Yesterday I treated myself to a fine Glenfarclas 10 year scotch and a pint of the house stout at The Telegraph, a local pub where fans of the St. Petersburg Zenith Football club gather to watch european premier league matches. As the pub became concentrated with pint-pounding russian hooligans, I made a quick exit to a relatively sunny, exhaust filled, Nevsky Prospect in search of some other kind of saturday afternoon action. As I walked, I passed one of the many high-end fashion boutiques that line the prospect. This one was dedicated to modern men's fashions. Standing on display, staring at me out the window was this...

I'm not exactly sure what this haircut means. I haven't seen many (strike that, ANY) Russian men with this style in effect. I suppose I should give it a few weeks though. Nevsky shops are tastemakers. If I spot this 'do on an actual head, rest assured I will capture it and report.

I continued walking. The scotch warm in my belly, I hoofed parts of the city previously unexplored. Behind the Moskovsky train station, on the other side of an auto repair/salvage yard, I found this old castle (church) boarded up and fenced in. Nearby two Turks in leather jackets who appeared to be undertaking some sort of street negotiation frowned at the sight of my camera, so I chose not to linger and read the sign you see posted on the fence there. Though its origins and purpose remain unkown to me, I still find the building quite striking.

After leaving the Turks and their business (whatever it may have been), I proceeded southwards until I encountered this small church. It doesnt look fit to hold more than 40 people, yet again, the design struck me, and demanded to be recorded and reported. The way it seemingly stacks layers upon each other reminds me of the old scandinavian wooden stave churches and also the massive wooden church (over 28 onion domes, and only wooden pegs used to hold the thing together!) on the island of Khizi (which I intend to visit soon). It was a quaint sight in an eyesore of a behind-the-railroad-station kind of a neighborhood.

In this same neighborhood, I found a small club (the Red Club) advertising live rock n' roll; a band called "cartoons." After a brief interrogation at security, (where my pens (I always have at least two on me) were checked to make sure they weren't actually knives) I was ushered into a small, dimly-lit smoke filled, people packed room. It was sparsely decorated and there was an air of anticipation. Cartoons it seems, are local favorites and roughly 85% of the kids in attendance knew the words to every song. They were ecstatic. Leaping, shouting, sweating, pulling hair, screaming, yelping, shouting requests, skanking, sliding, twisting, dancing, and shrieking like the beatles had just come back to the USSR. It was really amazing to see people reacting so strongly to music. In America, Austin especially, were all so jaded it takes a really great performance to get us enthused. These kids were probably seeing their favorite band for the 18th odd time, and they were freaking out! What a joyful outpouring.

On the way home, I chanced a quick photograph of the elegant subterior of the Ploschad Vosstaniya/Mayakovskaya metro station. Few are the pictures taken of the Russian underground, so please enjoy! Thats all for now...hope all is well in America. I send my love.

Its been a good weekend. I found some good music, and some bootlegged dvds in english. I also took new photos to share with you all. Ive seen some interesting things recently. Im in my kitchen, listening to the cure and guzzling Molodovan wine after a tasty spaghetti meal. It seems Russia isn't too happy with Moldova and Georgia's recent western leaning policies and in retaliation have decided to ban importation of the delicious wines that those regions produce. Its very sad as Russia is there biggest market and there isnt much coming out of poor Molodova besides wine. /Raises glass/ "Heres to you Moldova, and to you Georgia!"

Times change, and some people have trouble accepting that. This surly Babushka is protesting the fact that Russia is no longer the Soviet Union. She is holding the flag of the USSR, and her sign reads, "President Putin-Oligarch Man-Thief and Lackey of Washington." I do admire her handwriting though, this sign was painstaingly created! She snarled at me when she saw me take the picture, but I just had to. Seeing babushkas like this, walking the streets, caressing photos of Stalin, makes me more than glad I chose my own apartment over a home stay!

Seasons also change, and winter is finally, fully, leaving this slushy burg. These decaying ice plates on the surface of the once-solid Neva river are tell-tale signs of the approach of spring. If you take the time to enlarge this picture youll notice an orange, tank-like, conveyance rolling over the bridge in the background. They call that a tramvia here. I was surprised to here the word tramvia used in Russian, as my only point of reference is the graceful, gliding, tranvias of Bilbao, Spain. They were a light green, the interiors wafted the sterile smell of perfumed sanitizers and classical music drifted down upon the passengers. Russian tramvias are full of drafts that admit fierce patches of icy winter air as they chug, sludge, and rattle through the streets. I like them a lot. Its like riding in the biggest volvo ever made with 30 strangers who may or may not be drunk.

This is a poster for the cat expo I went to today. I couldnt find a cat that spoke to me with its eyes and paws that cost less than 300 dollars (6000 some odd rubles). Meagan and I are becoming known in the Russian cat circuit as the Americans (and sometimes Hungarians) seeking a Russian blue. There are many things I imagined for myself when I was a boy. Never among those things was notoriety in the elite Russian cat breeders circuit. Wonders never cease.As I mentioned in my last post, as the season truly shifts, the ice melts. Things that were long buried by the white blanket re-emerge, much to our collective dismay. Dog shit, broken bottles, baby booties, socks, gloves, frozen chunks of bile, as well as bones originating from various meats. However, the most abundant thawed treasure appears to be cigarette butts! Russians do love their smokes, and why walk to the garbage receptacle when there is a perfectly good snow bank right at your feet! This photos is the result of just such a mentality! Russia! Love it!

Swamp Gas

I know, I know its been some time since the last post. I make no excuses. Time moves strangely here, and Im working/studying alot. There were a number of days when I was commuting nearly four hours between my home in the northern suburbs (if they can be called that) and the southern village of Pushkin, home of one of the outlying summer palaces...also home of the small school where the young poet Pushkin honed his craft before claiming fame in the great northern capitol. Those days of heavy commuting are over for the time being, and I am settling in quite well. However, the ice and snow that once blanketed the city and its many footpaths is melting. Melting into cesspools of long, winter-buried dogshit and swampy mosquito wombs that threaten to unleash swarms of the tiny predators upon us all come the warmer days of spring. I've also been warned of excesses of swamp gas that escape from the warming earth (plaguing asthma sufferers to no end) as the cold leaves us. We must remember that St. Petersburg was built on a swamp. The many canals that crosscut the city weren't constructed for their aesthetic value, but rather they are the one-time sites of the excavations that provided earth enough to solidify Petrogradskaya, Vasilevsky Ostroff, and the other islands. Peter was admirably mad in his ambition to make this city what it is.

Some picutres then?

This television apparently fell from the sky. That, or it was kicked, hard, from a speeding van. No one paid it any attention on the street, but its shining, snowy, vacuum-tubed innards drew my eye. Where did this come from???? One of Russia's many mysteries that will remain unsolved.

This small onion-domed orthodox church lies a few hundred meters from my flat. I went there one Sunday morning hoping to hear a sermon in Russian and smell the incense and perfume of the babushkas I knew must be in attendance. No one was there. I'm not sure if this church is much more than decorative.

Walking down this alley one night, I was anticipating Ol' Raskolnikov himself to turn a corner nervously and dart away at the sight of me. Him or some other nimble foopad or cutpurse. It may not come across in this photo as I felt it that night, but the antiquity of this city often renders it beautiful in the manner of an old, poisonous, reptile, beaded and decorated to the hilt, but armed with fangs. There is often an undercurrent of malice in streets of aging splendor.

The merchant stands built up around the Pionerskaya Metro Stop on a snow Friday night. I was so happy to be done with the workweek on this night, I took a moment to document the joyful bustle that sometimes envelops this (often dreary) place of commute. Across the street, drunks stumbled into the Aladdin casino and sports bar. Immediately in front of me and to the right, thoughtful husbands and young paramours bought (odd numered) bouquets of flowers from the Oranj greenhouse for their sweethearts. This was a nice moment.

A taste of the glory of fabled Nevsky Prospekt. Here we see the dome and spire one of "Piter's" many churches. Gostiny Dvor, where oligarchs buy fine aged scotches and their wives carry chihuahas in handbags and debate Prada vs. Dior, lies a few steps away.