Babushka's Basement Vodka
Misha, Tatiana, Some Girl, Some Dude, Evgenni, Fyodor.I know there was only six of them, but I still managed to forget two of their names. To be fair, I was only given them once, and not even in formal introductions - Misha kind of just showed up with me as if I were his "Show and Tell" object for the day, which technically I was. The entourage included Misha (with headlight), Fyodor (the Russian Dutchman), Evgenni and his girlfriend Tatiana (47% of all women between the ages of 20 and 55 are named Tatiana. At least thus far in my research.), along with some other guy who’s name I can’t remember along with his girlfriend whose name I also couldn’t remember. They were all extremely welcoming and friendly. I was quite touched that I would be invited to join this small group of friends to celebrate a somewhat important event for a guy I had only met once before. Apparently it is the Russian way, and I'm glad that this cultural rumor turned out to be true.
Follow your moonshine shot with an immediate bite of shish, and this crooked look will be your only suffering.
Russian birthdays are a big deal. We drank homemade vodka that Fyodor’s grandmother made in her basement. Fyodor brought it in a plastic water bottle, and we had to water it down before drinking it to assure our esophaguses wouldn’t melt. The meal included chips, cuts of a pepperoni type sausage, cucumbers and tomatoes sliced, a ‘salad’ made by Fyodor’s mother (which consisted primarily of beets, carrots, celery, raw fish and mayonnaise), and shish kabobs piled with onions and smothered in, to no surprise of mine (anymore), cilantro! As it turns out, its one of the more prevalent herbs in Russian cooking, which has been a welcome shock to my Tex-Mex sensibilities. I thought I would never see it again, that last time at Boca Grande in Coolidge Corner. Here they serve it in Chicken Soup. I figured with a name like cilantro! it had to be the kind of thing that only grows in Mexico and the Spanish Mediterranean Coast. I love cilantro! I feel like it should be written in italics and an exclamation point every time its written. Its even fun to say: cilantro! cilantro!
Misha always gets in the pictures before Evgenni, as you can see.
So we ate and drank and ate. We ate so much that we couldn’t tell we were drinking. The guy who’s name I can’t remember (Lyosha) opened the trunk of his ’03 Russian Lada (think ’83 Honda Civic) and played some Euro-pop-house-dance garbage. And there was much rejoicing.
Volga: the Mother River
The Volga River is the Russian Mother River. It runs through the heartland of the country, around Moscow, and empties into the Black Sea. It connects the frozen northern wastelands of Lake Lagoda, the fertilish forests of Tver and Vladimir, the Steppe and Stalingrad (now Volgagrad) to the Black Sea, Constantinople, and Europe.
We camped out on the banks of the Volga for Fyodor's barbeque. We drove to the edge of town in Misha’s friend Evgenni’s Czech Skoda sedan, a fine little car I would say. After entering into the deeper woods, the road narrows to barely two lanes as we dodge babushkas on bicycles riding back to their ancient villages in the hinterlands. The river and the road bend north, and we turn off the road into an old abandoned horse pasture outside of a similarly abandoned Soviet stable. Winding through the field on a well-worn path, we eventually arrived at the riverside in a row of trees. To the west, along the mighty Volga, Dubna was not the least imposing – the city lights are dim and the buildings are few, even though they hold thousands.
Barges named “Lenin” passed passenger ferries named “Lenin” as the evening set in. Its bad luck to rename a ship after it first sails. I have a feeling that had nothing to do with it, though. When ships would pass, the river would recede 20 feet, exposing riverbed. In the lowest seasons, the passing ships will draw the river out far enough to beach many fish for just a moment. Then a rush of water pushes out from the wake, washing gallons of green chemicals up over the much and sludge of the shoreline. It was quiet, and clear enough to see a few stars through the settled fog that blankets every night in the Mot
I was in the Russian heaven. Or the closest place they get to it.
Time to light a fire in a bucket and start drinking moonshine.
Дубна
I was invited to Дубна (Dubna), the hometown of Misha and his roommate Fyodor, for Fyodor’s 24th birthday party. I know these guys through a friend at BU, we had met twice before, and they are certainly good guys, and certainly Russians. Two things I like.
When I stepped out of the train, Misha was waiting at the back of the crowd.
Wearing a BU t-shirt.
“I thought you would like my t-shirt.”
“I don’t even own a BU t-shirt.” [I don’t know if I have any evidence that I was ever at BU with me in this country.]
“We’re going to go a swimming pool first. Would you like?”
“Absolutely. Though I don’t have a swimming stuff with me.” I had only brought books to read in the train, which I didn’t read at all, but instead ignored while I sat glued to the window for two hours.
“That’s okayee. I have stuff.”
So I hadn’t been in Misha’s hands for more than 20 minutes, and I was wearing a bathing cap and Speedos.
His Speedos.
And what better way to say: Welcome to the Motherland.
“I hope you don’t mind. In Russia, everyone wears ‘dem.” Yes they certainly do. And here I am. In Russia. Being everyone.
Swimming by their standards consists of about a dozen lazy laps of an Olympic swimming pool. This wasn’t ‘lets go to the pool’ and kick around, this was laps. I explained to him that it wasn’t really the America notion of swimming. Neither were the Speedos, for that matter. The pool was a Soviet-style exercise facility, complete with the inscription “OUR PRIMARY RECORD IS HEALTH!!” above the blocks.
Dubna slides along 5 miles of Volga River waterfront, and alternates between being an entirely characterless Soviet planned city, and a conspicuously mysterious academic commune. It was built by the Soviets in 1951 as a closed city for physicists to work on the atomic program. Fyodor would later explain to me the pride of their mother-city, Dubnonium, unstable and unnatural radioactive element which was invented here in the 1960s. Don’t drink the water.
My conversation with Fyodor was itself a Cold War anecdote.
“…Dubnonium, its number 107 or something on the Mendeleev Table.”
“On the what table?”
“The Mendeleev Table of Elements.”
“Oh, the Periodic Table of Elements.”
America. Refusing to recognize the accomplishments of foreigners since 1783. [Mendeleev was a Russian physicist who first created our modern organizational system for the elements. The Russians named the table after him. Apparently, we didn’t see the need. Propaganda starts at home.]
The western end of the city includes about a half-dozen clusters of apartment towers, scattered along the main road and behind it. There will be 4 buildings, holding thousands of occupants, then empty land or trees for 600 meters, then another cluster. It was completely decentralized. Neighborhoods artificially planned and coordinated by some technocrat in the Kremlin, resulting in these pods of colonialism, of cleared forest and progress and triumph of nature. First the sickle, then the hammer.
Misha explained the plight of the town as it gets richer and stupider, as the New Russians buy up weekend apartments and take their ill-begotten money out to the country to escape the smog and assassins on the weekends. Science does not employ or pay what it used to, and so the scientists are drying up – not leaving, but just aging out of existence. Misha studied law at the University there. Bikes used to control the streets, now they are an afterthought to the occasional passing of Merc and Lexus SUVs. As late as the mid-90s, a theft of a bicycle would be newsworthy. In August, someone was shot outside their apartment building, and it went almost unmentioned in the paper. Its not that its common, its just no surprise that the city is not what it once was. New Russians even wash their dirty laundry in the provinces.
Misha pointed out some of the sights. “This is the place where you get married.” Not a church. Definitely not a church. In fact, it was a completely secularized place for a wedding. There wasn’t a cross to be found. The wall of the terraced entryway was adorned with an iron Greek goddess. It was Saturday, and there were weddings that day. The cars in the lot around it were all decorated rod-straight white, blue and red ribbons and balloons, emblematic of the Russian flag. The bride and groom were dressed as if it were any other Christian ceremony, but there was no Christ to be found. There was wedding cake and photographers and gowns and flowers. But there was no priest. No cross. It was fascinating. The Soviets completely removed the Christian aspect of the wedding ceremony – weddings were to be for creating little Commies, nothing more. And it stuck. Amazed. After the ceremony, the wedding party went out to the riverfront near the wedding hall and started drinking cheap beer in their gowns and suits. Love it.
The sign in the center of town which welcomes you to the old commune side of the city was of a nuclear particle enveloping the name of the city. Beyond it was a café, flower shop and a convenience store, then an attempt at a modern laboratory, then a kilometer of forest. Out of the forest rose a red and white candy cane painted smokestack, emerging from the depth of a rusty smoldering industry.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know what you call it in America. It is the heater.”
“You mean, the heater?”
“Yeah.”
“Misha, we don’t have those.”
In Russia, all heating is centralized and is under the control of the central government. You don’t get heat until some bureaucrat in Moscow decides you need it. This is how the Soviets did it, and it remains today. Thus, these huge power-plant looking ‘heaters’ exist all over the country, providing heat for an entire city from one central orifice. It looked like an incinerator to me. Take trash, make far. Sounds commie to me. I explained to the fantastically confused Russian that in the US, each individual building or house will have its own independent heating system, and will have total control over installation, maintenance and fuel, will decide when to turn it on or off, and will be able to adjust the temperature.
“That’s pretty inefficient.”
“You’re damn right.”
“What happens if you can’t buy gas?”
“You die.”
The laboratory and heater system probably ran on energy derived from the monolithic dam which strode across the Volga River just above the city, creating a massive reservoir behind it and gererating enough electricity for this city of 70,000. It helps that the place doesn’t sprawl in the least – Dubna has the same population as Portland, though the whole place could fit onto either bank of Portland harbor and only up to the crest of the hill. There are no houses – only apartment buildings with stores on their lowest levels. This is also the only place where I had seen construction outside of Moscow. Dubna was a growing city in a shrinking country. [Russia has had sustained falling population each year since the early 1990s.]
The ‘old’ part of town, noting that it was completely built only 50 ago, featured these old communal style farmhouses, interspersed among them was a small bar or a store in the lower level of an old empty lab. The buildings were curious impersonations of European intuitions or Colonial American homes. It was similar to what you’ve known all your life, but completely unfamiliar.
Later, Misha and I enjoyed The Big Lebowski, which Rachel had sent him from the States just that week. The last time I watched that movie I was with friends in Charleston South Carolina. I explained the more intricate concepts of Americana, such as: “at least I’m house broken,” “the bums lost, Lebowski!” and “this aggression will not stand, man.” Its the stupidest movie I’ve ever loved.
ЭКСПРЕСС
The following are the precise instructions supplied to me by Mikhail (Misha) Sherbakhov, the close friend of a BU friend of mine, on how to get from Moscow to Dubna, his hometown at the edge of the Moscow Region [something like a ‘state’].
1. Go to Savyoletskaya Station
2. Buy a ticket for an EXPRESS train to Dubna.
3. Get on the blue train.
4. I’ll meet you in Dubna.
Thorough. I spent most of my time on the metro in the process of completing Step 1 trying to figure out what the Russian word for EXPRESS is, thumbing through my pocket dictionary, panicked that I would end up on one of the notorious commuter trains with one hard wooden bench that stopped at every cluster of datchas from now to the Artic Ocean.
Thankfully, the word for ‘EXPRESS’ in Russian actually is ‘EXPRESS’, or, to be more precise, “ЭКСПРЕСС.” Close enough.
If you’ve never traveled to some far-off land without adequate knowledge of the language on the ground, you would be shocked to find out how much you can get away with by just keeping your mouth shut and observing what other people do. As I approach the ticket counter, I realize that people aren’t saying anything, and only handing over 100 rubles. There was only one line, and it said ЭКСПРЕСС right over it, along with ДУБНА right below that. After which, everyone was going over to the gates, showing their newly purchased ticket to the woman at the gate, who flashed some card over the sensor and allowed you to pass through. I got to the front, handed over my rubles, asked for ‘adin’ (one)Thus, the whole transaction was possible without any interaction whatsoever, only your powers of observation. This is meant to allay the fears of the lighthearted. Of course, this system is never perfect.
Step 3. Get on the blue train.
They’re all blue.
Luckily, I’m literate enough now to solve this problem.
The train was similar in quality to an Amtrack roller. There wasn’t quite as much leg room as there could have been, but there were comfortable lounge seats, tables between seats, and storage was ample. I took an empty singular seat near the end of a car, until a woman came up to me and looked perplexed. When I explained to her that I didn’t understand the ticket, she directed me over to my assigned seat across the isle. A center seat in a row of three, between two middle aged Russian guys and facing two other Russian guys across an all-too-small table. Comfy. Maybe we’ll play Canasta.
Later I would realize that I actually had the isle seat, when the guy who had the middle seat showed up and talked at me for 5 minutes, while the guy sitting next to me in the isle took off. About 3 perplexed looks from me later, he sat down in the vacated isle seat. After that, I glanced at the ticket, found the number ‘6’, and looked up to see myself sitting in ‘5’. A little gesturing on his part would have made the difference, but no. Quote from my travelogue: “Remember to learn some Russian, you jackass.” No matter, I wanted to be as close to the window as possible anyway. Plus, the guy to my right took off after 15 minutes and never returned. There were no stops for the next 2 hours, so I have no clue where he went.
Perhaps he jumped out of the window after realizing that those suspended 13” TVs above our heads would play, out loud, a French comedy movie from the 1970s starring Gerard Depardeu with a faded audio track of dubbed Russian performed entirely by one Russian guy. Male parts, females, children; same guy. Monotone, no less. I couldn’t decide if it would be worse if he tried changing his voice for every character. I suppose the Soviets deemed it necessary to subject the masses to the stupidest of Western entertainment in order to keep them content with their tank parades. That aspect of the experience reminded me of sitting on the bus as it careened across central Moscow while being subjected to hours of videos of traditional Moroccan wedding ceremonies in inescapable mono for 8 hours. At least that was Moroccan video in Morocco.
Then there was the window.
Across a broad river bridge, in the distance you can see dozens of apartment buildings rising out of patches of trees, with the vista peppered by clusters of smokestacks. Decrepit abandoned factory. Universal Bakery Number 9. A canal. A nuclear reactor. The train speeds and slows, but never stops.
Red-brick garages line the edges of the tracks. Wooden telephone poles struggle to suspend 6 crossbars, layered thick with lines. Metal electrical wire towers bisect the landscape repeatedly, carrying light to the ends of the tundra. The trees are green with leaves, turned to a sad yellow, or bare. An empty field of brown grass, without a farmhouse to be seen. A dirt winding road. Small houses and small gardens. The houses are wooden slats, with sharp and steep tin roofs that hurl any scant sunlight back from whence it came. A traffic infested road parallels the train as we enter Икша (Ikshha). The car is silent, except for the droning Russian dubbing and the underlying droning French performances of the movie. Occasionally there is an obnoxious whistling tune in the soundtrack, which serves as a transition between scenes. To a Russian, whistling is considered a sure sign of idiocy. A picturesque village on a hill, a few houses in a clearing around a circular domed orthodox church. Suspiciously similar to the faceless thousands of villages upon hills that I passed in Scotland or Turkey.
We stopped, but the doors don’t open. An old collective farm – fields around an unoccupied multi-family farmhouse. 70 km from Moscow (30 miles). A coal loader without coal. A factory that, but for the fact there are two workers near a loading bay, has no business being operable. It has that ‘built in 3 months because Stalin said so’ kind of craftsmanship – where the sheet metal walls appear ready to peel off their girders, the innumerable nails noticeably absent. Another factory on the other side. We’ve been passing it for 3 minutes. It must be 2 miles long. Perhaps it makes tractors. In the subway in Moscow, many of the stations feature icons [pictures or designs created using tiny square pieces of colored tile, originally used only to depict Christ or Mary] of a certain propaganda quality, where tractor-welding workers look up in awe as another finished tractor is lowered from the halls of their gargantuan tractor factory. The look on the faces of the tiny idealized workers is striking; its as if they’re drunk with tractor. You’d think it was a keg of Baltika Lager coming out of that chute.
Swamp run through by canal. Tin roofs. Electrical towers. Glimmering new highway bridge. The woman who took my seat has been fixing her makeup in the window for 45 minutes. Wooden village. Each one is confined to one side of the tracks or the other – the towns never quite reach the tracks, and they never dare cross to the other side. They are caged. We scream past one empty train platform after another. Орудьево. One woman sitting alone, surrounded by bags, looking North. The movie is finally over. Cue whistling. Roll credits.
Then roll another Gerard Depardou French comedy from the 70s dubbed, of course, by the same long guy. If I happen to have spelled “Gerard Depardou” wrong and you know how to; please, tell me why. Сореваное. Empty. Grass is slipping through the cracks in the platform. Some of the platforms are in such thick forest that you wonder if there was ever anything there, or if they were planned communities, poorly planned. A few people start getting up and moving towards the doors. I do not budge. Not only do I assume that mine is the last stop (ЭКСПРЕСС В ДУБНА, right?), but I have come to realize that Russians have this deep set belief that if they are not standing at the doorway an unconscionably long time before arriving at wherever they’re going, that they will be ‘swept away’ and they will continue on in that train until the end of the Motherland. These people would end up standing in front of the doors for at least 17 minutes before the next stop. Ridiculous. On the subway, it is assumed that you will be standing at the door ready to exit by the time the doors close at the stop before your destination. I sit. When we arrive, I get out. Its not rocket science. And these guys are good at rocket science. Well, they were. At one point. So were we, I suppose.
Text message received: “Get ready, the next stop is yours, its called Bolshoi Volga” (The Big Volga [River])
Oddities
This is nothing but your typical golden moo-cow with stilted chicken legs saddled by a Turkic carpet and ridden by a singing naked clay woman sculpture who is standing in a birdfeeder.
Ski jump off a cliff. Four-season ski jump. Thats a jumper in a pink jump suit. You can see the sand 'landing zone' in the background. I felt like buying the guy a frizbee.
Myuzhskoy Syezon opened this week. I get the filling the Russians don't make many of their own movies, since the advertizements for this trash flick are as omnipresent as ugly guys with plastic bags. The title literally means "Manly Season." This 300 foot version of their typical 'exploding trolleybus and flying motorcycle flanked by slavic tough guy with a pathetically fake facial scar and dork in suit who looks like the guy from the computer game Half-Life' billboard featurs two giant crocidiles of seemingly infantesimal length leaping from out of the Moscow River, which also appears to be on fire. The quote on this: "You see, Russian movies are not very complex." It looks so bad that I almost want terribly badly to see it.
I found these horses grazing in the grassy area between a concert hall and a 6 lane divided avenue with street trolleys. No one seemed particularly interested. I told a coworker I had seen this, the answer I got was: "Yeah. ...And what?"
"Moiy Zhizin" [My Life], by the Fat Bastard, was released in Russian last week. I assume it sucks equally in any language.
Pregnancy
Russia got me pregnant.
I wake up sick every morning. I have persistent morning sickness. Either I was the subject of some Soviet-inspired experiement which impregnated me with the golden child of the second coming of Lenin, or I was poisoned. Perhaps maliciously, perhaps not. I've been given various possibilies, ranging from 'it could be anything' to 'it could be everything.' My symptoms include nausea, upset stomach, indegestion, heart burn - the day it started I recall nuzzling the toilet at 4am, repeating the Pepto Bismol jingle to myself. Surprizingly, this did not make me more suicidal, but held me steady in a permenant smoldering insanity.
That wasn't the start really; from my third day here I began waking up with inexplicable muscle and back aches, migranes, dizziness and disorientation. For the first two weeks, these symptoms would fade after breakfast and a shower, but they are now nearly permenant. Nothing I do sets me right, not the food I eat or the habits I undertake. I ate at Sbarro yesterday and felt
better for a while afterwards. I don't know if I'm digesting anything, my stomach lining has been swpt from the field. I can't drink the water here, so I am also constantly dehydrated. Water fixed everything when I was in college. Now its just another poison in a world of poisons. I've lost weight, but not will. I am not dying.
I am just fading away.
I am Douglas McArthur.
A Band, A Place, and The Russian Mafia
I realize you can only technically have the strangest night of your life once, but when your memory is as shoddy as mine, you end up declaring several nights to be superlative. Thus, it shall henceforth for a day or two be known that Saturday night was the strangest night of my life.
Glancing through the events listings in the English-language Moscow Times during the day, I noticed that my favorite modern jazz band, Soulive, would be playing in the city the Satruday night. I was later told that the fact that this obscure jazz/fusion/soul outfit would be playing in a city which has played host to only the likes of Patti Smith, Kelly Osborne and Korn in terms of American 'artists' since I've been here is a sure sign that God loves me and wants me to be in Moscow. I am an agnostic, so "Thank you person/supernatural being/extraterrestrial/vague theoretical outline that I may or may not believe in for giving me the gift of stupidly random fortune/devine premonition."
Laura and I went down (thankfully, I would not be going to concerts in Moscow alone on successive nights, more on this later) to the place, and found a glistening silver monstrosity of garish metalic post-moderndom. Kuznetsky Hall was not the scummy rock club where I saw Soulive play last June. No, this by New Russians, for New Russians.
New Russians = the newly rich, ultra elite. The ‘Elitny.’ Most of them made their money between the years 1991 and 1997, when all the Soviet public businesses were essentially handed over to those who held the keys, leaving lower-level Communist Party peons with billions of dollars in capital overnight. They did not earn it, or work for it, in fact, some of them moved out of the country immediately to avoid fines or prosecution. Russians call New Russians 'empty people, and it suits them. They drive only Mercedes and BMWs. Which they use to run every traffic light. They dress expensively but usually poorly, and they are uncultured despite their best efforts at pretension. They exist to be hated; to drive up the price of restaurants, to own night clubs for six months and then skip town and the tax collectors, to wear obnoxious sunglasses, to be those asshole Russians that travel anywhere other than Egypt and Turkey, to threaten teachers who don’t give their kids top grades, to threaten everyone, really, and to be the kind of people whom it would be my utter pleasure to make life severely uncomfortable for if I had any ability to converse with them whatsoever. But I can’t, so I don’t. I am a portrait of a stifled brash manimal.
Kuznetsky Hall was perhaps the fakest building in the fakest neighborhood I have ever seen outside of the Virginia side of suburban DC where the fake politicians and their even faker lapdogs, yes men, lobbyists and lawyers live when they’re not at home with their ‘constituents’ faking listening to them. If you’ve ever been, you know precisely what I mean. If not, try to picture apartment buildings and condominium complexes towering above a tepid pseudo-natural landscape, each one the same, with those forged yellow brick pre-molded façades framing blindingly intense blue windows. Like the false blue contact lenses worn clandestinely by false women, they are reflective and strikingly beautiful, and are therefore perfectly contemptible.
Anyway, we showed up right when the playbill said, 8pm, and there was nothing but a lone Mercedes in the driveway. The place had plenty of room for a full-sized parking lot, but it had an underground garage, so the elitny would not have to their eyes spoiled by the sight of a tour bus or delivery van. There were about 20 spaces in the lot, and the place itself was surrounded by what might once have been a natural preserve (there are many in Moscow) which is being eaten away by progress. No laws apply to the New Russians, but there are a virtual cornucopia for the rest of us. Thus, I had no reason to believe that anything legitimate going on at Kuznetsky Hall or the surrounding urban Pleasantville. We should have known coming in that it would be like this, as the girl who answered the phone when we called for directions only knew how to get there by car.
I guarantee we were the only people who showed up by bus.
Ever.
Or ever will again.
We walked up the granite steps as the strategic lighting illuminated beneath our feet, as if we were being welcomed, one might think, if one weren’t me, and about as out of place at this venue as a non-Russian speaking American in Moscow. If one were thinking logicially, they would think: "This place just opened."
We passed a metal detector inside the door, and had to take off our coats for inspection by the door-goon. The chauffer confronted us immediately, asking what we were here for, and besides her flight-attendant posh demeanor, was quite pleasant. I assume. I had no clue what was going on. I just tried to look like a rich foreigner. And failed quite spectacularly.
The chauffer asked that present our passports to the woman behind the desk, who entered the information contained therein into their computer, and then took pictures of both of us using a webcam. For some reason, this didn't seem odd at all. Perhaps thats because I was too busy not looking like I had any money to my name, which I thought was far more interesting to everyone involved in the interaction. We had reservations, down to the seat and table numbers, under my name, ‘SMIT’. [There is no ‘th’ sound in Russian, and so ironically my official name has become a Russified bastardization of my high school nickname. The bastardization consists of an ‘i’ which sounds more like a brief and indifferent ‘eh’ than an exasperated and deterministic ‘ihh’; and a ‘t’ which spits out the tip of the lips as if it were a watermelon seed, the final production sounding altogether more like a brand of breath mints than the moniker of an Irish Manimal.]
After that, we were prompted to check our coats, which was the one part of the night I was wholly expecting. Coats are not worn inside in Russia. They exist for function, not form, and are to be gotten rid of immediately after entering a private establishment. Otherwise, snow, slush and water would make the inside of every restaurant or bar look like a high school locker room 8 months out of the year. Happily, they are safe, reliable, omnipresent and free, in addition to obligatory. A welcome service to cheap bastards such as myself, who would sooner freeze than pay $3 for a coat check at a bar in the states. The only time you wear a coat inside in public is in a store or a metro station. Most places of business have a separate changing room, often immediately upon entry and in the basement, for workers to leave their coats and outdoor shoes, and visitors to a place of business will also check their coats in the lobby for a meeting inside. It would be fine, if I showed up here with more than 1 pair of work shoes. Now I have to buy some of those ubiquitous Euro-shoes like the ones that I would wear if I wanted someone like me to want to kick my ass if they met me in the states.
The coat check was manned by an older fella, who stood in front of 17 well-lit rows of empty coat hangers. If it wasn’t already exceedingly obvious that we were the only people there, between the lights illuminating precisely at 8pm, or the fact that every employee in the place was standing at their assigned static position, the ladies in front of their assigned row of slot machines or behind their assigned card tables, the goons in front of this or that elevator or access point, the empty coat room was the red flag.
The bottom two levels were a casino, and had all of the erie trappings of a casino in Russia, with the gloss necessary to accommodate the New Russians in a pseudo-Western style decor. There were elevators that seemed to be unnecessary and that seemed to go no where. Everything was new, and I would not be surprised if the whole place arose from the dirt that very week. Since I failed to find any information about the it in the newspapers, or on the internet, and we drove past the it on the bus before finding it, it was quite impossible to know if the place even existed. At some point I recalled that there was no extraneous words anywhere inside; there were no words on the entry doors, the walls, the concierge desk, or in the bathrooms. No clocks and no windows, as in any casino worth half its salt. You were barely aware that you existed anymore.
We were escorted across the gambling floor and up two flights to the restaurant and to our reserved table, right in front of the stage, by the same woman who greeted us at the door. It was a fine event and dining hall - well apportioned, though disturbed by untimely pillars in the floor [Russian engineering and architecture at its most typical] - veiled in the aura of a jazz club. Portraits of Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gilespie lined the walls in a rather insincere manner. We were sat facing the wall and angled away from the stage, inexplicably, since if we called to make a day-of reservation and were put in the front row, one would assume that they are not anticipating a sell out, and that they could seat us facing the stage or sitting across from each other like normal people. We were either all too normal or too wholly abnormal for the place, I can’t decide which.
Moving on, the waiter approached us immediately, and we only really wanted water at the moment. You get parched in Moscow, perhaps its the debhilitating air pollution. The menus were just a rolled up piece of paper at the center of the table, which might have been classy if you didnt like things that were nice. Eventually we would look at the menu, for a laugh, and found the prices to be in that excessive to infinity range. But on the excessive side, you could get a glass of house Red for $11.
So we shot the breeze. For 2 hours. And drank our waters. As the only two people in a 300 seat dining room. Well, there were the 6 waiters, 9 bus boys, 4 chauffeurs, 5 goons, 3 bartenders and 1 Russian-mafia guy milling about the shadows, intermittently watching us and nothing, but otherwise we were the only ones there.
There was also one guy about our age, dressed in one of those old-time baseball shirts and jeans, reading a newspaper and looking uninterested. He was more out of place than we were, but sure enough, he went up to the stage and started checking the mics about 10 minutes later.
The sound check went on for about an hour and a half. If I wasn’t madly in love with my station and quite content to see a free show by my favorite jazz outfit, regardless of environment, then the several Berkeley School of Music dropouts who emerged to tune the guitars and drums would have made me feel quite at home.
In that time, about 6 people showed up, and were all seated fairly close to us for some unconscionable reason. The waiter decided to forget we existed, returning a honor we had committed to him about an hour and 26 minutes before. And all was right with the cosmos.
The band emerged to do a quick loop of the room, about a half hour before show time. Laura asked ‘is that was the band?;’ as if it were the first time in 4 years she had seen three black people at the same place at the same time. I think the sight of the 400 pound guy, the skinny guy with the 2.1 foot diameter afro and his twin brother sporting a dorag tied in a somewhat homosexual rather than ghetto fashion may have been a bit of a shock to anyone in this environment.
The show eventually started, at 10pm, for about 50 people. The crowd was of the type of people who would wear their suit coats out on a Saturday night. At one point, the band encouraged them to clap along to a song, forgetting even New Russians have no more rhythm than the 1984 LADA sedans driven by their less fortunate comrades. They were here to be entertained, and I was clearly the only one there to see the band, or perhaps even knew who they were. You felt like they were just there because that’s where they felt like ending up that night, and that they expected the venue to provide them with some filler. A few people left almost immediately, and more than a few stepped out in the middle of it to try and have cell phone conversations. [Which begs the following: if you get a call on your mobile and the place where you are at the moment is so loud that you have to physically move, why would you press the phone into your face, put your fingers in your opposite ear and squint as you strain to listen while you run from the room in an awkward, ugly and pathetic fashion? Why not say to the person: “I CAN’T HEAR YOU, HOLD ON A MOMENT”, then casually put the phone down to your side in your hand as you walk out of the room, sparing yourself such a ludicrous display. My impulse is to declare that this is a demonstration of a New Russian: moneyed but uncultured, however, I feel like everyone else does the same damn thing. Children.] They were loud and abrasive, and tried many new things. They certainly didn’t slow down or tone down for the ‘intimate’ setting. I mean, these guys can play low and intricate club jazz, but they were insistent on playing the same set for this show as they would for 1000 hippies, jazz beatniks, Berkley dropouts and black people as I have seen before, complete with the elements of funk, rock and soul. It was a strain to have to sit without dancing the whole show, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
The band seemed to be quite wierded out, so I also enjoyed watching someone else live my life for a couple hours. Passionate musicians can block anything out, however, and it seemed like after each song, it was as if they awoke from a coma, and realized: “Shit, I’m in Moscow in a room with 50 Russians, half of them are mafia and the other half merely stole more money than I know exists, and I’m wearing jeans, and my hair looks ridiculous to these people, and I don’t know how I’m getting home, and I don’t know why these people are here how the fuck I got here.”
Perhaps I've mistakenly quoted my inner monologue.
The road crew took dozens of pictures, obviously to croon on about the band’s first trip to Russia. They were all of the stage, and I don’t know if this is because the goons told them not to photograph anything else, or if they didn’t want to photograph a nearly empty room.
The crowed did as well, though it seemed to be tertiary to whatever else they were in for that night. Perhaps they just felt like spending their illicit money and having an excuse not to talk to their dates/wives/affairs/prostitutes for two hours. One guy in the front was quite amused, and said ‘gitt funkiee’ on one occasion in a thick Slavic slur. There was also a table of young New Russians in the back, the only other patrons under 35 besides ourselves in the room. At one point, the drummer alluded to the time they had last night, and the guys hollered ‘you is most best!’ in reply. They must have met these guys at an elitny place on Friday. They were probably sent by their elitny hosts to Propaganda or Night Flight, and being black, foreign and attractive, (unlike these guys) probably didn’t even have to pay for their prostitutes. America. Winning the Cold War, over and over again.
The waters, which were about 10 ounces, ended up being $4 each. We left a 110% tip and still paid less than I did to see them in New York City last year.
I wanted to buy their new CD, which came out this past week and, as you might imagine, obscure jazz/fusion releases are not readily available here. I found the band manager. He was chatting with a chauffer who was asking him what he was doing pacing around when I walked up to him. The conversation went thus:
Him, to woman: “Oh I just was going to see if anyone wanted CDs, but…”
Me: “I want one.”
Him: “The new one.”
Me: “Yeah, its not exactly available here.”
Him: “I guess probably not.”
Me: “So ... what the hell are you guys doing here?”
Him: “We don’t know. We got a call, someone wanted us to play a single show here, so we came out last night and we go back tomorrow. The money was good, so we did it. Its completely random.”
Me: “Welcome to Moscow. And my life. Will you take Rubles?”
Him: “Ummm. Yeah,…how much do you think…”
Me: “500. I don’t have change.”
No one will ever know why the hell they were here. Clearly they were paid enough to spend an entire weekend in Moscow to only play a single show, on the first weekend after their new album was released. They brought their entire setup across an ocean and a continent to play 2 hour
Both Ends
Strung out enough to pass out on a steam grate off Novy Arbat. Or dead. Who could say? The reaction from passers-by never changes, anyway.
Self explanitory.
Mom is off-camara 10m to right, screaming at him to keep playing if he gets distracted.
Garibaldi Ulitsa Nomerya 10, Dom 6 , Iogbezi 3, Kopiye 9, Kvarpera 563
#10 Garibaldi Street, Building #6, Entrance #3, Floor #9, Apartment #563
Really, it was fun walking around for the first couple days with a little note card featuring 5 lines of information that you must have to find your apartment.
10-6 Garibaldi Ulitsa is so depressingly, crushingly, bludgeoningly, heartshatteringly Soviet that it couldn't possibly be more perfect for me. I can't imagine that there are slums in America this putrid, at least on first glance. Youre greeted by the reek of human piss from the moment you open the steel security door, if its closed, which it usually isnt. There is a mechanical lock which is turned off by pressing 3, 9, 0 simultaneously on a keypad. There are about 7 entrances, all on one side of the building, and you have to use the correct door because there is no hallway between them. I don't know if this limits deaths by fire by preventing them from spreading down entire hallways or increases them by severely reducing the number of exits. You open the rusty door and pass through the rusty entryway to a dark foyer which smells of garbage and human waste. The mailboxes look like they don' t open, if your mail was actually delivered, and I havent seen anyone using them. In fact, I havent seen anyone in the building at all. You hear people occasionally, but I havent met anyone, including the neighbors with whom we share an entryway.
Two elevators are available, which I have dubbed "Shaky" and "Squeaky" for the ways in which they make you soil yourself on ascent. One of the elevators doesn't stop at our floor (the button is broken), so you have to go up to the 10th and then go down one flight. Thus, I prefer to walk the 9 flights.
This morning the stairwell smelled like burning plastic, and after descending 4 floors I noted some guys renovating an apartment, and after passing them was greeted again by that refreshing rustic outhouse smell. Which is ridiculous when you consider that there is a garbage shute which runs along the stairwell, with openings between floors where you throw your household trash - you would think the hallways would feature more of a rotting kitchen goods odor. The shute only has room for a small plastic bag, since people take out the garbage twice a day to dissuade cockroaches. I haven't seen one yet but I'm not holding my breath. At the door you enter a small entry room where one may leave their shoes and coat (Russkies never wear either inside). After that, you use a skeleton key to enter the apartment, which is an oasis so ridiculous that kind of feel like Alice stepping out of Kansas.
The windows are all on massive wooden frames and have manual hand locks to keep the cold out. Comforting. The view from the north side of the flat gives you a pretty good look at the spire for Moscow State University, which is much further away than the map might have you believe (think Allston to Prudential or Old Port to Maine Med).
In fact, everything is much further away than you might believe. As the map depicts it, I live ONE block away from school. Panferov Ulitsa and Garibaldi Ulitsa are consecutive streets off of Leninsky Prospeckt, however, it takes about 20 minutes to walk there. Don't ask me how this is possible. I havent really figured it out myself.
Novy Arbat, 5pm and 5am
The only place in the city where I could find any televised American sports in the city was at the carefully named “SPORT LAND” on Novy Arbat, though unless you're like most Americans and you consider poker a sport, you would probably consider "SPORT LAND" a casino, omitting the poorly-crafted life-sized clay-molded statue of an anonymous circa-1992 New York Giant standing lonely and pathetically at the door worthy enough to characterize an entire venue. I do not.
I think of the goon at the door with the metal detector, the poorly hidden security doors on either side of the metal detectors, and the typically face-could-melt-glaciers-in-February welcome of the ladies behind the reception desk to be rather indicative of a casino. That and the slots. And one half of the place was blackjack tables patroned by a dozen Elitny Russian Mafia types.
Anyway, I visited the place earlier to ask if they had the game, as suggested in a local newspaper. The first woman didn’t speak any English and immediately found someone who did, who showed me the schedule of games. I was sincerely hoping to get a rebroadcasting, and that this was a true expat-catering locale. If you can watch test cricket at several locations around Boston, you should be able to watch the first football game of the year in a comfortable setting, I reasoned. This is not Boston.
Opening night of the greatest sport on Earth was to be broadcast once, at 5am.
5am. What is Moscow like at 5am? Deserted. And a fine place to sally a tank battalion.
I wish I had the opportunity to experience Leninsky Praspekt in the old days, when no one had cars and the city’s stupendously wide avenues were this barren all the time. You can almost see the convoys rallying to Red Square for a parade. Victory day is going to be phenomenal. (Celebration for Russia's defeat of Germany in WWII, or, as it is known here, The Great Patriotic War (Re: Stalin) were famous for their parades of military hardware and goose stepping doughboys, and were reintroduced last year by President Putin, to the discomfort of President Bush, who as we all know can see his soul.)
Novy Arbat, (New Arbat) is the replacement for the Arbat, which was the major western route into the city. When the Napolean and the invading Frogs (together with the Austrians, Prussian, German allies, Hungarians, and everyone else who hated the Russians in Europe, which was nearly everyone) forced the Russkies to retreat through Moscow in 1812, they had to squeeze the Tsar’s entire army down a 35-foot wide street towards the Kremlin. Stalin, not wanting to repeat that clusterfuck, decided to plow over a dozen old neighborhoods to build the 100-foot-wide Novy Arbat.
So what was once the grand palisade to the Hero City of Utopian Socialism is now entirely lined on the southern side with tacky casinos in the lower floors of rusty old identical and anonymous Soviet apartment complexes. When I came by to case the place on Thursday afternoon, there was a marching band on the opposite side of the street playing classic Russian marches to throngs of listeners for some reason. Meanwhile, on the casino side, the venues were pumping out a cacophony of Sher-like Euro-pop vomit, in total indifference to the quality live performance across the way. The unrelenting wierdness of this place, I fear, may be all thats keeping me from passionately hating it.
Luckily, as noted, the wierdness is unrelenting. As I type, I’ve had the TV on in the background, and I am just now noticing that channel 3 (which I had believed to be the official state channel) is currently playing some movie from the 60s, in Russian, which is also subtitled (unnecessarily) in Russian. Try to decode this one, Holmes. Some standard bearded and suspendered Russian fellows are interacting with some Native American rain-dancer guy who is wearing something resembling an animal hide sports bra, as well as well as some Mongol looking guys who are also dressed like American Indians, and everyone speaks perfect Russian, and now the sports-bra guy is putting on a ridiculous ivory-tooth looking thing adorned hat, and now the Indians are floating a lamb out into a river on a log raft, and now the rain dancer guy is contorting, and now they’re playing some sweet drum ‘n bass music overlain with psycadelic syncopatic female screaming. And now the rainman is spinning around on the ground, and now the lamb appears to be spinning in the water in unison with him. And now the Russian guys have fired a hand gun, frightening the savages. And now it appears that the mountain on which this has been taking place is actually a volcano, even though this at first appeared to be Siberia, and everyone is melting. Fade out. Fade in. Now the rainman is approaching a naked savage girl menacingly, and now he’s touching her skin and seemingly pretending to grab parts of it off of her in an awkward and abrupt manner, and altogether asexually. Now he’s collecting dirt. Cue psychedelic drum ‘n bass now featuring laughable high pitched flutes. Girl is just standing there. Switch to Russians playing folk music and whistling. Switch back to the girl, who seems to be fine, and is now serving soup to the Russians. Savages sneaking up on sleeping Russians. Russkies get captured and tied. Though the savages leave one of the Russkies' knives lying on a rock right next to them, so they escape easily. Cue drum ‘n base for chase scene. No, the Russkies are recaptured. Rainman about to execute the Russkies, but one of the Mongol looking savages appears to have arrowed Rainman from behind. Russkie-Mongol banter. Cue poorly recorded classical music, Siberian montage. Russkies say their goodbyes, leader gets the savage girl, whom, gladly, he won’t even have to teach Russian.
Shit. Its not over. Another savage shoots the most pathetic of the Russian guys in the back, then runs off, is confronted by one of the Russians, who shoots him with a pistol, after the savage begs for his life. Alright, now the three living Russians appear to be on a mountain higher than any in Russia, it appears to be Himalayan. One of them abruptly slips into a crevasse. Second dies of exposure. Now the third appears to be walking across the North Pole, on a completely flat tundra. Is about to die of exposure, lying on the ground. Shoots two wolves who are about to eat him, even though he can’t walk. Should have used those on himself. Better than freezing to death, or being eaten alive. No wait, shots heard by passing Inuits, who wheel their reindeer sleigh around and rescue him. Fade out. The end.
I’m failing to realize the allegorical meaning of all this. My real question is why Brezhnev’s unitbots in the Ministry of Propaganda thought this was in anyway forwarding the cause of National Bolshevism. I don’t know what the point was in general. I don’t feel like defending the Motherland from the fascist-capitalist pigs at all. The Mongols introduced gunpowder which they brought from China to the Russians in the 14th fricking century.
So, the wierdness continues, unrelenting.
Anyway I walked out to Leninsky and hailed a gypsy, the ride took about 10 minutes, about 40 minutes less than usual, getting me there seriously early. I figured this wouldn’t be all bad, as it would guarantee me a better seat, which is probably what the other 11 people thought who were already there and nearest the big screen, who would turn out to be the only other people for the entire game.
The broadcast was a feed from Britain-based SkyTV, which must own the rights to at least 2 NFL games per week for Britain and whoever else in Europe wants to buy in on the feed. This is how I was delegated to watching the NFL in London, and the same scrawny white British bloke was the SkyTV in-studio analyst. “Tom Brady made some capital deliveries in that half, coming out on short legs without the strong horse in the stable, he was top shelf on this night.” Brilliant.
Otherwise, the waitresses were a bit too-attentive, visiting every few minutes to say something I didn’t understand. And, it was pricy – entry was 300RR (about $10.80) which bought you chips which you could exchange for food, drinks and gambling. When a bottle of water is $3, that flies. This also would mean that I’m not going to get to see much of the Pats, besides the fact that their start times are often midnight-5am, they will only be the feed into SPORT LAND if the Limeys choose them for their ‘game of the week.’ Happily, the Brits know little more about American football than the fact that the Pats have been the best team, and that New York probably has a team, maybe two. Thus, three of the Pats first five games are already purchased by Sky.
Around all of those Patriots and Giants games was a bunch of inexplicable garbage games. Teams from cities where the majority of the population have never left the country should be banned from international broadcast. That means no Tampa Bay v. Carolina games. And absolutely nothing from Texas. Whilst I was sitting there trying to stretch my dinner rolls through the entire first quarter, I noticed that the other screens (Sky2, I believe) were featuring WBNA semifinal playoff action. No, no one watches it here, either.
Casinos depress me. Strip clubs do too, though I've never been to one, I just know that they would. Its not the vice, its the high incidence of pointless despiration of the staff and clientel. Its goons are dressed up in three-pieces to cover for the fact that they are goons, and no one ever wants them around for any reason. At about 6:25 am the obligatory Babushka army emerged from the catacombs in their maroon aprons and vaccum cleaners. Theres no immigrant labor army here, only old ladies who can't live on their cashed-out Soviet retirement pensions. I've never seen anyone honestly having fun at a casino. It makes me think that there are many people who believe there is nothing better in life. That is depressing. Especially in the owner/casino manager and his religous amorality. Everyone knows that all of the figures are in his favor, and no one cares. Short of all the laws of mathematics, if anyone plays, he gets paid. Its fatalistic. And no one there cares.
I was also surprised at the total lack of football fans out to watch the first game of the season. I don't understand why - who doesn’t want to go to a casino in their work clothes at 5am to watch a video feed of a football game and then leave midway through the 4th quarter to walk to the train station, switch lines twice, be dropped 3 km from your house and then run with your briefcase and dress shoes down 7 blocks to get in before the first bell? Me. Ever again.
Road House
Friday night I was wondering through a quiet neighborhood which was distinctly un-Soviet, but at the same time lacking the grandiose Orthodox/European pretensions of the Center. It was almost quaint, and I have found nothing about this city to describe as quaint. Out of some half-lit half-open pub windows, I heard a live rendition of a John Lee Hooker standard, and considered myself at home.
Road House was a pleasant shock. I was the youngest patron in the bar by at least 10 years, probably 20. The beer was cheap and the music was excellent. After “Dimples”, the quintet played “Hoochie Coochie Man”, with all the discreet flair and genuine soul you could possibly ask for in a two room restaurant/bar 8 bazillion kilometers from the birthplace of blues. The crowd of 25 or so people at the tables kept demanding they play more, and the band kept delivering.
Between a couple of sets, the frazzled overweight frontman came over to the bar where I was sitting, seeking another drink for the band's tab. You wondered if this was their paycheck. While I assumed from his delivery that he was from the American south, my “nice work up there” was greeted with a toothless “Shto??” Apparently Yuri is from Georgia – the country – as well as most of the rest of the band, which made their final encore, apparently one of his originals, entitled “Aint Goin Back to Georgia” all the sweeter. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone in the all-Russian crowd, as the regulars sang along in thick Slavonic drawls. Even the 40 year old with the 'Russian Rocket from Rocky 4' haircut who was dancing like it was 1986 at some Soviet underground new wave cokefest. The few-years-shy-of-babushka moms with acid washed hair and tight stonewashed jeans had such a fine sense of rhythm to such down tempo blues that it defied all explanation.
The 40 year old guy in the floral pattern button-down sitting next to me at the three-stool bar got up and sang a few bars of "I'm in the Mood", and quite well. When I complimented him later, I found him to be an American and a highly placed official at the World Bank’s Russian office. Not an expected Friday at 11pm conversation. Probably for either of us, really.
He had some interesting perspectives on life in Russia. He claimed that he was constantly giving press interviews, and while he is frequently misquoted or mischaracterized, it is by both the Russian and American press. "The NYT and all them, they have their ideas about the World Bank, and my interviews with them essentially are them trying to goad or lead me into saying what they want to report...they have their beliefs about the World Bank, and they're out to write that story." On the other hand, "the Russian press mischaracterizes me as a way of saying something about the government that they couldnt otherwise say" because of limits on press freedoms.
After the music, we left and continued chatting. In a hep-cat jazz drawl he said that he wanted to go to some place downtown that I would like, if I wanted to check the place out. After the ride to Teatralnaya and the wandering through the somewhat quiet streets (nightlife here starts at midnight) while chatting about Russian culture and bond ratings, only to find the Big Bear Pub had vanished entirely.
A pane of broken glass and a ‘for rent’ sign. Off to Monaco, one step ahead of the tax collectors. “All the best places close,” he said, defeated. Again, hep-cat jazz drawl: "Well, there's always stripteeesee, if youre into that..." I wasn't. The conversation kind of ended there. As you might imagine.
Remind me if I ever talk to him again to take that part out.
Misha, Tatiana, Some Girl, Some Dude, Evgenni, Fyodor.
Follow your moonshine shot with an immediate bite of shish, and this crooked look will be your only suffering.
