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

I Heart Hate Moscow

Everyone hates Moscow. Everyone except the people who just got here, with a degree in Russian History and a fresh copy of Dostoyevsky in their back pocket. And even they are beginning to realize that the waitresses are mean and it's hard to cross the street.

Non-Muscovite Russians really hate Moscow. My Russian expatriate friends think it unites the cruelty of feudalism with the foolish excesses of capitalism. Which is, like, so embarrassing on the world's stage. The soldiers in my cabin on the train back from Petrozavodsk hated Moscow because the people have no manners or heart (and they have better cell phones than them). "Moskva ne Rossiya! (Moscow isn't Russia!)," I learned. Then we returned to translating their ringtones. And while I am interested by Moscow, in the way I am interested in the carbuncle on my boyfriend's back, I most certainly do not heart it, because the girls are way prettier than me.

Happy New Year, bitches!

If you have spent significant time in Moscow and still think it rocks, you either a) were born here and don't know any better; b) are a Central Asian gastarbeiter living out your wild bachelor years while sending money back to your hovel; or c) are a bottom-feeding expat who couldn't get laid back in Johannesburg. And even the latter two will concede that their hometowns have much better food.

For that reason I'd like to direct our attention away from the great She-Bitch to Norilsk, the northernmost city in Siberia, formerly a slave labor camp and recently named one of the Top Ten Most Polluted Places in the World. (Life just kept getting better!) The entire city is dying from toxins kicked up by the factories of Norilsk Nikel, owned by Russian brazillionaire Mikhail Prokhorov (who is also known for the minor international escandalo of flying planeloads of prositutes into French ski resort Courchevel). But even freezing, atrophied little Norilsk knows how to party. These are from the New year's Eve Bash at "Tornado." We're not in Moscow anymore, Toto.

Fuck dropping $400 on cocktails at a shitty Moscow club. In Norilsk, $20 buys you enough Sovetskoe Shampanskoe to kill a horse

One boy and one girl for every able-bodied man in Norilsk!

Grease your hair back, unbutton your shirt and pump your fist in the air, because you ARE the life of the party, Mr. Sparkles

Yes! I've searched for months for a photo of one of these in the wild: the provincial male "all bangs" 'do! I thought it went extinct in 2003. I see you, brother!

Shaving squigglies onto your scalp? Also still cool

Unfortunately, other Moscow hair fads have contimated Norlisk like so much nickel and arsenic in the air

And the girls are still smokin' hot. I guess nowhere's perfect

The best part of getting outside Moscow? No feis kontrol!

Photos: Geometria.ru

Saty-Rai-con

I’m trying to shake the winter doldrums by looking at photos from Rai, which takes it back. Waaaay back. Pagan, naked, super-camp — humankind hasn’t partied this degenerately since 99 AD.


Fellini couldn’t make this shit up. Drenched with sexual juices, rolling in glitter, Rai is a terrifying glimpse into the ancient depravity that exists in each and every one of us, if we can just get past face control.


Somewhere between heaven and hell, this Rai, although last weekend’s inclusion of Boy George tipped the scales towards the latter. Who better to take part in the pre-Christian orgiastic fury than a man recently charged with false imprisonment of a male hustler. If Rai could get R. Kelly up in there, it would be quite an interesting afternoon.

Doesn’t promoter Andreas look like a fun-size Caligula? Doesn’t he just?

Close the window! Go back to from whence you came! Once you realize there’s a place on earth you can indulge every perverse fantasy, including bug-eye sunglasses, you can never feel pleasure again!


Enough. I’m nauseous of boobs and lasers.

Photos: geometria.ru

Burnt by the Sun and City

I’m scabbing my own strike. If there’s one person out there who wants to know about Moscow’s fabulously retarded nightlife, then I guess that’s enough. Especially since I found a crop of party photos that need to be released into the wild: “Sun and City” at club Opera.


Just when you start posting things like “Moscow is becoming cool” and new oligarch club The MOST uses its “no skanks” policy as a selling point, something happens to make you realize it was all smoke and mirrors. Moscow is still Mars, Moscow is still Hell, Moscow still wears sunglasses at night.

Opera, fashioned as elitny hip hop megaclub, is in itself inherently ridiculous, but coupled with “Sun and City,” it provided a lens of uniquely fabulous retardedness through which to view the city. Sun and City is a poplar solarium. Hell, I’ve been there. Tanning is something dangerous for your health you have to do in Moscow to fit in, like driving without a seatbelt and having unprotected sex.


But indoor sunglasses? Let me just jump in my spaceship.


Note use of blackface and black people as promo for a solarium.

That’s really tan!

The remainder of the photo series is just called, "When You Were Leaving The House Tonight, Girl, Someone Lied to You.”

Girl.

Someone.

Lied.

To YOU!

Opera, 6 Trekhgorny Val., Metro: Barrikadnaya, Tel. 205-9822

Photos: mainpeople.ru

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