ShopCrazy

There’s actually a great shopping place within the Araneta complex apart from Gateway Mall. It has some really amazing finds and even a quaint Italian restaurant you have probably heard about and should definitely try.

Have you heard of Cubao Expo? It is the former The Marikina Shoe Expo, nestled between the Araneta bus terminal and Puregold, and located behind Ali Mall & the old Rustan’s Superstore, which now houses Automatic Supercenter and ACS Call Center.

Among its tenants are I Love You store, Grand Thrift Shop, Little Divisoria, The Reading Room (with lots of fashion finds and even a soul card reading room where you can have your fortune told by its proprietor, Sandy Allan), Breathing Space, White Box Gallery, Sputnik Fantastik Comicbook Shop, and Bellinis Italian restaurant, which we mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Learn more about this quaint shopping place hidden in the heart of Cubao in Quezon City as well as their exciting shopping events after the jump.

You can actually find stores that cater to your varied needs in Cubao Expo, and it goes beyond your need for a fashion fix. There are four full-service restaurants (including one that serves organic foods and vegan-friendly dishes), six thrift shops, a flower shop, nine shoe stores (including one that provides custom-made footwear services), a comic book store, a store for hopia and other Chinese delicacies, five fashion boutiques, two mini-divisoria shops, a health and organic goods shop, an old-style beauty parlor, a tailoring shop, a fabric/textile/sewing goods shop, a locksmith’s little stand, a little shoe store, and even an ukay-ukay shop.

According to Sandy Allan, “Cubao Expo manages to get inside your skin in the most delicious way possible. Even if it’s your first, fifth, or fiftieth visit, there’s always something new, something pleasant to find. The tenants and shop-owners of Cubao Expo are notoriously full of character. Whatever the reason, going to Cubao Expo will leave an impression, one that you will want to study up-close with subsequent visits. You can’t have enough.”

Sandy also shares that Cubao Expo, or Cubao X to its denizens, has been undergoing a curious revival in the past two years. Gone is the sleepy, dusty, uninteresting place that people just remember when they want to buy locally-made, good-quality shoes. It’s now a throbbing little village full of quaint, individualistic, and substantial boutiques, cafes, and restaurants.

White Box Art Gallery

There are 50 establishments in this U-shaped community: some of them are throwbacks from the late 60s, while some have opened as recently as four months ago. There are antique shops, thrift shops, high-fashion boutiques, an organic cafe, a cinemathique’s dream theater, and several art galleries that actually have good art displayed on their walls. There are shoe stores, of course, and the ubiquitous ukay-ukay shop that seems to have been placed there to round up the flavor of the area. Fans of the place include visual artists, art students, fashionistas, vinyl collectors, retro mavericks, back-packer European tourists, bargain hunters, and antique collectors.

Learn more about Cubao Expo’s exciting shopping events on the next page.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Fashion for Women, Food and Drink, Media (Books, CDs, DVDs, Movies), Other Stuff, Sale Alerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.