This refers to the article titled “They still call it Penguin” by Pocholo Concepcion (Nightlife, Sunday Lifestyle, 3/24/13). Please allow me to correct certain factual errors in the article.
The article says I sold my rights to Butch Aldana in 2004. I never sold the rights or gave him permission to use the name Penguin Café Gallery. I am the original owner of the café and I was the one who came up with the name. (He does not even know why it is called the Penguin). I operated the café for 25 years but due to health concerns, I had to abruptly stop its operations sometime in 2005. At the time, my principal concern was to find continued employment for my employees. For this reason, I agreed, on a friendly basis, to lease my restaurant equipment for a minimal fee and to assign my lease to the premises. But I clearly told Aldana, and he agreed, that I was retaining and not assigning the name Penguin Café Gallery to him.
Aldana called his new establishment Rockola. But apparently he could not build any reputation for Rockola. So he started creating the impression that I had sold the rights to the name “Penguin Café Gallery” to him and that the place he was operating was still the same café I had operated for 25 years. Unfortunately, my serious physical condition then prevented me from stopping him from making those claims.
I discovered only later that without my knowledge and permission, he had registered Penguin for his business name in violation of our agreement and of my intellectual property rights to the name Penguin Café Gallery.
He then opened a new bar in Makati, calling it Penguin, in 2010. Eventually he closed it and then opened one in Malate, this time using the name The Bar@1951 but still creating the impression, through word of mouth, that it is the current reincarnation of Penguin as stated in the article.
This is not true. The Bar@1951 is in no way connected with the original Penguin Café Gallery. The original Penguin is totally different from the latter. It was culturally and socially a practical extension of the Cultural Center in Manila and was home to many artists, writers, film directors, journalists, painters, photographers, poets, etc. from here and abroad. It was the subject of articles that came out in Vanity Fair, New York Times and various other international and local magazines, books and newspapers.
I do not want people to be misled, and Concepcion’s article creates the wrong impression about what really happened to Penguin in Manila. It misrepresents the history and provenance of the only true, original Penguin Café Gallery.
The Penguin in Malate has a lot of history and belongs to many people who grew up there at that particular time. I am in the process of writing a book about the Penguin, and I don’t want people to get confused.
—AMI MICIANO,
ami_miciano@yahoo.com
My article was written not “to create the wrong impression about what really happened to Penguin.” My only intention was to inform readers about a new club, The Bar@1951, whose co-owner, Butch Aldana, had also operated Penguin before it closed down in 2009.
Aldana has sent the Inquirer documents to prove that he and Miciano had discussed “permission for rights to use of the name Penguin/Penguin Café Gallery/604 Cafe.”
—POCHOLO CONCEPCION