By STELA SAYAN
www.nordis.net

Everybody may agree that Session Road is Baguio City’s most popular road, but is everybody aware that it was named so because it was the venue of the first session of the Philippine Commision under the American colonial rule?
How many of our fathers or our grandfathers would remember how Session Road used to look like, where cafes, restaurants, boutiques, the famous Session theatre catered to Americans in cowboy hats and highlanders in bell buttons? Well, that was Session road-very American.

Today, after celebrating Baguio City’s Centennial, here are two faces of Baguio’s Session Road:

Session Road in Bloom- the season of the country’s best festival; the Baguio Flower Festival or Panagbenga highlights Session Road for one-week where it gets transformed from a busy street to a shopping/foodtrip boulevard. Stalls are put up where food, ornaments, drinks and a lot more are sold; concerts are organized to entertain tourists, and the Baguio’s Finest Policemen parade in uniform to assure security. A picture of real festivity for one week, then after that, here is the other picture:

Session Road now bare – After the stalls are removed, Session Road gets back to reality. A mere walkway towards SM or to the Baguio Cathedral, a busy street of carbon emitting cars and a dumping place for the garbage from the recent festival. A good ground for pickpockets to practice their skill.
Heres the irony, do we just show off the best during festivities as a compliance? Why do we do a thorough clean up only before the Panagbenga? Why do our good looking policemen disapear after the festival?

Why does Session Road get so bare and neglected after it had just bloomed? Is Session Road like the sunflower that blooms only during summer then wilts and go for a while? Gosh what would the designers of Baguio say when they see how much we ruined the beautiful centerpiece they had designed for us, designed to be different from all the cities in the country, Oh how pitiful Session Road is, having to wait another year to bloom again. # nordis.net