Marikina Shoes Anyone?
I always say this wherever I go, whoever I am with, I am proud to be part of Marikina City. I like its "rural" like ambiance and yet I know I am in the city. It is a community where discipline is almost always apparent in the way its citizens conduct their daily life. Back in the old days, Marikina manufactured the best shoes. I remember back when I was about 10 years old, my aunts used to come to Marikina to have a made to order shoes. Sturdy almost to a fault, Marikina used to be THE shoeplace. The arrival of Made in China shoes however, extinguished the marketability of the Marikina made shoe. It could no longer compete with the cheaper and the mass marketed shoes from the Chinese. Sigh! Wonder how the early Marikina shoe industry made its mark? "Marikina is not the shoe capital of the Philippines for nothing. For the greater part of the 20th century, Marikina was the biggest manufacturer of quality shoes. There was a time, between 1978 and 1982, when Marikina’s women...