CUBAO NEXT ] Jake Verzosa serves muffins, espresso and real life in Manila Collective

It’s been awhile since we last ventured into Cubao X, and it’s nice to know there have been movements within its artsy, endearingly scruffy enclave—despite our long absence (Jejeje). The whimsical furniture store Heima has opened its second floor to serve as its manlier showroom. Right across it, Mogwai has expanded its ground level space to include the area that the gallery Blacksoup Project used to occupy. And then, most recently, there’s photographer Jake Verzosa’s café taking over the space of the hip curio store Vintage Pop.

Jake’s space, which is also a gallery, is called Manila Collective Photospace + Café. It is a small white box that, like most of the artist-run establishments in the Cubao X cluster, has a cool, homey, DIY feel to it. The space opened last May with an exhibition of Jake’s photographs of last January’s Feast of the Black Nazarene. Jake has been devotedly covering the prusisyon for the past six years, but this year decided to use a stereo camera. Hence, the 3D glasses provided the guests during opening night (Forgive our cluelessness, but we just checked out the photos in the website using a pair of 3D glasses we found lying around in the office—-pretty cool.)



Next to grace its walls are the journalistic photographs of Nana Buxani, depicting working class life. July 17 and August 14 are the last of the four Saturdays that renowned documentary photographer Alex Baluyut is holding master classes on documentary photography.

For more information on Manila Collective, it's all in their website.Photographs courtesy of Jake Verzosa.