Ahhhh, C&B Circle Mall. The abode of every Maristian, St. Scholastican, or OLOPSCian (sorry, I'm not sure if that's right) in Marikina. And I'm pretty sure every person not from Marikina is lost as you read this sentence. Let me explain what C&B is.
Well, C&B is this dinky little hangout that we used to have back when I was in High School. When I was a kid, this place used to be called S-Mall, and there came all the jokes that it was called S-Mall because it was so small. Hehehehe. Basically, C&B is just a really average strip mall with all your basic retail needs. It had your Mercury Drug, Jollibee, Chowking, National Bookstore, McDonalds, David's Salon, a grocery store (which changed in name literally 3 times over my lifespan) and various random stalls selling random trinkets and phone casings.
So yeah, there's not much to this place other than tons of memories from me and from literally everyone else here. But Marikina is probably the most "small-town" place in the Metro, and here's a hangout that pretty much shows off all the charm of this place. I have fond memories of the bookstore upstairs called Book Nook (which has now shut down) which offered 5 peso hardbound full-colored books, mostly because they were insanely obscure titles that no one has ever heard of, so I decided to buy like 6 of them. And there's the McDonald's that surprisingly has wi-fi that works, which is a fairly unique entity. Really, if you're looking for the real small-town, middle of nowhere experience, C&B's a good place to start. read more