REMEMBER when P500 made you feel rich?

Man, you?re old.

These days, go to a mall and P500 will just about cover a fast-food lunch and maybe a T-shirt ? if it?s on sale. If you?ve got a date ?forget about it.

That?s why I don?t go to the mall when I only have P500 to spend. No, I head for Marikina.

Why? Two reasons.

One, when it?s not chest-deep in flood waters, Marikina is quite the charming place, blending a quaint, small-town atmosphere with patches of a modern, urban lifestyle.

Two, it also allows me to travel by bicycle, which immediately cuts my expenses by at least a hundred bucks, that would otherwise have gone to gas.

Marikina presents itself as a ?bike-friendly? city because of the network of bike lanes that run through its main thoroughfares. I?m not really sold on the idea of bike lanes, however, because bike lanes per se don?t make you any safer. When biking on one, it?s too easy to be lulled into a false sense of security ? until someone opens a car door in your face, or some jeepney brakes suddenly in front of you to let a passenger on or off.

Bike lanes are just another way of marginalizing bike riders. At best, they give you a legal leg to stand on if, God forbid, something does happen to you while riding on one. Better to learn how to safely navigate traffic on a bike (Look up ?John Forester+Effective Cycling? on the Internet).

But I digress.

Marikina is a leisurely 10-minute ride away from my home ? five minutes if I pedal fast ? through C-5 and into the Diosdado Macapagal bridgeway going to Cogeo. This scenic route allows me to take in some of the Marikina local government?s whimsical urban design ideas, such as electric posts painted to resemble Japanese bamboo, ?Transformers? constructed out of scrap metal, and ?Dutch Marikina,? basically a Potemkin-like façade disguising an entire village as somebody?s idea of Holland, complete with fake dikes and windmills, because the village?s name is Olandes. The irony was probably unintentional: the Dutch wrote the book on living with perennial floods.

In a car, these sights barely register as a blur, but the more leisurely pace of a bicycle allows you to take in the full horror. If the local government?s intention was to put a smile on commuters? faces, they?ve certainly succeeded.

That was only the aperitif. I turn right before the Riverbanks Mall into the Animal Trail (which I privately call the Rive Gauche) that leads into the Marikina River Park.

During the monsoon season, the trail is often a quagmire of sticky river mud peppered with beached janitor fish in various stages of decomposition. In dryer times, however, it is a hallucinogenic journey through a Rosseau-esque landscape with concrete giraffe, gorillas, carabaos and goats and strange tableaux representing international landmarks such as Iguazu falls (Brazil), the temple of Anubis (Egypt), the torii gates of old Japan and the home office of Credit Suisse (guess where?).

If I continue on, the path will lead me to its end in Barangay Tumana. Hardier cyclists than I can choose to continue on to exit in Old Balara on the left or toward San Mateo-Batasan on the right. But since my climbing legs have yet to return, I cross the pontoon bridge into the Rive Droite which leads me into the town proper.

Most days, the bandstand sound system plays hits from yesteryears ? Connie Francis, Patti Page, Matt Monro, Elvisp ? the playlist is strictly pre-Beatles ? which provides some clue to former Marikina mayor (now Metro Manila Development Authority chief) Bayani Fernando?s mindset when he envisioned the whole thing.

?Urbanidad,? Fernando?s weary battle cry against the encroaching shirtless jologs nation, is painted in man-sized letters along one wall, and his vision of convivial urbanity is clearly rooted sometime around 1959-1961, when life moved at a more relaxed pace and people still doffed their buri hats to each other in greeting.

On the other hand, some days, the sound competes with the blare of people singing karaoke ? at eight in the morning! (?Jesus Christ! Get a job!? I sometimes mutter under my breath when in a less tolerant mood). Afternoons you can hear a band practicing across the river, anything from old surf tunes to death metal.

But again, the local government seems to have succeeded. Most days the park is full of people strolling, riding their bicycles, or just hanging out. There are people fishing in the river, a few with poles, some with nets, but most seem to prefer to just shoot the fish with air rifles. The park makes possible a more relaxed pace of life not rooted in frantic consumerism ? perfect if you only have P500 to spend.

The park feeds into J.P. Rizal, the city?s main drag, which stretches all the way from Pasig and Pateros in the South to San Mateo and Montalban in the North.

Although I grew up in Pasig, my father?s home town, I spent nearly as much time in Marikina, my mother?s, so I?m sort of a homeboy, though I don?t have the Marikina accent that we used to make fun of by imitating.

Back in the days when Pasig was still the provincial capital, Pasigueños considered Marikeños rubes. Today, the shoe (get it?) is on the other foot, Marikina being seen as a model of (relatively) sensible urban planning while Pasig grows ever more congested in an unchecked urban-industrial sprawl.

A leisurely ride along J.P. Rizal (admittedly not always in the bike lane, which tends to be clogged with parked cars anyway) reveals hints of the old Marikina. Barrio Calumpang used to smell of Rugby rubber cement and tanned leather during the day, and cheap perfume at night. Today the cabarets and nightclubs of the old red light district are long gone, as are the backyard workshops where most of Marikina?s famous shoes were cobbled by hand. However, you can still see the big houses that Calumpang?s shoemakers built during the boom years of the Sixties and Seventies, fading reminders of a prosperous past now ceded to modern manufacturing.

The only place where you can still see shoes being made by hand is at the Shoe Museum, where dioramas depict the evolution of Marikina?s shoe industry, and where you can gawk at the Largest Shoe in the World, a wingtip the size of a Range Rover that?s fully in keeping with the local government?s surrealist-inspired design philosophy. (The city?s official website identifies itself as the ?Home of the World?s Largest Shoe.?)

Nearby is Kapitan Moy, the 19th-century bahay na bato belonging to Laureano ?Kapitan Moy? Guevara, the founder of Marikina?s shoe industry immortalized in Hugo Yonzon?s old comic strip ?Sakay and Moy.? Now it serves as an events venue and occasionally a set for period films, as well as the city?s cultural center.

It?s almost lunch time and, what do you know, I still have my P500 intact. I?m spoiled for choices, all within pedalling distance and most with nearby bike racks I can lock my bike to. For fast food, there are the Riverbanks Mall, SM Marikina and the Blue Wave Mall, but that sort of defeats the purpose of not going to the mall. In town there?s the old reliable Johnny?s Fried Chicken (?The Fried of Marikina?) and various carinderias, or, if I want to blow the entire budget, Bellini?s, the Marikina branch of the Italian ristorante that first opened at the Cubao Expo.

It?s a bittersweet, slightly surreal experience, since Bellini?s is strategically located in the geographical middle of J.P. Rizal. As I dig into my Penne Arabiata, it?s hard not to think about the old Lion Theater, which used to stand across the street, and where I spent many a happy afternoon or evening watching classic Shaw Brothers kung fu films, spy thrillers and Kurosawa movies. A stone?s throw away is a bank where my grandparents? bowling alley and pool hall used to be. There I was once knocked unconscious by a wayward duckpin while playing with the pin boys in the pit (before the advent of automated bowling, child labor was often utilized to manually set up the pins after each round). My brother and I used to play Ivanhoe with billiard cue sticks (it?s a wonder neither of us lost an eye) in between watching the oldtimers play carambola.

P500 goes a long way here, for me at least, because nostalgia is priceless.