PINAY DIVA
Last Wednesday night, my homegirl Grace and I cruised South Berkeley and North Oakland. She's new to the Bay Area and I wanted her to get to know some cool spots. After getting some sorbet from the place formerly known as Double Rainbow on Bancroft Avenue, we headed over the Lake Merritt. The urban scenic route via College Avenue and Broadway Auto Row lead us to Kingman's Lucky Lounge on Grand Avenue. Lucky for us, we bumped into an acquaintance of mine: Maylene Briones, 1/4 of Pinay aka Pinay Divas.

May sat on a bar stool smoking a cigarette. She greeted us as we approached the door. We chatted awhile before going in. As Grace and I headed over to the bar, I said in her ear, "Maylene is a Pinay Diva." Grace stops dead in her tracks, bends over and covers her mouth in her "Omigawd! No way!" kinda way.

As the evening rolled on, May, Grace and I ended up outside again while her roomie Marissa (muh-ri-sa) and her friend Larissa (luh-REE-sa) chatted inside. We talked about Irma de los Santo's wedding the saturday before. May said that people were surprised that she was at the wedding, let alone a bride's maid. Since Pinay's second album is missing Miss Briones, people thought something bad went down between the ladies. "Why do people always think there's some big drama!" she exclaimed. Well, it's easy to assume when you don't know the real deal. Apparently, the management/producers, the Divas and their families really knew wassup: May is just going to med school.

So Maylene is off to a small medical school in LA. She's leaving this week and she will be putting in 100% of her time and energy. The past few years, she devoted all her time to her dayjobs at Chiron, UC Berkeley and her moonlighting gig as a Pinay Diva. "It was like having 2 full-time jobs," she says of her research and her music. Irma, however, managed to balance law school at UW in Seattle and her singing career. But when the Bar came around, that was a whole different story. A source of mine said she was advised to put music on hold so she could focus and pass her Bar. Juggling the two careers was just took a little too much. Maylene didn't want to juggle anymore. Her passion for singing will never die, though. She's just putting on hold for awhile. I have full confidence that she'll be Miss Superwoman once again.