Bright Lights, Big Moscow

It’s snowing hard in Paparazzi Bar, the heir apparent to Mix. Good, because scruffy Moscow club kids were lacking in recreational options beyond alcohol and cough medicine. The rich and fabulous can get yayed up ten ways from Sunday at their Dyagilevs and their Rais, but what about the little people? Can’t they get theirs?

"OMG, I'm falling in a k-hole"

Drug proliferation is the perhaps the greatest testament to the existence of a Russian middle class, you know, that great void between Roman Abramovich and the pensioners farming beets in permafrost with plastic McDonalds forks. If the unwashed hipster masses can afford narcotics and nice places with chairs and doors in which to do them, then things might not be so bad after all.

The nods

Bono and Naomi Campbell love Paparazzi Bar

This kid sold drugs in my junior high PE class

Kurt Cobainov

Don't forget to hydrate!

Return of Abnormal Circus! Kids...don't do drugs

“OMG, I love everyone!!”

"Shaddup, you don't know meeeee"

Paparazzi Bar, 3/4 Pyatnitskaya Ul., Bldg. 1, Metro: Tretyakovskaya, Tel. 953-1620

Photos: lookatme.ru

Rai'd or Die

Sexton was founded by feared Soviet motorcycle gang the Night Wolves in the mid-nineties. Ten years and change later, it continues to party on, Wayne. Who'd have guessed the hog & hiefers lifestyle, with its binge drinking, violent beatings, down-for-whatever chicks and white pride, would resonate so well in Russia? Just doesn't add up.


At any rate, three cheers! Sexton is a welcome breath of stale beer from the tired elitny club scene. No where else can you breeze through feis kontrol in a pit-stained Kiss t-shirt -- unless it's Simachev Bar or Solyanka and you are firmly, visibly, unequivocally steeped in irony.


Normally, biker bars are a good place to get your head bashed in non-ironically. But now that the Night Wolves are upstanding middle-aged Putinites, there's much less chance of gang rape, much more chance of fun.

Viva la Lucha Libre!

Predictably, Rai saw how much fun Sexton was having with biker kultur and wanted in on the action. From the looks of their 2,000 euro Ducatti jackets and gleaming D&G belt buckles, it seems something was lost in translation.

It's not the size of your bike, it's how many Rai hoodrats you can fit on it.

"The South will Rai'se again!"

Sexton, 110 Nizhniye Mnevniki, Metro: Oktyabrskoye Pole, Tel. 8 926 4097149

Photos: geometria.ru, mainpeople.ru

Step Back from the Light

Young man, do yourself a favor and don’t attempt Soho Rooms. I mean, you won’t get in anyway and, moreover, they’ll publicly humiliate you at the door for having the gall to try to breach Moscow’s magical elitny club scene in A+F. (What the fuck?! This is the biggest day of your life and you’re wearing army print cargo shorts!)

"Come towards the legggggs"

But, on the freak chance that you do speak the correct incantation to Pasha Feis Kontrol, before rushing forward towards secrets kept since the dawn of time, ask yourself, “What good will it do for my life?”

Gurgle gurgle

What lies beyond: Hyper-sexualized nymphs rolling on top each other. Supermodels eating up every awkward drunk thing you day like it’s the Holodomor famine. Zero competition by other menfolk.

Is this real life? Have you finally arrived at a place where beautiful women appreciate your natural worth and charm, and reward it with sexual favors in the bathroom? Or is it an alien race, punishing the hubris of man?

"Auggh she's mind-melding!"

Some people’s faces melt off on contact with Soho Rooms, like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Those are the lucky ones. The rest have to go on living knowing that a place like this exists in the world and they can’t live there.

Neenu Neenu

Having to live among uppity, pear-shaped women with memories of Soho Room still fresh in the mind, they eventually drives awls into their own eyes.

You flew too close to the sun, killa.

Soho Rooms, 12 Savvinskaya Naberezhnaya, Metro: Sportivnaya, Tel. 988-7474, sohorooms.com

Photos: mainpeople.ru

Justo Banya Death

Sauna-turned-apathetic nightclub Justo Banya Dush seems to have fallen in with wrong crowd in the past year. That is to say, no crowd at all. After a mega-impressive opening, Justo rested on its laurels as one of the самый закрытый (most closed-est) clubs in Moscow, never deigning to do the one thing it was supposed to do -- bring the party. Sad, but we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Gave it enough rope to hang itself with

We went out of our way to find its silly unmarked door. We stood in the cold when they couldn't find our name on the list. We paid 3,000 rubles for tables in an empty club. We made excuses to our friends for Justo's failure to perform. We all believed what we wanted to believe -- that it was the harbinger of new generation of Moscow clubs, cool not corny, where hoodies reigned supreme and hoochies were kicked to the curb.

Head tattoos? Really? As Chris Rock said, you can drive a car with your feet, that doesn't mean it should be done! (Also, you can't catch a crackhead in a footrace)

But alas, shuttered behind a steel door, the Great Hip Hope has turned into a haunt for pasty freaksi. Even TimeOut, a cheerleader for Moscow's elitny club scene, described the vibe at Justo as "melancholy." A great place for, like, wristcutters meetings.

"Down the road, NOT across the street, guys"

So these are photos from a White Trash For Cash party night at Justo. Now ask yourself, would you rather be drinking here, or in Bittsevsky Park, killing grounds of the Bittsevsky maniac? At least the latter don't have men in formal shorts.

"Rater, cruer worrd!" -- Justo

Justo Banya Dush, 3 Teatralny Proyezd, Metro: Teatralnaya, Tel. 625-6836

Photos: adensya.ru, mainpeople.ru

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Every once and a while there comes a club that humanity is so much gayer for. This time it’s Famous, from the promoters who did yesteryear hotspot First. It was known for being a) opposite the Kremlin and b) really douchey.

Gaymous

I like to think that Russian nightlife is moving in the right direction – towards democracy and good fashion sense, albeit following a different beat (shitty techno). But with developments like these, it seems that's just a bedtime story told to little bloggers.

There are reasons Moscow clubs have fire problems

Questions abound. How did a club this mid-'90s cheesy survive into the 21st century? Were we lulled into a false sense of security by a string of respectable openings? Is this our punishment for getting too cocky?

While positioning itself as elitny megaclub, Famous lacks the self-introspect and playfulness of Rai and Dyagilev which could push it over the brink to pure camp pleasure. So it’ll just carry on being fascistically exclusive, pointlessly expensive, criminally tasteless and ultimately joyless -- except for, I guess, 1990s club nostalgists.

Klaatu Barata Nikto, man

80s cokehead power couple -- this is complete atavism!

Sadly, he is in her league at Famous

It's Teeeeeeeeeeam Date Rape

As the first big club to open in the Medvedev era, Famous could be a harbinger of bad things to come. Perhaps under that friendly liberalist chipmunk façade, he's an even badder bitch than Putin.

Oh no! Make way for Crazy M

Every cloud has a silver lining, I guess, as the Famous photos have a little something to increase your chances for a successful clubbing experience. Listen up: The wiseguy with the cigar is Alexei Gorobiy, who started the wildly decadent Zima/Leto/Osen franchise. (Read more about him in this indispensible Vanity Fair piece.) And the one doing the devil fingers is the fabled Pasha Feis Kontrol. By day he's a dentist who lives with his mother (unsubstaniated rumor I chose to spread as fact). By night he wields the God-given authority to deeeee-ny your ass. Combined, these two men have the absolute power to make or break your night, so tread carefully. The guy in the middle, disregard.

"You scuffed my Puma! You'll never club in this town again!!!"

Famous, 15 Rochdelskaya Ulitsa, Metro: Krasnopresnenskaya, Tel. 255-5354

Photos: mainpeople.ru

Kheppi Byerthday, Mr. Simachev

The Moscow club scene suffers from an alarming infant mortality rate. Remember Versus? Neither do we. After a gradiose opening last September, it quickly faded into relative obscurity. Even my mother could get into Versus now. If the right backs aren’t scratched, bureaucratic brouhahas over liquor licenses, building permits, pool permits, etc. can easily suffocate a baby club . And “accidental” fires (RIP Dyagilev), the preferred means of solving shareholder disputes, claim an unsettling number of victims.

Burn, baby, burn

With this depressing backdrop, cheers to club survivor Denis Simachev Bar, which celebrated its 1st birthday in May. Maybe it’s the new photographer I’m working with, but the bar also seems to have morphed into a happening place you’d actually want to be in. Back when it opened it was the target of severe anathema from, uh, me for using a hipster disaffected veneer to hide a terminally New Russian heart. That is to say, monstrous feis kontrol, overpriced cocktails and golden youth club kids hiding under cardigans. And above all, Denis Simachev’s facial hair is a bit too Megans Law for my taste.

Hide the kids

So it's hard to place why Denis Simachev Bar seems so appealing these days. The photos from the birthday party verify that the place is still very small and very congested, like partying in an ironic shoebox.

Also, what kind of Russian club doesn't have this waiting to slice you open on the dance floor with her razor-sharp pelvic bone. (Sounds of people across the world booking flights to Moscow.) Boring.


I guess its only real acheivement (but one that can by no means be denigrated) is they have hot Russian men, a mythological species. And not just one, but several. I've been at this game for a long time and have yet to see more than two attractive men in the same club. Once, it seemed true, but there was just a mirror in the room.

And if you think that's unusual, get this: They also managed to snag a lesbian for indie street cred. Not a Girl Gone Wild (those are falling out of trees in Moscow), but a real Sapphic powerhouse.

Finally, the man on the left is a Grade A asshat for not letting me in with my cupcake print rainboots. But be nice to him because he mans the door at Simachev Bar.

Photos: uaixblog.com, mainpeople.ru, mixtura.org

Denis Simachev Bar, 12 Stoleshnikov Per., Metro: Teatralnaya, Tel. 629-8085