Human Trafficking

Watch out — whoever you are, wherever you are, Moscow can buy you. Hollywood starlets were long the most fashionable human furniture for hire. For the right sum, which was assuredly very generous, they stood around in polite confusion at openings and awards ceremonies. And people osmotically absorbed their glamor.


Read A.A. Gill's monocle-polishing surprise at seeing Gwyneth Paltrow, Academy Award-winning actress and wife of one of England's richest entertainers, in a crate at a Martini launch party last winter:

"She stands in a party frock in a small wooden box with her bodyguards, like a little Punch and Judy show. Photographers and film crews jostle as smart hostesses and the wives of the new rich are jostled in to shake hands. It was, Gwyneth told me later, the weirdest experience of her life."

More recently, Pamela Anderson was rented for the MTV Russia Movie Awards. Ostensibly headlining the ceremony, she appeared on stage only once. But MTV's investment did not go to waste. Presenters made plenty of jokes about her ta-tas, and she was tangentially involved in the night's skandal: Vladimir Menshov (director of, oh shit, "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears"), displeased at the Academy's Best Picture selection, cast the opened envelope to the ground. "I am not going to present this award to a film that disgraces my country. Let Pamela Anderson present this one," he said. Anderson smiled brightly at her name's mention, not having been supplied with a translator.

Pam impersonators, transcending barriers of language and taste.

But the new vogue, as evidenced by last weekend's VIP "Prorok" premiere, is males. Stephen Baldwin — owned!


Photos: elite.ru, fotos.ucoz.ru

Oh No, Bocconcino!

Went out for lunch today at Bocconcino, Arkady Novikov's posh pizzeria. At noon, two girls crashed their BMW into the wall, right where two men were sitting. The best part was then they got out and had lunch.






Bocconcino, 7 Strastnoi Bulvar, Metro: Pushkinskaya, Tel. 299-7359

Summerfolk (or There Goes the Neighborhood)

You bet it gets hot in Moscow in the summer: 36 degrees today and climbing. In times like these, poor people take a dip in the Moskva, rich people drive to their dachas and very rich people drive to their dachas in Zhukovka, 10 km outside the city center on the Rublyevo-Uspenskoye highway. In this village's elite settlements, new cottages start at $1 million, with things like helicopters thrown in to sweeten the package. These gated communities bear spacestation names — Zhukovka-3, Gorky-22 — or else evoke faraway American suburbia: Green Hill, Apple Garden, etc.


Subbing birches for beaches, Zhukovka is Moscow's Hamptons, a pretty place soured by urban vs. townie, richy vs. poory tension. A long time ago, Tsar Aleksei decreed that no industry shall ruin Zhukovka's natural beauty, making it the prime destination for black-lung city dwellers in the years to follow. Standard-issue huts were distributed among the proletariat in the late Soviet era. In the present day, many owners have held onto these and tend chickens in them year-round, despite the creeping onset of very important neighbors. At the neighborhood potluck you'll find the political elite (many members of the State Duma and the FSB (ex-KGB), Ukraine opposition leader Yanukovych), captains of business (Roman Abramovich, Nornikel head and skiing whore-monger Mikhail Prokhorov) and pop singers (Eurovision loser Alsou). Putin's brigade, heading deeper into Rublyovka, chokes the highway twice daily.


Poor people living in huts, rich people complaining of the livestock smell — a class war is a'brewing, if you listen to the old man on the porch in the rocking chair. As demand for luxury housing in the suburbs increases, things are getting nepriyatnie. The Guardian reported in February of mounting land grab "casualties," including the car-bombed Valery Yakovlev, formerly a community property official. The more civil are leaving it at strong suggestions that stubborn people surrender their land titles. The plebes have responded with harshly worded graffiti.


Before the Revolution comes, don't forget to enjoy Veranda u Dachi (Summer Terrace of the Dacha), part of Zhukovka's upperclass retail/dining neighboorhood, which was named the Best Out-of-City resturant by Menu.ru the last two years. The theme is pre-revolutionary country living — owner Arkady Novikov calls the restaurant a love letter to one's own home — but there's no Chekovian idyll. Cozy details like rustic cupboards with marinating cloves are undermined by perversely expensive prices and a degenerately rich clientele. A conservative estimate for dinner (Italian, Japanese, Uzbek and Chinese cuisines) is 70 euros.


The restaurant is attached to Dacha, an art gallery started by collector Yemelyan Zakharov and Sasha Vertinskaya, granddaughter of the ballad singer Alexander Vertinsky and niece of director Nikita Mikhalkov. It sells provincial knickknacks, and hosts haute couture shows like the one below.


The entire point of this article when I sat down to write it, arms sticking to the desk, was that it's now summer veranda season. Moscow is really cold more often than its really hot, so we really care about these things, yo. Veranda u Dachi's patio opened; people went.






Veranda u Dachi, 70 Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, Zhukovka village, Tel. 418-3394, www.artdacha.ru

Photos: readrussia.com, novikovgroup.ru, elite.ru

Ain't No Rigga Like the One I Got

Last weekend, I went to the opening party of a new R 'n' B club, Zhara.


Few subcultures inspire as much ire as Russian hip-hoppers (ahem, riggas). Why though? Certainly these homeboys aren't any more ridiculous than, say, Burmese or Canadian homeboys. A character in Aburdistan even points out that Russians share plenty of similarities with their American brothas: they live in housing projects, they solve problems with drive-bys, their kids have asthma.

But all that's not really applicable though because hip hop is only popular with rich teenagers living on Rublyovka whose daddies are the ones killing people. No idea what their lungs look like.


That's M for Moscow, bitch!

Maybe the annoyance comes from the mindfuck of it all. Most riggas hate or at least fear blacks, but worship hip hop culture. And the country's biggest rap star, Timati, isn't black, he's Jewish/Tartar. Meh, he's tan — close enough.


The crowd in front of Zhara naturally parted when a real black man approached. He couldn't walk 50 meters in the city without being stopped by police, but was graciously waved in by the feis kontrol, operating under instructions to admit anyone with a tan. To give the club their air of authenticity.


The only explanation that I can come up with is that the Russian hip hop party is a carnival, that ritual staging of the violent decomposition of society, in which social hierachies are inverted. Exactly at this time is when you feel the weight and power of social totality most powerfully. The height of holism and individualism coalesce, etc. The carnival is necessary and cleansing. A societal douche, if you will.

Riggas are also douches. (Outed! Its true, I'm an avid, rabid La Russophobe reader.)





Zhara, 8a Tverskoi Bulvar, Metro: Chekhovskaya, Tel. 650-4556
Photos: geometria.ru, timaty.ru

Rave New World

What the hey, Moscow. Taking all the fun out of rave culture again. A Russian Love Psychedelic Trance party already meant beer & glowsticks in the woods — now we get neo-raver street fashion without any of the sex, drugs & oontz that makes dressing like a fool worthwhile? Ok fine, pass the hair gel.


Sure, New Rave — Neu Rave, sorry — originated in the UK underground, not Tulskaya, but that's not stopping new Moscow label White.Trash.For.Cash from biting its colorful DIY style. As I'm not a 14-year-old from New Cross, I don't understand what New Rave is about. But I'm told it involves neon art, 8-bit video games, MDMA, clocks passing through fire, The Klaxons (above) and people who look like The Klaxons (below). Kids are so weird.


White.Trash.For.Cash held a fashion show at Danilovsky Monastary last Friday. To my limited knowledge, they got all the basics right — skinny jeans, over-sized t-shirts, spandex — although, as usual, drugs were not invited to the party.



White.Trash.For.Cash — a victory for copying good. And quickly! Five out of ten British gutter punks will agree that Neu Rave does not yet suck.



The fashion show attracted hip people. Varshavskoye Shosse or Williamsburg? You tell me.









White Trash for Cash, 18 Perevedenovsky Per., Metro: Baumanskaya, Tel. 109-5609

Photos: wtfc.ru, geometria.ru

Its ANDREA$ Time

Rai promoter Andreas (or ANDREA$, if you'll humor that eccentricity) had a birthday last weekend. We now know more about the life and opinions of this Caligulan dwarf than ever before.


ANDREA$ — carries a man purse.



ANDREA$ — snuggles pop stars (like Vlad Topalov).



ANDREA$ — wears a silk robe.



ANDREA$ — cannonballs.



ANDREA$ — juggles strippers in the water.



ANDREA$ — gets "gaysted."


No, don't try to understand it. Different plane of existence entirely. Your life is more like a Kyrgyz shit herder's than it is like his.

I don't know, I like Rai. All the preeeeteeee colors. Everything beautiful, and nothing hurts. A wonderful place to sink into oblivion.



Rai, 9 Bolotnaya Nab., Metro: Polyanka, Borovitskaya, Tel. 767-1474

Photos: geometria.ru

Mo' for Your Money

Generally I don't like to pollute Moscow's premier amateur nightlife anthropology blog with business plugs, but in this case I'm bound by inguinal duty, having known Lochamer ever since 1996 when we were colleagues at Sibneftgazpromsoyuzcorporation's Vienna branch office, then later as bandmates in mid-2001 Moscow boobcore outfit I Hate Your Endomorphic Girlfriend. Back then she had a lez-mullet, and I was still going around as DJ Lazy V.

At any rate, turn to Mo Corporation for all your next-generation performance-driven goal-oriented momentum strategy needs. Pretty standard stuff, but here is their pitch:

holistic development solutions
blue-sky targeting techniques
comprehensive success blueprinting
zero disclosure proposal benefits
market leaders in increase and reduction (I&R) strategies
across-the-board accountability charters
quality-standard matrix approach™
pre- and/or post-market saturation recovery
:::::::::::MO CORPORATION:::::::::::::::::::

Our unique corporate proposition? That’s what we deliver to you!

MO is the leading cutting-edge diversified integration service provider on the international corporate arena. We provide a full spectrum of business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and consumer-to-business (C2B) services for the business and consumer community. Our commitment to the diversification and simplification of integration practices has led us to develop the groundbreaking quality-standard matrix approach™. This unique IPR method ensures superior enhancement level consistency across the board in all spheres of corporate diversity.

Together, reach for the sky!

MDBIT in the Mix

Not too long ago, Mix celebrated its 7th birthday. It's an after-party club, which is where people on drugs go after all the drunk people have passed out. As a result, Mix can be alienating for those who are not on drugs.

My friend Vlad once called me at 6 a.m., high on life, with a proposal. "MDBIT, I've always wondered what it would be like to wake up in the morning, and go straight to a nightclub before breakfast. I've been here all night, but you can wake up now, come to me at Mix, and tell me what it's like. Or you can go back to sleep." I chose social experiment over sleep because I am a scientist after all. Upon my 7.30 am arrival to the club, I was looked over in a way that an art director with a single dreadlock coming out of the back of his head should never be allowed to look at someone. But he let me in. I chose orange juice with my vodka, you know, because it was breakfast.

The kind of people one meets in a nightclub at 8 a.m. are the kind of people who claim to be 28 when they're pushing mid-forties. Moreover, they look like they've been pushing for a long time, and it's been quite the struggle. Dzaek (don't ask me) was just such a guy. Leathery to an extent that my dad can only dream to be, Dzaek accompanied me to Tapa de Comida when the club closed around us. At 9 a.m. he started the slow decline into his breakfast. Weighed down by all the years and earrings, his head made its way down into his breakfast salad, led by a trail of drool, until finally that leather bag met its lettucey pillow. Seems Dzaek had been partying for a long time (maybe 35 years) because it was impossible to wake him. So I left him there. As a tip.

Here are photos from the birthday party. All of these people are on drugs.







Photos: 44100.com

Mix, 11 Novinsky Bulvar, Metro: Barrikadnaya, Tel. 255-4333