Ode to the Shop
An empty shop stirs memories of old times past.
There is an empty shop front in my neighborhood shopping area. Empty white walls, a drab paint job and a blank space above the entrance which once bore the signboard of the occupant.
A few years ago, as I recall, there were always a few shops in your friendly neighborhood shopping district (you know, the cluster of small shops smack in the middle of every HDB estate) that catered to a dodgy sort of business with a dodgy sort of clientele.
The nature of these shops was simple: they bootlegged copies of video games and sold them at insanely deflated prices to an eager and very poor group of sorry sods who couldn't shell out the ridiculous sums that the licensed versions cost.
Most of us customers were teenage students. I recall many good times discussing the merits of various new game releases in these underground shops with my old school chums.
Due to the illicit nature of the goods sold in these shops, the proprietors were particularly watchful for the presence of patrolling cops. And they had an impressive organization structure, despite being comprised mainly of what I assumed to be desperate folk in urgent need of a paying job, or teenage delinquents that had screwed up in school. There were patrolling groups strategically placed as an early warning system; there were assembly lines packing cloned CDs into clear plastic baggies at the back of the shops; there were cashiers keeping an eagle-eye on the throngs of teenage boys looking for a bargain.
It was a hive of underground activity that supported what must have been hundreds, if not thousands of folks scraping out a bit of extra income.
Sadly, with the rise of faster broadband connections at home, and the rising popularity of games that focus more on the social and cooperative aspect of gaming, the need for such "Pirate Shops," as we called them, decreased rapidly. What used to be a feature in all popular shopping areas have all but disappeared overnight. And the thing is, I feel sorry about it.
These places brought to a wider Singaporean audience a mass gaming culture, which would otherwise have been limited to only a few rich kids with too much allowance in their pockets.
Illegal they may have been, but the "Pirate Shops" were the closest thing to a mass youth movement in Singapore, at least in the 90's.
Other countries have their own extreme representations of mass gaming culture. Japanese youth dress up like anime characters and call it 'cosplay'. South Korean kids have become so good at strategy games like Starcraft, that watching them at their game play is like watching real commanders lead their troops into battle -- that competent and professional.
We just ripped the games off their original CDs and sold them at absurdly low prices -- note the past tense.
I find it sad that movements and trends die off in Singapore just like that. I agree, bootlegging video games isn't exactly the most honorable thing a man can do, but still, it was something we all did in common (c'mon, admit it). But it seems that even the bigger issues in Singapore, like youth participation in politics, entrepreneurism, and various other features of our education system is exactly like that of the "Pirate Shop" phase -- transient, and vaguely remembered as a dim memory.
If everything in society, even those that have real value, is only brushed off as a phase, how can we ever achieve that level where nationalistic sentiments can rise above the infancy level of primary school and arrive at the level where we truly, wholeheartedly believe in the values passed down from previous generations, and fulfill those values to the fullest extent on this tiny island we call home?
I saw a cold, austere shop front. I saw our soul.