It's a Very Zverev World

Everyone hearts Jocelyn Wildensteinian reality television star, singer and man-about-town Sergei Zverev. Broadly speaking, Russians hate and fear gays on the street, but love their celebrities camp as a row of tents, and so Zverev floats above homophobia, a shining silicone he-she. He even melted the heart of thugtastic Chechnyan leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who stated he finds the anthropoid creature "companionable" and gave him a 100 thousand euro watch. (Read all about it the GQ interview between Kadyrov and...Ksenia Sobchak, proof that reality is much stranger than fiction.)


You read so much about Zverev's extracurricular pursuits, like recieving wristwatches from scary tyrants, that you may have forgotten his original calling – male hairdresser. September saw the grand opening of his Celebrity beauty salon, which, given the popularity of the tranny aesthetic among biological women in Moscow, will likely do quite well. I except to see an army of Zverev lookalikes take over the world just before Armageddon.


To celebrate the opening, here's MDBIT's tribute to the many looks of Sergei Zverev, because no one embodies the spirit of retarded fabulousness better than him. Good night, and God bless.


Celebrity, 10 Nikolskaya Ulitsa, Metro: Lubyanka, Tel. 721-3524

Photos: mainpeople.ru, blesk.ru, the deep recesses of the Internets

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

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