One Night in Moscow

Big ups to Paris Hilton, who appears to have made Moscow her second home. She was just in town last month to visit roosky BFF Kiira Plastinina, the heinously rich teen-cum-heinous fashion designer. (I wonder what that last sentence will do for my Google hits…) This week Paris came back with that guy from Good Charlotte to promote her sexy new fragrance Can-Can Cocktail. (Again...)

Paris and Kiira ride the short bus the elevator at Yevropeisky shopping mall

Most Western stars are far too prudent to venture east of Cannes, and with good reason. A bad night in France ends with herpes and a sugar hangover, not missing organs and a ditch in Butovo*. Also, many customer service mainstays we take for granted in the West have not yet reached the former Soviet Union. Like human rights. And TiVo.

But I guess some people have a taste for extreme tourism. And you better believe Paris is getting real paid every time she shows her face in these parts - $1 million a night, if you read the Russian tabloids. Ow, ow! For that money, few people would kick Moscow out of bed for eating crackers. Certainly not me, with Long Island Ice Tea prices at 500 rubles and rising.

Paris about to get feised at her own party

Paris was last spotted at Wall Street Bar, the new and thoroughly weird conflation of all things English speaking. In the neo-modest tradition started by The MOST, it is touting itself as a not entirely depraved place for serious businessmen to meet other serious businessmen and stupidly attractive women. Seriously, looking at the girls in these photos, Paris Hilton comes off as about a 7 and me a feral gypsy child.

The Russian PH knockoff -- plastic smells weird, causes headaches

Wall Street Bar frequenters work hard and play hard. And get paid hard and pay hard (450 rubles for a mojito). There’s Bloomberg TV on the plasma screen cuz the Asian markets open at 3 am. Buy! Sell! Buy! Jackpot!

Checkin' her stocks

The ol’ co-opting-a-famous-name-sans-any-connection trick reminds of a scam language school Garvard Inglish which operated in Moscow in the early naughties. They flew in hordes of teachers from the First World then kept them as indentured servants in Russia, raking all the dough without paying the help. I knew some of these forgotten victims -- Americans and Brits who came with a dream to see the world and exploit innate language skills rather than get a real job. They were left destitute and malnourished, without enough money to cover the rounds at Silver’s. Since the expat.ru servers crashed, there’s no one left bearing witness to this atrocity but MDBIT.

But anyway, unlike that naughty Garvard, we trust Wall Street will provide refreshing beverages and invaluable business connections.

*Moscow suburb you never want to end up in. May as well be Afghanistan, because there’s no sushi and kalyan.

Wall Street Bar, 9/1 Volkhonka Ulitsa, Metro: Kropotkinskaya, Tel. 7(495) 916-5731

Photos: Paparazzi.ru, elite.ru