Freakonomics, or In Defense of Fair Trade

It occured to me recently that the Moscow bar scene is a perfect example of "race to the bottom," a trade theory usually applied to sweatshops. That is to say, competition between countries (the women attending the bar) over attracting investment (male attention) leads to the reduction of regulations (standards of social conduct). Ultimately, it is those who abandon all vestiges of dignity who survive.

This is not an uncommon scenario: You rock up to the bar with Lena and Katya from work and predictably, there are about 3 eligible bachelors in the place.

Sasha, Sasha and...Sasha

The female-male ratio standing at 25-1, the air is thick with tension. Women start nervously preening and bending their bodies with unnatural rigidity to display their sexual organs. Conditions are bad, but they're about to get much worse.

Enter topless go-go dancers, the match to the gasoline. When these lithe animals start shaking their ta-tas on the bar, you lean over to Katya and Lena to suggest "fuck this place, let's get the fuck out of here" only to find that they have taken to the dance floor. To keep up with the go-go dancers, they are doing some sort of freaky deaky kick dance.


When it becomes clear that the naked chicks are still recieving far more attention, rather than give up, Lena and Katya become more and more determined. By the time you finally drag them off of each other, they're already... doing THAT.


Throughout all of this, Dima continues calmly smoking his kalyan, bored, trying to watch football on the plasma screen.


The point is that in this economic model, no one wins: not the desparate chicks lezzing out on the dance floor, not the guys who have become dizzy and nauseated of women as if they ate too much sugar, and certainly not the MDBITs who go home to write about it in their blogs. However, with a little solidarity, some grassroots organizing, it can be overcome. Si se puede!


Photos: 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

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

"Boobs," the Opera

In light of the insiduous Puritanism of Soho Rooms and The MOST, thank Bog there are still places like Opera, where funky-ass hos can roam free.

You forgot your....nevermind.

Photo: Geometria.ru

A-Rai-yan Nation

Something in the water at Rai? It's starting to resemble "Village of the Damned," or perhaps Hitler's grooviest vision of the future. These photos are from last weekend's Bob Sinclair concert, where your corny endormorphic girlfriend and her friend were playing Olsen Twins.


In other news, I'm going on strike until people start posting more comments. I have a Statcounter; I know I'm not just writing this for myself. Russia, United Arab Emirates, Korea, Davis — you take and you take and you take of the MDBIT and you gives nothing back. But, no one rides for free. Look, I don't make any money off this thing. All I want is attention. And expensive panties.

For My Sisterz

On November 23, the hallowed Altai marble halls of Ritz Carlton were tarnished by the ass-ugly spring/summer 2008 collection by Via delle Perle, an Italian fashion house. Allegedly an Italian fashion house, as I have a very, very hard time swallowing that this clothing did not originate from somewhere in the post-Soviet bloc. Cut-off tops circa 1991, leopard print bodysuits and neon baseball caps — at very least VDP vacationed in Sochi for inspiration.

(MDBIT Fun Fact: The singer's name is Anesthezia.)

Even the MC looks like he stepped out of Color Me Bad video. However, this is all at odds with dominant critical theory on Russian fashion. Fellow social anthropologist and RUSSIA! magazine contributor Julia Ioffe recently told Gawker:

“They've only had about 16 years to catch up to us, so they went through all these phases really fast. Like, two years of disco, two years of cokehead 80's ... they're just starting to get the appeal of subtlety.”

According to her estimations, Moscow’s now at 1999. Wrong! Girlfriend, we are still in the roaring “I’m NOT a Common Girl” attitude baby tee early '90s.


Russian girls. Ah, Russian girls. They are the stare that hangs on too long, the cup of tea with too much sugar. But to be fair, its hard to stand out, so you kinda have to dress like a peacock. By some cruel hiccup of fate, there are 8 of these:























For every one of these:

In the kingdom of the blind, the lumpy, pasty dude is king.

Ritz-Carlton Moscow, 3 Tverskaya Ul., Metro: Okhotny Ryad, Tel. 225 8888

Photos: Elite.ru, adensya.ru

Ochen Horrowshow

Given the city's predilection for Bacchanalian excess, it makes sense that Moscow would take to Halloweeen, a non-organic holiday, like a street dog to an abandoned toddler. Russian girls have embraced a fundamental truth known by American sorority girls for quite some time: Halloween is a great excuse to dress like a ho. With enough care, even the most banal costume can be skankified.

Skank Nurses

Bride of Skankenstein

Skangel

You don't understand the infinite sadness that comes from spending hours meticulously wrapping yourself in Ace bandages treated overnight in black tea for that special 2,000-year-old mummy look, only to be turned away from XIII in favor of this girl.

In general, guys come up with better costume ideas, as they're not afraid to experiment with different world cultures.

I refuse to believe he went there. Perhaps its a bad tan. Perhaps he was out of conditioner.

Perhaps the star got stuck to his uniform in the dryer.

But Halloweening as Holodomor victim? That's tasteless.

Finally, Russians spend years trying to undo a black PR campaign that bears roam freely on the streets of Moscow, then this guy fucks it all up.


Club XIII, 13 Myasnitskaya Ul., Metro: Chistiye Prudy, Tel. 925-3550

Photos: Geometria.ru, moscowfaces.ru