Cars and Coffee: Saying Farewell to Yardstick Coffee in Makati
Yardstick Coffee has been a staple hangout place for car enthusiasts, bikers, and coffee lovers alike. Since mid-2020, the coffee shop located along Esteban Street in Makati has become the new home for people that want to hang whether it’s on an early Sunday morning or late in the afternoon.
But a few weeks ago, they announced that the shop will be closing. So, I decided to pay Yardstick one last visit during their last day of operation. It seems we weren’t the only ones who had the same idea.
I dropped by early in the morning to check out the more laidback scene, and the regular Sunday morning Yardstick people were there such as Mr. Patina Machina with his MX-5. Not a lot of cars turned up but most of the parking slots were full. More importantly, it was nice catching up with familiar faces we haven’t seen in a while.
After a while, I took off but decided to come back in the afternoon to see whether more people had shown up this time with Aurick’s GR Yaris.
Surprisingly, it was even more jam-packed than the morning session.
People had already double parked almost the entire length of Esteban Street. Luckily, I was able to find parking rather easily.
The Buzzhype Motorsport crew turned up with a lineup of 6 or 7 Toyota Yaris (Yarises?). They’re all set up in different ways and seeing them parked together made for a very interesting sight.
Most of them had an RS setup albeit somewhat similar to Robert Tan’s Yaris.
But there was one RS model that had a “4” at the end. It also wasn’t a Toyota since it had four rings on the grille.
One of the cars that really stood out was this Pandem-kitted GR Yaris. The GR Yaris is already wide as it is, but the kit made the AWD pocket rocket even wider. It’s running a set of Gramlights 57DR which looks like the ones previously fitted on the black Pandem GR Yaris.
Even Mr. Manila Fitted himself dropped by with the Adidas S15 rocking the new set of Work T5R 2P.
We’ll definitely do a proper feature of this “One of One” S15 in the near future so stay tuned for that.
It was nice being able to chill and hang with everyone with all of their new toys before Yardstick closed its doors.
Thankfully, there is some good news. We found out that Yardstick Coffee isn’t closing permanently. Instead, they’re closing only for a few months for renovations, and they will be back soon.
With that, expect the people who have grown to love the small coffee shop to come back once they reopen. But for now, it looks like we’ll have to find a different street to hang out at in order to get some coffee.
So, any suggestions?
Photos & Images: Jose Altoveros
