Let me flex my psychic powers and tell you what you’re thinking right now. First, you’re thinking: “Sige nga, tingnan natin kung alam mo nga ba.” (Or roughly translated along this line.) Second, you’re thinking: “If that’s a Popular Bookstore, then why don’t I know it exists?“

Yes, the Popular Bookstore is hardly popular. It’s virtually unknown, which is unfortunate considering that we should know any bookstore in the same way that we know, say, Manny Pacquiao (ridiculous, I know). It’s so unknown, the Popular Bookstore that is, I feel guilty giving it a single post, while the more popular and exponentially much bigger Powerbooks is lumped together with other bookstores.

I’ve long wondered why this bookstore, surprisingly sprouting along Tomas Morato Avenue beside Army+Navy and THE Belo Clinic, is called Popular Bookstore. This curiosity got the best of us and so we had to stop and check the bookstore. Ok, I’d admit we first dropped by Fleur de Lys, home of heavenly desserts, which is adjacent to it.

As reflected in the logo above, the “PO” is made distinct from the rest of the letters in “popular”. The design is intentional and explains why it’s called the Popular Bookstore. The owner’s family name is “Po”, the staff explained.

The subsequent conversation brought to mind the “six degrees of separation” theory, which postulates that “everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth”. We were one degree separated from them. Amazing how small the world seems to be.

This bookstore, while not big, is cozy. There’s a discounted portion at the third floor. We found a P150 book that is worth more than P600 in ebay.

We were told by the staff that Popular Bookstore focuses on serious and hard-to-find titles (website) . We were also told that this place is frequented by professionals, intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals. I don’t know which classification the staff lumped us into. It would have been convenient if there’s something similar to Harry Potter‘s sorting hat. Every time a guest comes in, the sorting hat is placed on his/her head, then the hat declares, instead of Gryffindor: pseudo-intellectual! I bet my keyboard that it’s going to be truly a Popular Bookstore. Or, depending on how many are sorted as pseudo-intellectuals, it could prove to be a very unpopular place.