This is Truth.

Comprehense-less Guide to Moscow Nightlife

Café Havana:

Europe’s largest Cuban restaurant/salsa bar. A semi-authentic sits in a corner at what looks like a piano but is actually a rolling station for Cuban cigars. The mental adjustment which accompanies your black Cuban waiter speaking fluent Russian is par for the course. I enjoyed some rice and sausage garnish smattering for a reasonable $3 accompanied by a standard issue Russian lager such as Starry Priodsnak, which is unreasonable at any price lest it be served with nose plugs. The all-Cuban band was ½ black ½ latino, with a drummer who bore a striking resemblance to the quality soul/hip-hop singer Mos Def. There is an internal debate continuing in my head whether it was the stolen 42’ plasma screen TVs playing a 13 minute loop of a beach party scene in some Black Sea paradise (e.g. Russian version of) featuring the exact same salsa band that you are watching play live right in front of you at the same moment, or if it was the fact that the couches at the tables were so wide that when you would sit back in them, your feet would have to stick straight out in front of you and making you feel like you’re on the assembly line at Geppetto’s workshop which killed the atmosphere. The Russian waitresses in those flowing red and white linens make you it look like its Christmas in July weekend in Minneapolis, but you’re in Moscow and its September. Gypsy cab driver on the way there called me “American Mafia”. That alone makes it worth two Soviet Hero Emblems and a Third Class Badge of some sort.

ORDERS:
Readjuster of Capitalist-Exploitist Propaganda Tendencies; Third Class
Castro-Khrushchev Award of the Worldwide Movement Toward Socialist Unity


Karma Bar:

I went here on two consecutive nights about a month ago, when the only person I knew in the city was my roommate. After these experiences, I decided that no company was vastly superior to his, or at least to the kind of guy who would get face controlled at an empty salsa dancing club on a Thursday night at 10pm, an hour usually reserved for drunkards and old ladies. Dividends were paid, as he resigned a month ago and moved to Kiev, leaving me with a two bed room apartment to reign over as dictator.

Enter through the steel gate and metal detectors on Kuznetsky Most. Cover is a bit steep at 300 rubles on Friday and Saturday, but they do their best to ‘entertain’ you. After passing the gate, you realize that you are actually walking down an alleyway in a courtyard between two buildings which is covered and lined by red tapestries. You pass tables and eventually end up at a coat room, small dance floor and bar, which feels something like the forts I used to make in my bedroom when I was 10 using blankets and pillows. The main club is down into subbasement 2, half way to hell and about as likely a fire trap. A bar with low couches, black red and glass framed by buddist artwork welcomes you to the bottom of the nothingness. There are separate rooms for hookas, drugging, staring, chatting and a sizable dance floor. It was like everything else, strangely interesting.

Anyway, salsa night at Karma is the kind of place where a 5’5 balding squarefaced 83 pound middle aged Chinese guy with a OCD induced habitual throat clearing tendency could dance a heated salsa with a 19 year old Russian girl for two consecutive songs without resistance or an attempt to flee or excuse herself. I don’t know if it was the club or the crowd, but everywhere you would find men dressed in what they woke up wearing partnered with Russian girls who tried oh so hard to look a little bit Carribean, all sharing this beautiful dance together in a very casual atmosphere.. There is plenty of diversity in a crowd of Russians, but not of those Western Hempishere sort of flavors. There was a certain 7th grade prom feel to the procession, as at the end of every song, the couples would separate and look for new partners, then continue again with little hesitation and ostentatious vigor. I of course did not know how to dance the salsa, but was capitally entertained by the spectacle. A few friendly Russians would strike up conversation with me, asking why I was a wall fly, to be met with an awkward ‘I don’t know this’ response. I didn’t know the word for dance until this week.

Everyone danced with everyone. Boyfriends would get drinks while others danced with their dates, and they would try their best to not look like they cared. Chaotic. Egalitarian anarchy. Aldous Huxley’s nightmare incarnate. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” played by a live band of all Russians fronted by a red-haired semi-Asian looking girl, who sung the tune in Spanish. This might surprise you, but they sucked.

Friday night, no live band, instead there was a guy with a microphone headset who looked like the infomercial peddler of those home exercise machines who was recently mocked in a Geico commercial, barking out instructions for an introductory salsa dancing lesson in Russian. I struggled, and I don’t think it was because of coordination. At about 11:40, as the previous night, the salsa dancers disappear into oblivion, and I realized then for the first time that the actual Moscow nightlife starts no earlier than midnight. The class and kitch of the salsa dancers was supplanted by mediocre house music, fat embassy employees and European businessmen in their suits (on a Saturday), and art directors and nondescript looking goons. As I left, no worse for wear, I walked through the main bar room on the lower level, to notice a Man- and She-Man-Zilla dancing on the bar in nothing but bikini wear, to little notice or fanfare, and to the beat of their own down tempo drummer. Hard to tell if they were paid to do it or just felt like deeply disturbing me for the rest of my eternity.

ORDERS:
Communist Hero, Second Class (before midnight)
Trotskyite-Proto-Fascist Conspirators, First Class (after midnight)


Pancho Villa:

Is it possible to be a professional-salsa-dancing roommate and insist on pronouncing the above bar name “Pancho Will-UH”?? Sadly, yes. Happily, this was the last night I knew Eddie Wong – he was gone within days afterwards, leaving me to enjoy my entire Vill-AH alone.

Live Russian band played a decent selection of Latin music without any sembelence of cohesion or timing. Chaotically typical. Few people dancing, most people just eating – the dance floor was again surrounded by several rooms of underground dining. The Hispano-Amero Southwestern atmosphere was about as authentic as a semiprofessional salsa dancing instructor who says he’s a native speaking American but is actually from Hong Kong. Feel free to distract yourself from your company by gazing at the Discovery channel on flat screen plasma TVs hanging above the bar. You will find someone from Britain here. I met several expats and tourists, and no Russians, which made me even more prepared to leave immediately. Overpriced fare. The few girls who are here will not be able to dance the salsa. You will realize you aren’t enjoying yourself after the band plays “Oye Como Va” with a Russian accent, and you will leave for stranger things, confident you will find tem.

ORDERS:
Enemy of the Botherhood of Socialist Workers and People’s Committees, First Class
Brezhenev Award of Stagnation, Price Inflation and Underinvestment in the Arts


Zona:

I don’t know where this place is, I jumped in a gypsy cab from Poncho Villa and asked the driver in 4-day Russian to follow the black Range Rover pulling out in front of us to some place called Zona, which none of us had ever heard of before. The Range Rover people wanted me to come but couldn’t give me a ride because their personal driver was under countract not to allow anyone into the car other than the Scottish oil tycoon’s daughter and friends it was currently carrying. None of us spoke Russian, which was fun when we arrived and tried to pass the Macarthy quality Face Control at the point of entry.

After escaping that, you’re welcomed to pay the 300 ruble cover for the privilege of passing through a barbed wired gate and steel door, only to wait in a second line within the courtyard heading to the warehouse which houses the club.

The entire place is done up to feel like a Soviet political prison, complete with a cage of barbed wire which encloses the queue, watched over by wax maniquin KGB agents with kalishnikovs pointed down at you from windows and awnings, followed by a steel bared entry system, after which things start getting strange.

We arrived at 1am, and the queue took us about 45 minutes to clear. The main hall was long and fairly narrow, with two levels of balconies encircling it above. There were drapes descending from the ceiling that brought in a level of intimacy to the otherwise gaping space. All of the patrons were courteous – as I have noticed to be the routine, everyone keeps to themselves or their group of friends, dancing in a circle or a line and allowing no one to disturb them. Guys didn’t press onto girls, girls didn’t fawn over guys, people just danced near each other and then left the floor to talk in one of the myriad themed rooms on the upper levels. I recall one of the waitresses walking around shirtless, and neither her nor anyone else seemed to notice or think it out of the ordinary. We met the Scot’s kids’ brother upstairs in a glass room, next to a small red bar which was held aloft by a sculpture of a pair of breasts made using traditional Orthodox iconography.

At 4am, there was a show on the stage suspended between the balcony and the floor of the main hall.

Add the costumography of Donnie Darko to the drug-inspirography of Alice in Wonderland, and still don’t come close.

The first ‘dancer’ was a crotchety 4 foot 10 inch 60 year old man in a fluttery 19th century venture capitialist/Mad Hatter costume. His toothless grin and untamed gray hair flowed seamlessly with his jarringly abrupt and limited steps across the suspended stage. He was joined later for a dancing duet by a 20 year old blonde chick who was taller than God, wearing a pink Moulan Rouge stylized getup. Follow this with a guy in a gray body suit, with a long solid beak and a mask consisting of two 6 inch eye sockets and a dunce cap, something like the black spy of the Spy vs. Spy series, albeit with the sort of creppiness that I assume makes people on acid trips run the risk of hear explosions while they bear witness.

None of these ‘dancers’ actually danced, as much as crept about the platform, while gazing about in an uninterested sense, giving little notice to a crowd that seemed to pay be returning the favor, preferring instead the pounding of the decent house music that whaled its way through your torso en route to the next non-obstacle. I may have been the only one standing motionless in the middle of the floor with a stare fixed to the spectacle, as the characters interacted in a rather seamless but entirely uncoreiographed sequence. There was at least one girl who seemed to have suffered a ‘wardrobe malfunction’, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. And then there was the guy videotaping the whole thing from the front of the suspended catwalk. At some point one of the Scottish girls went to find her brother upstairs to pick up so they could leave, though the kid was unresponsive because the waitress who had come to clear the table where he and his friends had just enjoyed a meal was apparently dancing atop it at the time.

The whole experience made you feel like you were somewhere near the distant edge of the Universe, or at least near to its distant End. It was like a scene from an futuristic movie about the collapse of humankind, like Total Recall or the 5th Element. There is no line between a dance club and a strip club, there is no place that is normal, no place that isn’t completely uncorrupted. The collapse of the system that imposed and artificial conservatism has led to this swing of the pendulum, leaving me to wonder if the bell will swing through the case and shatter the world around it, or if a backlash will send them back where they came from in a horrible cancer of repression. Pendulums never stop in the middle.

ORDERS:
Star of Commemoration of Soviet History
Gorbachev Award of Openness and Reform (Glasnost and Perestroika), First Class

Road House:

See earlier comments. Hole in the wall blues club a la some dusty road in Tulsa. That the only beer on tap is Heineken is their only sin, meaning they’re still headed for some secular Communist version of heaven. Don’t bother talking to the bands during breaks, they sing in English, but only speak Georgian.

ORDERS:
People’s Committee Order of Merit for the Friendship and Understanding of International Workers and Farmers
Demonstration of the Political-Economic Failings of a Capitalism through Song, Second Class
Personal Honor of Stalin, The Constructor of Happiness (saw this on a postcard, had to include it somewhere)
UPDATE: newly installed Guinness tap, making this the coolest place in the coldest place on Earth, which might be good, I’m not sure.


Kutuzov Hall:

See earlier comments. Russian mafia, $8 water, and a stellar American jazz-fusion performance.

Orders:
People’s Award for the Preservation of Muscial Heritage of Foreign Oppressed Minority Peoples, First Class (the music)
Trotskyite-Proto-Fascist-Anti-Revolutionary Terrorists, First Class (the crowd)
Stronghold of the Enemy of the People’s Soviets (the venue)


Sport Land:

See earlier comments. Las Vegas style casino tries to be Chicago-style sports bar. Fails miserably at both.

Orders:
Trotskyite-Proto-Fascist Conspirators, First Class
Enemy of the Soviet People, First Class, Second Class
Gorbachev Award for the Attempt and Failure to Introduce Western Key Aspects of Cultural/Political Heritage to the Motherland


Propaganda

The original progressive club in Moscow, Propaganda opened up with Glasnost and was a staple of the opening up of Russian culture after 75 years of repression. It closed recently, probably either because some politician wanted to show that they cared about drug abuse and cracked down, or because its owner at the time heard through someone he knew at the Office of Taxation that they Tax Cops were going to come for him, so he took off for Monaco and hasn’t been heard of since. Recently, the place reopened, and while the popular perception is that they lost a step, I find it to be about my speed. The music ranges from mediocre to average techno, but at least without the stupid pop bounce that is the plague of Russian radios, malls, culture parks, casinos, car stereos, alarm clocks, and McDonald’s bathrooms, and is in general is about as good as one can expect in this country. The waitstaff has an undeniable Paradise Rock Club quality, expecially the Mongolian looking guy with 2 foot hair who, if you ask for whiskey and coke, he adds lemon. They just don’t know any better. And they don’t have ginger ale here, but lets not even start on the problems that creates.

Has a medieval wooden architecture, with an intimate balcony area. Its about as dark as a cave, which makes it feel like a medieval beer hall dug into the side of a mound of dirt, like something out of Braveheart. The drinks are reasonable.

When you arrive, you’re going to see the remnants of what was once an Irwin Rommel styled face control system, which will consist of one guy sticking his arm out in front of you so you to stop you from passing through the door, followed by another guy who will ask you how many people in your party.

This happened to Misha and I when we arrived once a few weeks back. We were asked how many, as we were the only two people outside of the building or within view of the door for 300 meters in either direction. If I could, of course, I would have said, “Well, there’s 17 angry youths with scars from Chechnya that we’d like to bring in here too, and they’re just waiting around the corner to you to give us the okay, then we’d wave them in behind us.” Of course, then he wouldn’t appreciate the sarcasm, and then I’d be dead.

Just out of curiosity, I turned to Misha after about an hour here, and asked “How can you tell which ones are prostitutes?”

“Just ask: how much?”

“I see.”

ORDERS:
Gorbachev Star of Glasnost and Perestroika, First Class, Second Class, and Honorable Mention


Pistelene [‘Plastique’ or, plastic explosive]

Visit was the first and potentially last time I will ever hear Enya’s Pure Moods classic “Sail Away” mixed over the domestic abuse house-call of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.” Irony lives on in the frozen wasteland.

Order a Byelorussian, and be entertained as the bartender asks repeatedly how its made, then asks another bartender, then a passing waitress, then flirts with that waitress, then tries to find milk, then returns with cream, then fails to decide what sort of glass to put it in, then pours it for you, unmixed, and gives it to you bez stirrers, and asks for 150 rybley. Dance the robot while the dyevs look on in confusion. No protentions, democratic door policy, conspicuously clean toilets. Subbasement 2 makes it impossible to realize that the sun has risen when you emerge at 7am. (well, not in winter, but at least the trains are running again by then.) Located in a courtyard off an alley of a pedestrian walkway, with no sign save a henna tattooed portrait of a fellow playing a trumpet to a girl sitting under a tree, emblazoned on a stretched animal skin canvas. Everyone is cool here, even the goon who guards the ‘coat check’, which is a converted fire exit stairwell.

ORDERS:
Ribbon to the Heritage of the People’s Revolution of Worker’s Solidarity
Merit Badge for Efficient Use of Public Egresses
Putin Award for the Embracing of an Unlikelihood of Escape from a Subterranean Tomb


That Place Without a Name

Proves that despite sporting a stupid clichéd name, such a place can support a decent party, like one night last fall where all dance tunes were mixed with samples from 8-bit video games. Tired? Try enjoying reasonably priced pelmeni dumplings in the dining room at 4am. Do this especially during the set of the semi-popular German indie-electronica group’s set, who’s crackling high pitched English-language explanation that during some ridiculous throwback song that probably only makes sense in robo-efficiency terms he will be placing his glass on the stage, and that he ‘hopes that someone will put something in my drink!’, while you hope it will be arsenic and not acid. Or at least some really bad acid. If that’s possible. I really have no idea.

Orders:
Distinguished Emblem of Service to 3rd Shift Workers Unions and Militias


Art Garbage

The art really is garbage here. A little piece of Allstony Boston. Allow that to conjure up whichever fantasies or nightmares you please. Came based on one-line announcement in the Moscow Times that a German-based rockabilly band named after Italian-American moviestar Al Pacino’s famous Cuban druglord anti-hero would be playing a midnight set. If anyone can for some reason locate any purchasable music by The Tony Montanas, please, procure one for me and yourself. I was shocked too. Germans playing Amero-hillbilly music? I half expected the four horsemen of the apocalypse to come riding across the beer-stained floors and into the feudal theatre-style wooden pit of a concert room, based on that anachronism itself. Closes at 6am. Access through a courtyard. Sign something resembling that of The Model. Noting that I have no counter-culture friends here, I haven’t been back. Waiting for another one-line announcement in the Moscow Times, for fear of stepping into an experiemental-rock trap, or worse, a no-concert night where they fill in the void with trip-hop and you wished for a ZZTop jukebox with all your might.

Orders:
Cultural Seal to the Preservation of Working-Class Musical Heritage
Lenin Award for the Somewhat Successful Introduction of Germans to the Russian Populace that Did Not Result in the Deaths of 20 Million Citizens


Krizis Zhanra

50 Rubley for Baltika #3, 24 hours a day. That’s $1.75. For Moscow, that’s like an Oasis in the desert. First experience featured some underground London/DC based hip-hop group called One Self which I had never heard of before. Only the 2nd occasion that I was impressed by a live MC performance. He and I were essentially having the conversation throughout, since I was the only one who could understand the words and properly reply to his requests for holler-backs. Him trying to get 300 Russkies to shout ‘One Self does it now’ in reply in the middle of a tune ends up with 150 of them missing the instruction entirely, 149 coming up with ‘Van Silf dakhz it nahv!’, and me in the middle laughing hysterically. After the set, confronted the DJ and MC to say ‘that was great, I’d never even heard of you guys, where are you from?’ to get a dumbfounded look in response, followed by a pause, and the refrain: ‘where the hell are you from?’ Overall, excellent. Though the CD I purchased was write-protected (a technology unbeknownst to or wholly rejected by the Russians) and wouldn’t play in my computer, rendering it useless to me.

Everyone has fun here. Recent expedition sported a retro 70s set so terrible that you couldn’t decide if it was supposed to be kitch-irony to play ‘Disco Inferno’ and ‘Staying Alive’ or if the guy was serious. They have food, but I haven’t the bravery. Lost points for projecting an Aerosmith Live DVD from this decade on a wall, but gained them back as none of the clientele seemed to recognize the band, and the sound was off. Besides their increasingly shittier music, I just cant understand the homoeroticism of those guys. Does that sell records?

Orders:
Medal of International Friendship with our African Worker-Brothers
Certificate for the Support of those otherwise Unnourished Students and Laborers [as is inevitable in any system in which international imperialists and their fascist-Trotskyist allies will export their oppressive systems of distribution thus rendering it inevitable that prices of some establishments frequented by our comrades will be wholly capitalistic in nature while still…]

Albion Bar, Rosie O’Grady’s, Molly Gwinn’s, John Bull Pub

I’ll list them together since these are all the same – fake exported British- or Irish-pub themed hellholes for Embassy types, Citibank employees and New Russians pretending to be one or the other. The only reason I ever go, and the only reason to ever go, is for Guinness. Sometimes they put the shamrock in the foam, sometimes not, but the price is always around 229 Rybley. That’s about $8 a pint. It’s a one pint a week ritual, for my counter-indoctrination of my Russian friends into Irish-American culture. They wonder if its authentic, I wonder why it has to suck. Piles of cash exchanged regularly. Foreign imperialist capitalist fat-cats abound. Sometimes makes you want to start a revolution.

Orders:
Enemy of the Revolution, First Class
Yeltsin Medal of Failure to Properly Mimic Western Cultural and Business Practices
Cultural Stamp for the Importation of Necessary Foreign Material as Required to Develop Support of Socialism in One Country (for the Guinness)


Silver’s

Shitty expat bar, though one I’ll mention one separately, as it is a slightly different animal. Tiny and unique in decoration, clearly emblematic of the work of one or several totally spacially incapable men, not of a team of interior designers which attempted to bring the ubiquitous King’s Heads and Queen’s Heads of West London to West Moscow as was obviously the case above. Slightly cheaper Guinness, but with shamrock this time. Irish pub theme destroyed immediately after I entered with my Irish styled hat to be greeted by a hammered guy name Steve who turned out to be the owner, and when I told him my name was Myles Garvey, I was given free Kilkenny’s for the night. At least you knew the place was owned and operated by Westerners making a Western experience for its own sake, not by Russian oligarchs who live in Monaco and put up the money for the fake exports listed above. I suppose that makes this the better option, but if I lived in Southie maybe I’d spend my time at O’Leary’s.

Everyone speaks English, or is English. The men are fat Western accountants. The women are the most boring expats you’ll meet in Moscow, mostly English teachers at the big language factories like BKC. I was closest to an Irish person they had, and could produce a better accent than anyone. Was so bored, I ended up staring blankly at a 9’ inch rebroadcast of some WWF match on Sky Sports.

Orders:
Enemy of the Revolution, Second Class
Cultural Stamp for the Importation of Necessary Foreign Material as Required to Develop Support of Socialism in One Country
Putin Medal of Slightly Less Egregious Failure to Properly Mimic Western Cultural and Business Practices

Doug & Marty’s Boar House

How many Manchester United fans could there possibly be in Moscow? Went here to meet a British guy for dinner, and though the food was good an cheap as dirt, there would be no other reason to return. It is a legend among former Communist bloc expats, which is precisely what loses my interest. Two kinds of people come here – newly minted expats who are completely lost and afraid of Moscow, and dirty old expats who are completely lost and afraid that they can never go home. Well, three kinds, there’s also prostitutes praying on both groups. Has a roulette table, blackjack table and a few slots, just to confuse you. Might have been saved by the wall-mural of the Blues Brothers, were it not for the fact that there were three of them and the third guy was not Cab Calloway, nor anyone else I could recognize. Has that sort of Harper’s Ferry barnyard feel, but still manages to be 85 degrees inside when its -37 outside. Guinness is cheap, so cheap I fear for its quality. You’ll see a waitress approximately once ever 1.6 hours. Drunken women may smash ketchup bottles for use as weapons.

Orders:
Enemy of the Revolution, Third Class
Emblem of Appreciation for the Preservation of Logical Decision-making when faced with the Course of One’s Possible Future in Russia


Kult

Young, hip, and cultured, without the intelligencia pretensions. First time I ever saw Moscovites break dancing to Run-DMC. Some of them can, most of them can’t, but as any true Russian, they will try. No tension whatsoever - people seem to come with friends and leave with them. The best 11-2am place in town, with superior music and a comfortable atmosphere. Bartendresses will take your drink order, then forget, but at least they’ll feel a little bad about it.

Orders:
Gorbachev-Reagan Star of Cultural Exchange and Friendship
Sholzhenitzen Prize of Underground Rebellion Against the Established Norms


Project OGI

I’m thinking The Fore Street Pub in Portland, Maine, but that’s just because I’ve never been out in Brattleboro, Vermont. But, its not all bad. Everyone genuinely cool despite their smell and the smell of the place in general. Dirt cheap. Music somewhere between interesting [50-year old tiny African front-man in a purple bowtie of an indie/rock/samba outfit of grungy looking Russian hippies] and abominable [femiNazi band which can’t find the C chord during the chorus, let alone start on the same beat, though I suppose some I know might have found that display sexy]. Has an attached expository book store. Open 24 hours. I don’t know what OGI stands for, but I assume its retarded.

Orders:
Medallion of Brotherhood with the Quasi-Revolutionaries of the American Continent
Chairman Leonid Brezhenev’s “I Would Never Go Here” Award


Fabrique

Once elitny, now democratic [I should note if I didn’t previously, that ‘democratic’ in the Moscow sense means that they let in anyone who shows up until the place is full, as opposed to the rather omnipresent ‘face control’ policy which will turn away anyone and everyone for either good reasons (hockey fans or mungy backpackers to lazy to clean themselves up) or none at all, but just to prove that they have some power and authority within their miserable, pointless existences], club complex along the Moscow River. Has a fine gloss of class, with lounging areas as uncomfortable and queerly lit as one would expect in the finest spots in Ibiza, matched with a prison-style dance pit as only the Russian mind can fabricate. Come at the behest of aristocratic Western assholes who are interested in your female friend and let them buy you drinks to buy your approval, even when its not at all necessary. DJs were of fine quality, as they all had Spanish names, you could entertain guesses why. Bathrooms hosted an off version of black-marble squatty potties on small throne-like podiums, which might have been the most entertaining aspect of the place.

Orders:
Shield of Comeradeship for Securing Socialistic Access in a Hostile Capitalistic World
Red Star of Friendship with Foreign Social-Economic Communities

More entries, and madness, inevitably, to come...

posted by Майлз Г. Смит @ 5:00 PM