earth cemented together with decades of congealed detritus from, well, one couldn't quite imagine. I had looked up through the gloom to the corroded galvanized iron roof and noticed gigantic spider webs, concealing, no doubt, gigantic spiders. Was this how Henry Ford started out? There was dust everywhere and the noise of banging and grinding and cursing and the radio at full blast combined in a miasma of horror as far as I was concerned but Jean Guy had a dedicated look upon his furrowed face as, with his heavily accented English, he tried to explain to Nanding what we wanted him to do for us. Nanding had looked initially amused, then, quickly, anxious. Lastly he had obviously decided we were quite insane and indeed we were! Finally Jean Guy had presented a roll of banknotes and Nading's face erupted in smiles. Of COURSE we were crazy but business was business. We had a manufacturer!

It all sounds totally crazy of course but actually we weren't insane at all, merely excessively adventurous! We had imported a Renegade Jeep from Renault in Paris and we were going to strip it down to the chassis, put on our body and then send it to Paris where Renault would put in a special engine that was used in the Renault Alpine and then, amazingly, it would be shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany! Actually it's quite incredible what can be achieved by setting out with a good idea and no limitations coupled with a firm belief in yourself! But then reality set in and reality nearly killed me.


Previously: Chapter 9 - Camelot Part 2

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Part 2 of Chapter 9

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 9 - Camelot Part Two

Don't bring home AIDS, take home EMPEROR PIZZA. (An advertisement for pizza I once saw on a wall in Bacoor Cavite). Yes it's a strange country, but perhaps country is the wrong word as the Philippines is so much more than that! A black comedy of errors, the Philippines staggers from one crisis to another in a mindless mayhem of magic and madness where the normal rules of existence have been transcended: the endemic corruption, the non-stop intrigues, the unbelievably bad driving, the dirt and degradation that surround the cities…and yet this twilight zone called the Philippines – would we really have it any other way? There's something seductive in the madness; something truly compelling! In this weeks episode English designer Nicholas Stoodley, finds himself embedded in a coup in progress and becomes a Pinoy in the process.

We drew to a halt beside a huge throng of bystanders blocking the road and making further progress impossible. Just as well; no doubt, if given the chance, my taxi driver would have pulled into the parking lot of the Camelot Hotel and that is where a contingent of rebel soldiers were holed up! There was a sudden sharp report of gunfire and the crowd dived for cover, scattering in all directions – unfortunately leaving the taxi I was in dangerously exposed.

"Get out, get OUT!" I yelled at the insane driver who was straining to see which side had fired the salvo. Dangerously insane young boys broke cover from behind trees and raced to pick up still hot shell casings from the road. They were worth money and money was food!

"There…THERE!" the taxi driver stabbed the air with his hand towards the right, completely ignoring me.

"Get the hell out of here!" I bellowed and seized the driver by the shoulders. A loud rumbling sound was followed by a huge tank lumbering slowly but very deliberately directly towards the taxi. Fearing perhaps that his nice new taxi might get flattened, the driver finally realized he'd better retreat. It wasn't an easy feat. Several other cars had backed up behind our taxi also wanting to see what was going on and they had formed a road block of sorts. The tank was getting closer and closer.

"Reverse…reverse!" I screamed, almost sobbing in mindless panic. The driver too was now panicking and tutted continuously as he inched his way backwards almost flattening an old woman sitting on a stool outside her house with a bemused expression on here face. She'd seen it all before no doubt, but to me it was a completely new dimension to life in the Philippines.

Eventually we were able to make a twenty three point turn and speed off to my original destination. That day several bystanders had been killed at the Camelot Hotel but despite the fairly obvious risk of being shot, crowds of onlookers continued to watch in awed fascination as the coup ground on. But all this was just a passing diversion when compared to the big one: the coup of 86.

Holed up in the palace, a freeze dried Marcos and his Pit Bull, Fabian Ver, plotted out the final steps to an overlong charade. The party was long over and it seemed as though everybody knew it except general Ver who, almost foaming at the mouth, was screaming, "We must ATTACK!" And this was live TV. We had watched in disbelief as the embattled pair attempted to explain their strategy to a horrified nation. ATTACK ATTACK. And General Ver was not known as a gentle man. Meanwhile Cardinal Sin who had taken on the moral responsibility of ridding the country of its unduly unelected President, cajoled the crowds to gather outside Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame and defend the rebels holed up inside. This was history being created on my doorstep: People Power, and I wanted to be part of the action!

The embassies had warned us at all costs to stay indoors, buy candles and canned goods and to all intents and purposes my friends and parents assumed I was ensconced at home watching what was happening on CNN along with the rest of the world. "Where are you going?" demanded my maid, dropping the customary "Sir" in her disdain as to my obvious attempt to leave the house.

"To the camps" I had replied almost happily as I ran towards EDSA to join crowds of jubilant people on their way to save their country. Throngs of Nuns in full religious regalia, complete families with Lola in a wheelchair, students, hot dog vendors and souvenir salesmen. Transistor radios spewed out unfounded rumors, some were singing and most were eating as Filipinos tend to do when possible. It was Mardi Gras. A day out. Yes, it was serious and there was a purpose to it all but it felt joyful despite the hovering presence of helicopter gun ships overhead like vultures waiting for a kill.

Nearing the junction of EDSA and Ortigas a major road block had been created by buses and huge trucks parked side by side across the road. Here the crowd was completely solid and appeared to be so all the way to the camps. Some had spread rumors that tanks were on the way. Further progress was impossible so we settled down to wait – for what precisely we didn't know. Nobody knew really except perhaps Marcos himself who knew that the last waltz had been danced long ago. It had shown in his face when he forbade General Ver to bomb the hell out of the camps and machine gun the crowds. He was already looking at his legacy and Imelda was packing her jewels into Kleenex boxes in another room.

It was the first time I had seen so many tanks in full battle mode. A snake of dull green war machines heading directly to where I was standing and there was no way forward. If they wanted to get to the camps then I was toast. Simple as that! I took a few photographs but I was too nervous to concentrate. The nuns just in front of me knelt down in the road in front of the lead tank and the crowd went quiet. A ripple of electricity went through the crowd and the hairs on the back of my neck tingled. For a few moments there was an impasse and with all the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets you could have heard a pin drop!

Suddenly the lead tank roared, swung round and ploughed straight through a concrete wall as though it was made of cardboard in an attempt to find a way forwards but, as one, the crowd repositioned and blocked any further movement. Nobody had said anything, it was a collective consciousness. If they wanted to get to the camps they'd have to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of us and we didn't care! We just didn't care. This was our chance and we were going to take it whatever the cost! It was an amazing almost exhilarating feeling and it was at that moment that I became a Pinoy, fighting alongside my brothers to forge a new republic. But of course times change. There's Marcos nostalgia now! He brought order to an unruly country. Imelda had so many good projects. The list is long. And where I had faced down the tanks is now Robinsons with scads of shoppers totally unaware of the historical significance of the site. There Nicholas Stoodley made what could have been his last stand. For the Philippine Nation.

Previously: Chapter 9 - Camelot Part 1

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 9

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 9 - Camelot

One almost got used to it; waking up one morning and finding it quieter than normal. Usually I would be woken at about 6am by the sound of the garbage truck slowly advancing its way down the street outside my house with its horn blaring in a non-stop repetition of shrill sharp blasts guaranteed to wake all but the dead! This was the signal for my maids to haul the huge rusty old oil drum that we used for the garbage out into the street. There they would wait gossiping with all the other maids who were doing the same thing. They twittered like pigeons.

Occasionally though, the street was eerily calm: no garbage trucks, no children playing or cars passing. No maids gossiping, no scavengers scavenging before the garbage truck reached their quarry. Just an eerie calm. Most unusual in Manila! Tell tale signs of another coup! You forgot how many after the first few and became almost blase about them. "Sorry I'm late Sir, there's another coup," was an excuse at the office that was considered on about the same level as, "Sorry I'm late Sir, but I had LBM."

It had been one of those quiet mornings. Nesing, my maid, had appeared with my usual cup of tea but no newspaper. "Good Morning Sir."
"Morning Nesing."
"What would you like for breakfast Sir?"
"Nesing, where's the newspaper?"
"No newspaper Sir," No explanation had been forthcoming so I returned to the question of breakfast.
"I'll have poached eggs please."
"Sorry Sir only one egg left."
"Well then, poached egg."
"What Sir?"
"One, just one poached egg then!"

No doubt Nesing would have normally then informed me that there was no bread left and we'd carry on our little game until eventually I had ascertained what my breakfast was likely to be that morning, but a new element had been introduced that probably explained the absence of the newspaper.

"Can I please take the afternoon off Sir?"
"I suppose so, why?"
"There's a coup Sir."

I wondered what the connection was. Was she somehow involved in the proceedings? Was she going to watch, something that many of her countrymen chose to do - rather like going to the movies? Worse, was she perhaps planning to manufacture homemade bombs in the garage for delivery to the rebels? Nesing answered my unasked question. "My sister Sir, she lives near the base." That made it a bit clearer. There were two large military bases right slap bang in the middle of Manila and of course in any coup that was not the best area to be living near.

"Who's winning?" I asked, assuming she's been following the progress on the radio.
"Sir?"
"The coup, what's happening?"
"Oh, I don't know Sir....just like before." It was no big deal.

This particular coup was being carried out live on the radio and after listening for a few minutes it became clear that the action was, as yet, confined to certain well-defined areas of Manila and the rest of the city was basically carrying on life as normal; which is what I decided to do. I had work. Unfortunately my car was being repaired after having descended into an enormous bottomless pit which is called a pothole in Manila. "Nesing!" I shouted, There was no answer. She was in her room listening to a hysterical news reporter giving a blow by blow account of the coup as though it was an Olympic event. After several attempts she finally emerged from her room looking annoyed at the interruption but then that was a normal expression. I had asked her to get me a taxi and a few seconds later I hear her scream Anna's (my other maid) name as loudly as she could. Equally loudly, and from the other side of the yard, Anna shouted back. "TAXI!" Screamed Nesing. That was how they communicated if it were at all possible - positioning themselves as far apart as they could and then screaming at each other.

Anna had produced a suspiciously new looking taxi almost instantaneously which was strange in a city where you could never get a taxi when you wanted one and they were, on average, at least twenty years old in those days! Telling the driver my destination I was promptly informed that there was a coup. He further went on to inquire if he could make a detour because of this coup which seemed pretty reasonable to me, I had even flippantly said he could take a long detour if he wanted. After all I wouldn't want to get involved in the action that was coming in off the car radio at full blast!

"And now we switch over to out mobile reporter, Rod Reyes, who's at this moment just outside Camp Crame........Rod? come in Rod......(sound of static)....hello? Rod? are you there?" There was the sound of a loud explosion followed immediately by loud cheering.
"Yes, Nestor, I'm.......standing here (boom....boom) in front of Camp Crame....there's thick black smoke coming from....here they come again! (boom....boom!....more cheering)......and it's a direct hit! Smoke really pouring out from the main command post now and the crowd of people here this morning....(ka-BOOM)......that was really a big one Nestor!......there's an........(boom)................"
"Rod?.....hello Rod....are you there? (sounds of yelling then cheering again).....Rod.....ROD?"

It transpired Rod was still alive and the coup proceeded in gripping detail as I wondered which way my taxi driver would take as he took a right turn down a side street not far from the Camelot Hotel - a somewhat seedy recollection of Las Vegas motel masquerading as a whimsical castle done out in pre-cast concrete and King Arthur Gothic. At that particular moment the hotel was temporary home to a contingent of rebel soldiers who were, as we headed towards the action, trading pot shots with government troops. I had thought foolishly that the "short detour" was because the driver wanted to avoid trouble, not actively seek it out!

Previously: Chapter 8 - Coco Banana

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 8

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 8 - Coco Banana

Let it be Magic.....and it was. It was the time of Donna Summer who, in so many ways, created the spell that was the Disco Decade. That was the time of Coco Banana, the offspring of Ernest Santiago who had a talent for self-promotion and wore a satisfied smile that always reminded me of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. And why shouldn't he have been smiling! They lined up to be admitted to the magic. In droves.

Perhaps some of them had found their way to Coco Banana by way of the mini forest that used to stand in the middle of Remedios Circle in Malate where on a Saturday night you could smell the clouds of illegal smoke as it slowly wended its way up into the atmosphere in a haze of its own particular magic. In those days the yuppies didn't go to Malate - that was out of bounds. But Sean Connery came. Lots of famous foreigners were there but in those heady, glorious, riotous days Coco Banana was almost the center of the Universe!

Tucked away in a dimly lit side street just off Remedious Circlem, the club somehow managed to attract the most amazingly eclectic mixture of people that could be imagined. Sure there were the sex tourists from Europe who were only just becoming Euro Trash but then they were fanning out allover the East in their quest for cheap thrills. But actually nobody gave a damn and that was what disco was all about. It was a great leveller where we all merged into a homogeneous melange of interweaving bodies, sweat and the general Ecstasy of freedom that flowed despite the castration of the system wrought upon the country by its government!

Socialites and Movie Stars writhed with hookers and call boys and fashion models. Cross dressers slunk around eyeing up the competition and even the odd politician showed up anxious not to be left out. And through it all Donna Summer oozed an almost sacred grail. She WAS disco. The heart. The soul.

It was at Coco Banana when I first realized that Nicholas Stoodley, as a brand, had "made it" in the Philippines. I had drifted in at midnight since just NOBODY really went there before except perhaps the sex tourists from Europe, and there I was confronted by at least 15 people wearing my signature across their chests. A strange feeling. They had no idea it was ME as I squeezed through them, but there I was. Sort of famous. In many ways it meant a lot more than winning the PBA at the Araneta Collesium. Of course the majority of those that cavorted my name across the floor were call boys but then I guess I could claim that I was master of street fashion!

Manila had always, up to that point in time, been very self-conscious socially. I mean one just didn't cross social boundaries. One would never, darling, go to a club with hookers and call boys and yet here they were. The genuine Makati socialites not giving a damn, cheek by jowl with, for all it was known, their drivers. Look around the room and you saw fame and wealth and poverty together and having FUN. Simple as that. Not like the Embassy in the Fort today where it is necessary to be a friend of Tim Yap or famous or beautiful and rich to even survive a few minutes before being swept into a corner!

Coco we miss you.

Previously: Chapter 7 - Skatetown

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 7

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 7 - Skatetown

Skatetown came into being after a conversation I had in the early 80's with Jorge Araneta. He thought that Cubao needed an image shift. He was right! The problem with Cubao was...well, Cubao was in Cubao and not Makati or Greenhills where all the "smart" crowd went. Or so the theory went. Here was a chance to get wild and wild I got - in many ways!

Well, the ONLY way to get people to see Cubao in a different light was to do something way out of the ordinary - so I bought a 1957 Cadillac convertible and painted it bright pink. A good start. Then I crashed it into the plate glass window next to the entrance. The concept was Roller Disco. The lights, the music and Bose speakers with a hell thumping bass that made your hair stand on end...none of that anemic Muzak and neon strip lighting of normal roller rinks where glazed matrons watched with horror while their siblings crashed to the floor in convoluted heaps. This was meant to be SERIOUS. It had to be because to some extent roller skating under a raft of screaming lights to loud disco music in semi darkness produces an effect not guaranteed to be the best recipe for safety! I mean it was all very well luring the crazies from Makati to go all the way to Cubao (like it was the NORTH POLE in those days) but put them on skates to Donna Summer and you've got a serious potential problem. And that was only the start. I remember well nearly dragging one of the disc jockey out of the booth since the atmosphere inside the booth had become rather enveloped in a haze of marijuana fumes. Fun perhaps but dangerous. Dangerous.

This is an original invitation to the opening of SKATETOWN which opened in the early 80's. It was my project with Jorge Araneta.

The space up on the third floor of Ali Mall was cavernous and screaming for development and apart from an actually extremely good Italian restaurant where I once had lunch with Paul Anka, (who had the great misfortune to compose the favorite song of all bad singers in karaoke bars in the world: My Way) the rest of the floor was one great space waiting to happen.

Electro Systems were brought into create the lights and install a high-tech sound system and we worked, therefore, from the top down; working on the ceiling first since it was this cacophony of coordinated lights that would hopefully not disorientate the skaters too much that would create the mood for Skatetown. The DJ booth jutted out into the rink so that the disc jockey could see what was happening (unless he was stoned out of his mind) and was clad in mirrored sheets as was, in fact, quite a lot of the sidings. The original rink was painted with clouds but with the thousands of skaters that besieged the place they quickly faded into obscurity. Silver padded edging surrounded the rink itself and that lasted about a month only since bewildered skaters zoomed, temporarily blinded perhaps, into the sides at speed = shredding everything in their path! They were replaced with industrial strength vivid pink vinyl and the problem was solved.

At the far end of SKATETOWN there was, somewhat incongruously, a real Australian outback saloon that Jorge Araneta had purchased complete in Australia and had shipped over to Manila. It was as far away from a disco as you could imagine but it worked. Crazy was what was needed and crazy we got. Bit too crazy. The Araneta management decided that we needed to have periods every hour when the lights (the neon srip lights I hated) were turned on and the sound turned down so that more normal people who just liked skating could enjoy themselves without risk of brain damage or a broken arm or leg! It became the headquarters of an important skating club and these were serious skaters! They wore uniforms and not like the scarlet red one piece, zip up coveralls that I designed for the Skatetown staff either. It was a culture clash: me wanting wild and then wanting wholesome. But all in all - it worked!

The opening actually did attract the glitterati, I mean there really was, for all to see, Chinbee Monotoc, all the way from Makati in her Saint Laurent gliding across the rink hemmed in by A Listers from the "better" areas. They had made it to Cubao without getting mugged! Ernest Santiago of the famed Coco Banana arranged a show on skates and anyone who remembers Coco Banana will have an idea of how it was - outrageous comes to mind. So it was a great success and I wanted it to spread. I wanted to do the whole top floor as a sort of crazy, young vibrant place that would have all linked in together like cool Lego but it was too advanced a concept for that period. But Skatetown remains a great memory for many people. It was a spark. It ROCKED.

Previously: Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever & Nicholas Stoodley Photos

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Basketball Fever & Nicholas Stoodley Photos

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever & Nicholas Stoodley Photos

"Sure Enough it was STOODLEY". Well, it may have seemed sure enough to everyone else but it sure wasn't sure to me..... we didn't even know each other's names the first time we practiced as a team and THAT was just a few days before the first game in a school gymnasium - Thomas Aquinas School I think it was called. There they were these big, lanky black guys (and one shorter white guy) dripping with sweat in the tropical heat and with brains made soggy with jet lag figuring out who was who and....."hey man, who's the English dude looking worried in the corner?" That would be me! There was nothing sure at all!

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER SCAN)

Sonny Jaworski leaps into the air with amazing ease in a bid to outwit a Stoodley player. Despite such elegant playing though Toyata was finally beaten by the Nicholas Stoodley team - the first foreign team ever to win the a PBA championship. Of course it wasn't exactly popular; in fact a wave of nationalism almost spelt my end since, for good luck, I had to watch all but two of the games in the series confined amongst rabid Toyota fans up in the "cheap seats" so far from the action you needed a telescope to see what was going on. Well, it WAS the INVITATIONAL Conference. My team was invited, we came, we won. End of story but start of me becoming one of the best known foreigners in the country. So famous I ended up dancing with Elizabeth Ramsey on TV and that is something I pray doesn't exist somewhere in the archives!

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER SCAN)

Hail Nicholas. How the hell did we do that? At the time it seemed miraculous. Besieged at the end of the final match I had been surrounded by a phalanx of security guards and hauled down to the court protected from the baying Toyota fans who would have probably ripped me limb from limb. Dazed, I had faced an array of reporters wanting to know how I had done it! Me? What had I done? Did I even know what a technical assist was? Sure it was my name emblazoned on their shirts but I was a designer... I'd never even played Basketball once in my entire life. I stood there bathed in light, the focus of awe, respect, scorn and outright rage and words failed me. That night we got extremely drunk indeed.

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER SCAN)

Somewhere among the throng on the court is me. It was the beginning but also the end. I had arrived from Rome and Australia and opened a shop selling Ready to Wear that was, well, a bit different. I had fun, it was a crazy time back in the late 70's and I guess what I did and how I did it fitted in well with the almost manic desire to make hay even though the sun wasn't exactly shining on the country at the time. That one shop soon became three, four then five and then THIS. PBA Champion and soon I was on the six o clock news every day talking about clothes and was allover the media. But even though I won, was a champion, I also lost something big and that was what made the whole Nicholas Stoodley brand. I was becoming too big, too well known and therefore just another brand name!

This is part of a promotional flyer sent to stores carrying the Nicholas Stoodley brand in the Philippines. If you look closely you can see me on the cover of Mr and Miss magazine with a mustache for God's sake - can't stand facial hair - and then, of course there's that iconic group VST & Co wearing Nicholas Stoodley. VST really encapsulated the Disco Sound in those days.... and buy were they underrated as was, in general, Pinoy music!

Can you believe the HAIR! We all seemed to have it then (luckily I still HAVE hair). Here Nicholas Stoodley looking Oh so cool models one of his army inspired shirts. Leaning casually on the front terrace of what was the first house I rented in Manila in Scout Magbanua, Quezon City. It had seemed like a zillion miles from Rome and Valentino and it WAS. Believe me!

Casual Ready to Wear Clothes. Nicholas Stoodley really took off though because we were the first company to make jeans specifically for girls......before women would buy men's jeans and then have them taken in at the waist at a tailor shop with the result that...well, they looked exactly like that was what you had had done! It was hell in pattern making but at least the pants fit and fit they DID. WELL.

Lounging in my back garden.


Previously: Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part Two

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Part 2 of Chapter 6

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part Two

For reasons that were not really clear to me (for I didn't know how to play basketball and had only a vague perception that somehow getting the ball through the hoop – and not the "goal" as I had embarrassingly called it when interviewed by a newspaper – was a good way to score a lot of points) we actually managed to win the third game. This state of events didn't exactly go down too well with the Toyota supporters but my fate was sealed! Since I had been sent up to sit with them in the "cheap" seats about two kilometers from the court and we WON, then obviously THAT was what changed our luck! Well, great for the team but not so good for the Englishman; not only could I hardly see what was going on below me in the far distance but if anyone discovered who was sitting in their midst disguised with dark glasses and a basketball cap pulled down low over their face (thus almost totally obscuring what little vision I had of the game - I may as well have stayed at home) then I was history. Toast!

A rather fat but energetic lady sat to my right screaming "Get that ball!" at every opportunity… Get that Ball… Get that Ball. It was driving me crazy. Hell, lady…do you realize that's MY team down there somewhere…… but that was a fantasy………. I would be lynched. Anyway, it was my team that got the damn ball and slammed it through the hoop more times than Toyota. So there!

Incredibly we continued to win every match we played even beating the somewhat arrogant Addidas team from France that obviously thought that Addidas was a MUCH bigger brand than Nicholas Stoodley (true) and that their superior experience as a team (well, we had almost none) would allow them to crush us into the floor of the Araneta Coliseum. Tough Luck Addidas. No contest. We blitzed them and I stayed hemmed in by an increasingly irate crowd of "Let's kill Nicholas Stoodley" fans. I was the LUCK we needed. Actually I think it had more to do with the midnight party I had held for the team at my house, THAT was what created the team spirit - but I was still in disgrace for that episode.

The final was an out of world experience for me. I looked to my right and there was a huge scoreboard with my name, STOODLEY and to my left was another scoreboard with the name TOYOTA. Was I really THAT important? It didn't seem right somehow. What the hell did I know about the game – though I was learning more and more; it was just marketing and GOOD marketing at that. Suddenly my name was everywhere. Who WAS this enigmatic Englishman and his unknown team of American misfits that were sweeping through the opposition? I was even signing autographs! People were buying Nicholas Stoodley T-shirts at an incredible rate and production was running into three shifts. What had started out as a bit of a lark on the way back from Australia was now a fast expanding business. But was it still "a bit of a lark?" It was scary!

The famous "last two minutes" were almost the last two minutes of my life as the game hung in the balance. My heart raced as Larry Pounds, the star player (who also happened to be about nine feet tall which helped) basically propelled the ball through Toyota's hoop with the force of a thousand tons of TNT. A huge roar erupted and it was a roar of disappointment. Of revenge, of, "Let's kill STOODLEY!"

I was immediately surrounded by twenty security guards and hustled out of the cheap seats to the astounded stares of the Toyota supporters who never realized that the quiet Englishman with the racing heart was none other than their nemesis!Basically dragged down to the court with my feet hardly touching the ground I was pushed in front of the TV cameras and asked how I did it. God knows….what could I tell them? I can't even remember what inanities I proffered but I do remember trying to leave the Araneta Coliseum through the back entrance. They were waiting for me! Despite the many guards, rocks were smashed down on the roof of the car as others rocked the vehicle from side to side cursing the foreigner cowering in abject terror inside. "GO HOME" they cried. "You are not welcome here!" Yes, my team won but in many ways I felt as though I had also lost.

Previously: Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part One

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 6

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part One

In 1980 it was decided that what the brand "Nicholas Stoodley" needed a bit of spectacular publicity and hence there emerged from Los Angeles the Nicholas Stoodley Basketball team which, according to the meeting in question, would arrive in Manila, play in the PBA 2nd conference at the Araneta Coliseum and, hopefully, slaughter the opposition and make the brand into a countrywide phenomena!

The players were assembled from NBA hopefuls who were hanging around hoping to be picked for a team later in the year or they'd end up serving burgers in McDo. The chance to play in Manila (wherever in the world that may have been) sounded like fun – a free trip, pocket money and hey... isn't Manila famous for R & R? A place the American troops went wild in whenever they escaped from the Vietnam War!

The first practice session they had upon arriving in the country was actually the first time they had actually played together as a team – they didn't even remember each other's names... and it wasn't as though they were going to play second string teams in Manila either; apart from the Addidas team from France, local teams like Toyota ruled and under the 2nd conference rules they were allowed to field imported players! I was doomed. We would be routed and I'd be a laughing stock allover Manila; my name emblazoned across every players chest on National TV. That first practice was enough to convince me that my initial instincts were correct: Yes winning the championship would be great publicity but LOSING with a ham-fisted team of uncoordinated players who seemed more interested in local girls than playing…well there goes my marketing genius!

The first game loomed. It was humid. And HOT. They had jetlag and LBM. They still couldn't remember each other's names. And then there was me. I WAS Nicholas Stoodley and I knew nothing about basketball at all... never played the game. What an idiotic idea. I sat just behind the players and could feel the tension vibrating inside me as we crashed to a humiliating defeat which the newspapers described in relish the following morning lest you missed it on TV live! The second game came and went in the same manner. We were slaughtered. A meeting was held and it was decided that me sitting behind the players on the court was bad luck so to improve our chances I was sent up to the cheap seats and placed among a group of rabid Toyota supporters.

Totally dejected I decided that what was needed was a party at my house before the third game and consequently, under a full moon a team of almost naked black basketball players cavorted drunk in my swimming pool to disco music and a little too much fun! The following morning the maid found a scene of carnage before her horrified eyes: a body behind the sofa, possibly dead, two more on the patio. Vomit here and there. The other maid was discovered in a condition that is best not described in detail and the phone was ringing off the hook! Where were the players? Didn't I realize there was an important practice? Do I know what will happen if we lose the next game. Was I INSANE?

Previously: Chapter 5 - An Alien Culture

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 5

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 5 - An Alien Culture

The early days were a bit of a blur. Here I was in a foreign and sometimes truly alien culture sweating it out in a climate more suited to alligators than Englishmen! Outside there were an amazing amount of people with guns! There were check points and Martial Law and I was opening a store selling RTW clothing with my name outside - I was even decidedly unsure about the whole venture! And then there was the publicity! I wasn't really used to that. I'd had publicity before in Europe and had even appeared (drunk unfortunately and telling a dirty joke to the Premier of New South Wales) on TV in Australia, but the Philippines was so "personal". Everyone seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time just gossiping about everyone else: who was bonking who and why and when and even HOW. It is hardly surprising that the Philippines ended up as the text capital of the world!

In the mid 70's there wasn't much choice when it came to press publicity because Marcos had closed down a lot of newspapers for not being too friendly to him so one was very much left with the Bulletin Today and it's magazine, PANORAMA. Chelo Banal interviewed me one afternoon – a delightful young lady – and soon I was chatting away nineteen to the dozen with no thought at all. As far as I was concerned we were just gossiping. Wrong. "And what did I think of our local actors?" I had been asked. "Well," I had stupidly said with no thought at all, "I think Christopher de Leon has about as much talent as a dead slug!" It had been a throw away line designed, I guess, to make me seem both clever and superior. Such is the naiveté of the young and inexperienced. Actually Christopher was the ONLY actor that I knew about at that time and he was, in fact, a good actor; but I was just having fun. Gossip. I was enjoying this. Christopher de Leon wasn't. As far as he was concerned it was libel or slander or whatever, but it wasn't Kosher and I was in for big legal trouble.

Life WAS casual in the Philippines and it was so easy to become ensnared in a situation without even realizing you had slipped down a honey-coated slope into an abyss of unfathomable proportions. There was NO SCRIPT to life in Manila – it was a crazy hodge podge of events that spontaneously erupted in the face of the unwary with alarming regularity. Invited to appear on a game show called SPIN-A-WIN I was suddenly grabbed in the full glare of God knows how many people on TV and made to dance with Elizabeth of the crazy hair Ramsey. Me, a reticent English virgin that had, up to that moment, thought himself adventurous. Was THAT ever my baptism of fire! And it was constant. Everyday brought new heart stopping events bubbling to the surface.

Drinking beer one evening with a friend at one of those open air bars on M.H. del Pilar (well kiosk would be more appropriate) I had gone off for a few moments to try and find somewhere I could buy a packet of Dunhill cigarettes and returned fifteen minutes later to find that, apparently, my friend had been taken away in a Police van with several others. Directed to the Western Police District Headquarters somewhere near the Hilton Hotel, I finally found him languishing in a filthy, smelly, crowded, locked room full of various miscreants and a few well dressed individuals looking both scared and out of place. Demanding to see the policeman in charge and summoning up all my British courage I was directed outside where a sloppily dressed man with a bulging belly, sweaty armpits and a presumably loaded gun was lounging across a table, obviously in the latter stages of a drinking contest with his buddies – also all with loaded guns. I was toast. But England didn't become the World's leading Imperialist Power for nothing and I managed to crack a meager joke that had all the cops laughing hysterically and inviting me to get as drunk as they were. "Well, just ONE bottle then". Four beers later I had won my friend's reprieve. His crime? None. It was beer money that's all; who wouldn't pay to get out of that hell hole? They even offered to drive me back to the bar from where I'd come but by then I doubted if they could even stand, let alone drive! Yes, it was an alien culture alright!

Previously: Chapter 4 - Curfew Passes

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 4

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 4 - Curfew Passes

Jeans were jeans were jeans. But not designer jeans. Not DESIGNER jeans! It was a new concept back then and I happened to land in the middle of Manila just at a time when Ready to Wear was about to burst forth in all its glory. Considering that jeans were the new "uniform" then it was about time to inject a bit of pizzazz into the arena. The first good idea I had was to make jeans for women in women's sizes! Not an outlandish idea but something that hadn't been done before. Previously they'd have to buy a pair of men's jeans and have the waist taken in two or three inches. Great for the customer but hell for production double the patterns, double the everything. "How come," I was asked, "is it REALLY necessary?" "After all." etc etc etc. Bahala na. How often was I to come across THAT particular expression!

The second good idea was that jeans should get away from the Levis flat arsed approach that tended to desex the wearer. Using a few techniques I had picked up from the Valentino couture department I therefore taught the cutter techniques on how to get the jeans to actually fit and flatter the body to mold themselves around ones nether regions in a sensual and highly profitable manner.

This of course was all a bit of a revolution in Manila in the middle of the 70's where if you had wanted anything that was even remotely stylish you went to a tailor with a sketch or a photograph ripped from a magazine and hoped for the best or you got a pair of Levis that desexed you. And desexing wasn't really on with the sensual throbbing of the disco enticing you into the darker corners of the night; that's if you were lucky and got a Curfew Pass!

Ah the Curfew Pass! Strange how something so onerous can actually engender nostalgia when viewed in retrospect. They were a sort of status symbol you could always tell the best parties because Curfew Passes were handed out like confetti ..the more passes, the more important the celebrant. There were the days when you had to rush home cut off very much before your prime in order to escape the police but there were other, glorious nights, when armed with a curfew pass you could roar through Manila's deserted streets at top speed without seeing anyone or anything, except perhaps the odd road block or two. That's why it paid to stay focused. No good speeding down Aurora Boulevard at 160 in a semi-alcoholic haze if a group of police had erected a barrier across the road and were attempting to slow you down by waving a dimly lit flashlight wildly in your direction that obviously needed new batteries. I didn't even see them until it was too late! And they had guns. Lot's of them. Driving, as I did in those days, a Mach 1 Ford Mustang with a V8 engine, the only sensible thing to do was to accelerate as fast as possible and turn off the main road at the first opportunity. I still live today but it was close. They shot people that did that. But not me that night thanks God!

The third good idea I had was deciding that if I was going to start something new then I might as well go for it and make it ALL new. Not just the clothes but the marketing as well. So I did it myself.

DON'T BUY MY CLOTHES ran one advertisement with nothing else on the page except my signature and my trade mark: a sensual red kiss mark. NICHOLAS STOODLEY CLOTHES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE. Again nothing more on the page. This was probably the clincher. The shop was packed with people after that came out. It was a fun time. I was playing around defying convention and getting away with it.

Previously: Chapter 3 - Playboy Magazine

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia