Entrance to the Mayakovskaya Metro station, around noon, Dec 3
Looking toward Triumfal'naya Sq., around noon, Dec 3
Friday, December 03, 2004
More shots of snowfall
Entrance to the Mayakovskaya Metro station, around noon, Dec 3
Looking toward Triumfal'naya Sq., around noon, Dec 3
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Late in the evening
Icicles, etc., on 1st Brestskaya St., December 1
Graffiti facing away from Triumfal'naia Sq., December 1
Snowy Saturday Morning
And more photos from last Saturday morning, these ones trying to capture the falling and drifting snow, which is pretty much impossible using a still camera.
Exiting the Pushkin Square underpass / metro entrance.
Hunching down against the wind and drifting snow.
Self-portrait of me and Lorina - reflected in one of those shiny food kiosks.
Exiting the Pushkin Square underpass / metro entrance.
Hunching down against the wind and drifting snow.
Self-portrait of me and Lorina - reflected in one of those shiny food kiosks.
News in Brief
[Sorry, but these links all go to Russian-language articles - the Polit.ru daily news email has made me a lazy researcher.]
"Prosecutor's office claims Ministry of Finance official traded state secrets for a Mercedes"
This is news?
"Chairman of Bashkortostan Committee for the Defense of Servicemen raped an 18-year-old deserter"
It never ceases to amaze me how many so-called Russian patriots would rather wave the flag and ignore incidents like this than deal with the epidemic problem of hazing and abuse of recruits in the Russian military today.
"Bush opposes foreign interference in Ukraine"
Well, it's nice to know he and Vova are on the same page about this.
"Russia has cut off rail service to Abkhazia"
Didn't they just resume this service a month or two ago? So fickle.
"Joe Cocker and Sting expressed their support for Ukrainians"
Well, now that the real geopolitical authorities have weighed in, I guess all those protesters can go home. Although if they're not careful, Joe and Sting will get on W's and Putin's bad sides with such "foreign interference."
And that's all the news that's fit to print.
"Prosecutor's office claims Ministry of Finance official traded state secrets for a Mercedes"
This is news?
"Chairman of Bashkortostan Committee for the Defense of Servicemen raped an 18-year-old deserter"
It never ceases to amaze me how many so-called Russian patriots would rather wave the flag and ignore incidents like this than deal with the epidemic problem of hazing and abuse of recruits in the Russian military today.
"Bush opposes foreign interference in Ukraine"
Well, it's nice to know he and Vova are on the same page about this.
"Russia has cut off rail service to Abkhazia"
Didn't they just resume this service a month or two ago? So fickle.
"Joe Cocker and Sting expressed their support for Ukrainians"
Well, now that the real geopolitical authorities have weighed in, I guess all those protesters can go home. Although if they're not careful, Joe and Sting will get on W's and Putin's bad sides with such "foreign interference."
And that's all the news that's fit to print.
Khip-khop
I happened upon this list of links while searching for a link to a page on the rapper Detsl for an earlier post, and I can't resist sharing it. Some of the artist names and English phrases are hilarious:
Lipetsk is in da house.
V -law and alliance Volga Style - the official site of the rap- commandOK, so maybe it's not nice to make fun of bad translations that trip over every "false friend" possible (команда actually means "group" or "team" in this context in Russian, but it a military context it does mean "command," so it's easy to see why someone might make this mistake). Nice it's not, but it is funny.
Dolphin - the rap- musician - Biography of dolphin (Andrey lysikova). Photographs. Video are clips. Articles of press. Diskografiya, the texts of songs and music in size mp3. chat room and forum.
Prospectus - Lipetsk KhcIp -xop the association - News of urban KhcIp -xop of motion. History of the groups, entering the association: musical, the executors of breyk-dansa, artists to graffiti. Photographs. Musical files in size mp3 and the texts of rap- compositions. Video clips.
Burito - KhcIp -xop the group - Information about each participant in the command. Story about the debyutnom album. Information about the concert projects. Photo-archive. Chat room.
Lipetsk is in da house.
Update - thanks to Polynomous for pointing out that this was probably translated by a website like Babelfish (link is in the right-hand column), which may be useful for other languages but which I can't recommend for Russian -> English based on a couple of tests I gave it.
Changes
Last Saturday morning we found out that we would be without a valued friend during the long, cold winter - the super-Soviet laundry where I have all of my shirts washed is closing up for a renovation. This makes a lot of sense, since it's located on prime real estate 50 yards from Pushkin Square (right across from the entrance to Scandinavia's summer terrace, for all you expats who know Moscow). No doubt in the new "remonted" laundry when it reopens you won't be able to reach an agreement with the washerwoman to do your shirts for 10% cheaper off the books, and they will hand out clean shirts on hangers so you won't have to bring your own and then count them when you get your laundry back to make sure they haven't cadged one. It will be more efficient, more transparent, but there will be less flavor to it.
The shoe store which is in the same building as the cleaners and always used to have loud music blasting was apparently some sort of Mecca for provincial kids - the stairwell was always full of graffiti that they left on their pilgrimage to the Camelot shoe store. Now the walls have all been painted over and the only thing left of the former decor is the door pictured above. The wild, no-holds-barred 1990's are definitively over and bland, middle-class-oriented stability is the rule now.
I do like some of the changes - like when the Eliseevsky grocery store (their official site appears to be down, but I am posting the link in case it recovers) was renovated and turned into a self-service, western-style (well, except for the decor) supermarket from a place where shopping meant pointing to what you wanted, finding out the price, having subtotals calculated on an abacus, paying at the appropriate cashier's booth (of which their were many), and taking your receipt back to the counter to get your goods, then repeating the process at the next counter. So I am not knee-jerk nostalgic for anything that brings back the dehumanizing experience of being a Soviet consumer. And I guess that talking about the place where I get my shirts laundered as a "friend" is nothing if not bourgeois, so maybe I am a poor spokesman for this concept, but I always liked Moscow as a rough-and-tumble burg, a place where you never knew quite what might happen. Those days have been on the wane for some time, but I still often have a slight pang of nostalgia when I see a truly Soviet establishment biting the dust in favor of a mobile phone store, a fancy coffee shop, or a clothing store.
This happened recently to the Kulinariya affiliated with the Hotel Pekin - a tiny store with elements of what would be known in the US as a deli and a mini-mart - i.e., fresh food (sometimes of questionable freshness) as well as packaged food and beverages. This place had three cash registers in a space the size of your average American suburban living room, but you could always get fresh Berlinskie pastries there, and often khachapuri. You could often witness local working stiffs freshening up in the morning with 100 grams of cheap vodka at one of the "stoiki" - tables that you stand around rather than sit at. But now it is no more, its door has been bolted shut for months. Every so often at first while walking to work in the morning I would see someone go up to the door (to the right in the picture below) and try to open it, then shake their head and mumble or curse at the discovery that this once-reliable source of sustenance was out of commission, at least temporarily.
I predict it will be reincarnated as a coffee shop, or perhaps a more upscale bakery, with a single cash register that will take credit cards and cashiers that might have at least a chance of flashing a smile. At least the convenience store by our apartment building has stayed true to its roots - 5 cash registers in a 20-by-60-foot space and never more than two surly cashiers working at any one time - but even they have gone upscale a bit, with a new, fancy, branded beer display case replacing the old, nondescript fridge with an unlit interior.
The McDonald's on Pushkin Square (famously, at least at one time, the largest McDonald's in the world, and the first one in Russia) is also getting a facelift. They have added a fancy "McCafe" section that is Starbucks-like (there is still no Starbucks in Moscow) and always crowded, and have upgraded the furniture from those prefab plastic chairs bolted to tables so familiar to Americans to sleek, modern, leather-looking couches and other stylish items.
And the Pepsi sign over Pushkin Square provides a concrete example of the rollback of freedom of speech and expression under Putin. When the sign first went up (about a year ago, maybe?), you could send an SMS from your mobile phone for a small fee to a number that flashed up periodically on the word crawl, and your message would scroll across for the whole square - well, at least anyone who happened to be looking up and cared to read it. The one time I exercised this freedom felt liberating, knowing that my message ("DC represent -- Lorina eu te iubesc" - shouting out to my hometown and proclaiming my love for my wife in her native language) was reaching the masses.
Now the word crawl flashes a pro-consuming message of banal intensity: "Бери от жизни всё!!" - "Take everything from life!!" This is in keeping with the mentality of so many Russians today who are content to consume that which was unavailable 15 years ago but are no longer interested in attempting to exercise the freedoms which were supposed to have been the real point of getting rid of Soviet power. As it turns out, the authorities are now pulling the strings as they see fit in a non-transparent way behind the scenes, much as before 1991. What's frightening is that the new system may be more sustainable than the Soviet system, at least as long as the petrodollars keep everyone employed at wages which allow them to aspire to consume ever more expensive goods - bread and circuses for all is a potent recipe.
The shoe store which is in the same building as the cleaners and always used to have loud music blasting was apparently some sort of Mecca for provincial kids - the stairwell was always full of graffiti that they left on their pilgrimage to the Camelot shoe store. Now the walls have all been painted over and the only thing left of the former decor is the door pictured above. The wild, no-holds-barred 1990's are definitively over and bland, middle-class-oriented stability is the rule now.
I do like some of the changes - like when the Eliseevsky grocery store (their official site appears to be down, but I am posting the link in case it recovers) was renovated and turned into a self-service, western-style (well, except for the decor) supermarket from a place where shopping meant pointing to what you wanted, finding out the price, having subtotals calculated on an abacus, paying at the appropriate cashier's booth (of which their were many), and taking your receipt back to the counter to get your goods, then repeating the process at the next counter. So I am not knee-jerk nostalgic for anything that brings back the dehumanizing experience of being a Soviet consumer. And I guess that talking about the place where I get my shirts laundered as a "friend" is nothing if not bourgeois, so maybe I am a poor spokesman for this concept, but I always liked Moscow as a rough-and-tumble burg, a place where you never knew quite what might happen. Those days have been on the wane for some time, but I still often have a slight pang of nostalgia when I see a truly Soviet establishment biting the dust in favor of a mobile phone store, a fancy coffee shop, or a clothing store.
This happened recently to the Kulinariya affiliated with the Hotel Pekin - a tiny store with elements of what would be known in the US as a deli and a mini-mart - i.e., fresh food (sometimes of questionable freshness) as well as packaged food and beverages. This place had three cash registers in a space the size of your average American suburban living room, but you could always get fresh Berlinskie pastries there, and often khachapuri. You could often witness local working stiffs freshening up in the morning with 100 grams of cheap vodka at one of the "stoiki" - tables that you stand around rather than sit at. But now it is no more, its door has been bolted shut for months. Every so often at first while walking to work in the morning I would see someone go up to the door (to the right in the picture below) and try to open it, then shake their head and mumble or curse at the discovery that this once-reliable source of sustenance was out of commission, at least temporarily.
I predict it will be reincarnated as a coffee shop, or perhaps a more upscale bakery, with a single cash register that will take credit cards and cashiers that might have at least a chance of flashing a smile. At least the convenience store by our apartment building has stayed true to its roots - 5 cash registers in a 20-by-60-foot space and never more than two surly cashiers working at any one time - but even they have gone upscale a bit, with a new, fancy, branded beer display case replacing the old, nondescript fridge with an unlit interior.
The McDonald's on Pushkin Square (famously, at least at one time, the largest McDonald's in the world, and the first one in Russia) is also getting a facelift. They have added a fancy "McCafe" section that is Starbucks-like (there is still no Starbucks in Moscow) and always crowded, and have upgraded the furniture from those prefab plastic chairs bolted to tables so familiar to Americans to sleek, modern, leather-looking couches and other stylish items.
And the Pepsi sign over Pushkin Square provides a concrete example of the rollback of freedom of speech and expression under Putin. When the sign first went up (about a year ago, maybe?), you could send an SMS from your mobile phone for a small fee to a number that flashed up periodically on the word crawl, and your message would scroll across for the whole square - well, at least anyone who happened to be looking up and cared to read it. The one time I exercised this freedom felt liberating, knowing that my message ("DC represent -- Lorina eu te iubesc" - shouting out to my hometown and proclaiming my love for my wife in her native language) was reaching the masses.
Now the word crawl flashes a pro-consuming message of banal intensity: "Бери от жизни всё!!" - "Take everything from life!!" This is in keeping with the mentality of so many Russians today who are content to consume that which was unavailable 15 years ago but are no longer interested in attempting to exercise the freedoms which were supposed to have been the real point of getting rid of Soviet power. As it turns out, the authorities are now pulling the strings as they see fit in a non-transparent way behind the scenes, much as before 1991. What's frightening is that the new system may be more sustainable than the Soviet system, at least as long as the petrodollars keep everyone employed at wages which allow them to aspire to consume ever more expensive goods - bread and circuses for all is a potent recipe.
Cold War redux
I am relatively new to this blogging thing, but I've found a few of the bloggers out there who focus on parts of the region that used to be ruled from Moscow. There is some very interesting commentary out there; I won't post the links here because the best ones I've found are located permanently in the right-hand column.
One parenthetical observation before getting to the point: there seems to be lots of quality English-language blogging about Ukraine (by Ukrainians and otherwise) in a way that suggests the bloggers are physically there, though of course that's never verifiable, and there are at least a couple of excellent English-language bloggers posting from Central Asia, but I have not found a wealth of English-language blogs originating in Russia. Is this yet another consequence of Russia's ejection of the Peace Corps - a source of thoughtful English-speakers with time on their hands - while volunteers remain in Ukraine and Central Asia?
That logic breaks down, though, when I realize that I haven't been able to find a single Moldova-related blog (English-language or otherwise), although there are still lots of PCV's in that country. Maybe the expats in Russia don't think this place is exotic or interesting enough anymore to merit a blog; maybe they are just too busy getting a piece of the petrodollar windfall.
Anyway, one of the aforementioned excellent bloggers from Ukraine, Discoshaman of Postmodern Clog, posts the following, in part:
Powerful words and powerful ideas. The cynic in me is almost overpowered (then wants to say, "wait a minute, aren't we ALL geopolitical pawns?"). The Argus agrees heartily with Discoshaman's post, then goes into detail which is interesting and relevant to the point to which I'm getting. Namely, that it wasn't the US or Western media that created the narrative of the Chestnut Revolution as a US-Russian proxy battle - this narrative was created in no small part by the many Russian leaders, pundits, and media outlets which have framed the story in these terms.
Every time Channel 1's Vremya covered the events in Kiev, there was lots of footage of the orange brigades' large stocks of food and clothing, and not-so-thinly veiled insinuations that "someone" - i.e., "the West," or Soros, or another such meddler - had to pay for all of this, right? As for Russian elder statesmen, who should know better, Primakov's recent statement that "the West stands behind the crisis in Ukraine" is just the latest - Foreign Minister Lavrov is also on the record talking about Western "interference," not to mention Putin's statements on this score. All of this in spite of Ambassador Vershbow's protestations that the US "does not see Ukraine as an arena for US-Russian rivalry."
Furthermore, the mere comparison of the current events in Ukraine to Georgia's Rose Revolution, during which the role of the US irritated many Russian political elites, implies that there is some level of US involvement with a goal of rolling back Russia's sphere of influence. So it's not just "our" journalists shoehorning the story into a simpler narrative that lets them file their articles on time, there really is something to the US-Russian conflict angle, if only because the wounded superpower pride of so many Russian leaders prevents them from seeing that activities in the post-Soviet space do not have to be a zero-sum endeavor.
There is room for humor in all of this, right? I got a laugh out of some of the anti-American posters which apparently turned up in the hands of Yanukovych supporters, which polit.ru has helpfully aggregated on a single page.
One parenthetical observation before getting to the point: there seems to be lots of quality English-language blogging about Ukraine (by Ukrainians and otherwise) in a way that suggests the bloggers are physically there, though of course that's never verifiable, and there are at least a couple of excellent English-language bloggers posting from Central Asia, but I have not found a wealth of English-language blogs originating in Russia. Is this yet another consequence of Russia's ejection of the Peace Corps - a source of thoughtful English-speakers with time on their hands - while volunteers remain in Ukraine and Central Asia?
That logic breaks down, though, when I realize that I haven't been able to find a single Moldova-related blog (English-language or otherwise), although there are still lots of PCV's in that country. Maybe the expats in Russia don't think this place is exotic or interesting enough anymore to merit a blog; maybe they are just too busy getting a piece of the petrodollar windfall.
Anyway, one of the aforementioned excellent bloggers from Ukraine, Discoshaman of Postmodern Clog, posts the following, in part:
Ukrainians are people, not geopolitical pawns. And they want to be free.
One of the tragic things I see developing is that the Western media narrative seems to be falling into a US vs. Russia play. And I'm seeing more and more commentary in that vein on the web. So few seem to grasp that this is about an entire system, not about an election. Yes, the people are rallying for Yushchenko, but it goes so, so much deeper than that. [...]
People are proud to be Ukrainian, proud that their country is now known for something other than mafia, dead journalists, and corruption. People who a week ago were convinced of their own powerlessness are now standing fearlessly, singing together, "We are many, we are one, we can't be stopped!"
Can anyone be so dead of heart not to find this beautiful?
Powerful words and powerful ideas. The cynic in me is almost overpowered (then wants to say, "wait a minute, aren't we ALL geopolitical pawns?"). The Argus agrees heartily with Discoshaman's post, then goes into detail which is interesting and relevant to the point to which I'm getting. Namely, that it wasn't the US or Western media that created the narrative of the Chestnut Revolution as a US-Russian proxy battle - this narrative was created in no small part by the many Russian leaders, pundits, and media outlets which have framed the story in these terms.
Every time Channel 1's Vremya covered the events in Kiev, there was lots of footage of the orange brigades' large stocks of food and clothing, and not-so-thinly veiled insinuations that "someone" - i.e., "the West," or Soros, or another such meddler - had to pay for all of this, right? As for Russian elder statesmen, who should know better, Primakov's recent statement that "the West stands behind the crisis in Ukraine" is just the latest - Foreign Minister Lavrov is also on the record talking about Western "interference," not to mention Putin's statements on this score. All of this in spite of Ambassador Vershbow's protestations that the US "does not see Ukraine as an arena for US-Russian rivalry."
Furthermore, the mere comparison of the current events in Ukraine to Georgia's Rose Revolution, during which the role of the US irritated many Russian political elites, implies that there is some level of US involvement with a goal of rolling back Russia's sphere of influence. So it's not just "our" journalists shoehorning the story into a simpler narrative that lets them file their articles on time, there really is something to the US-Russian conflict angle, if only because the wounded superpower pride of so many Russian leaders prevents them from seeing that activities in the post-Soviet space do not have to be a zero-sum endeavor.
There is room for humor in all of this, right? I got a laugh out of some of the anti-American posters which apparently turned up in the hands of Yanukovych supporters, which polit.ru has helpfully aggregated on a single page.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Bridge to Sir Elton
Update - Now they are showing a tele-bridge to London and Pozner is interviewing Elton John. Vladimir is reliving his glory days of US-USSR tele-bridges with Phil Donahue.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing broadcast with an amazingly frank discussion. It says something that I am surprised to see such an honest discussion of this on Channel 1.
I just realized that this broadcast must be related to World AIDS Day, which was Dec 1. All of the HIV-positive people on the broadcast are sporting caps with the logo of FrontAIDS , a Russian NGO. It's apparently being sponsored by Alfa Bank (which will be accepting donations at its branches throughout December) and Unilever, among others. I'll have to look for something on the net about this, I didn't find anything on my first search which is surprising if such heavy-hitting sponsors are involved.
They have assembled quite a group of people in the studio - in addition to the NGO representatives and government officials, tennis star Elena Dementieva, rapper Kirill Tolmatskii (a.k.a. "Detsl" of "Legalize" fame), singer Yulia Chicherina and other celebrities were present, as well as "person in the street" types.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing broadcast with an amazingly frank discussion. It says something that I am surprised to see such an honest discussion of this on Channel 1.
I just realized that this broadcast must be related to World AIDS Day, which was Dec 1. All of the HIV-positive people on the broadcast are sporting caps with the logo of FrontAIDS , a Russian NGO. It's apparently being sponsored by Alfa Bank (which will be accepting donations at its branches throughout December) and Unilever, among others. I'll have to look for something on the net about this, I didn't find anything on my first search which is surprising if such heavy-hitting sponsors are involved.
They have assembled quite a group of people in the studio - in addition to the NGO representatives and government officials, tennis star Elena Dementieva, rapper Kirill Tolmatskii (a.k.a. "Detsl" of "Legalize" fame), singer Yulia Chicherina and other celebrities were present, as well as "person in the street" types.
AIDS in Russia
I can't believe my eyes. I am translating an article on AIDS in Russia from last week's Bolshoi Gorod (I've been meaning to finish this one for days) in front of the TV, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a TV special - "Время Жить" ("It's Time to Live") - on this dire topic, and what's most stunning, on Channel 1, usually Putin's amen corner in proclaiming a new era of Russian stability and prosperity. Of course, information on this program is strangely absent from the channel's website.
This is a town meeting format, hosted by VJ Tutta Larsen and Soviet propaganda retread turned ORT talk show host Vladimir Posner. If you are near a TV with access to Channel 1, you still have a little over an hour to catch Russian government health officials looking unprepared and uneducated about the country's biggest health crisis. To be fair, a couple of the officials have appeared more competent than one might expect, but is that really saying so much?
This TV event seems to be connected to a concert at Luzhniki Sport Complex - they have now gone from the studio to feed to some live music.
This is a town meeting format, hosted by VJ Tutta Larsen and Soviet propaganda retread turned ORT talk show host Vladimir Posner. If you are near a TV with access to Channel 1, you still have a little over an hour to catch Russian government health officials looking unprepared and uneducated about the country's biggest health crisis. To be fair, a couple of the officials have appeared more competent than one might expect, but is that really saying so much?
This TV event seems to be connected to a concert at Luzhniki Sport Complex - they have now gone from the studio to feed to some live music.
End of the Line #3 - Алтуфьево
The north end of the gray line - Altuf'evo
The Moscow Metro gray line (officially known as the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya line) has something of a split perosnality. It's one of the newer lines, so it is bereft of the grandiose design which enriches the ride on the ring line and the downtown stations of many of the older lines; however, it intersects with one of the best examples of such fine design - the Novoslobodskaya station, a.k.a. the stained-glass station.
This line boasts stations named after Chekhov and Mendeleev closer to the city center (though even these stations are nondescript architecturally), but as they got out to the end of the line, they seem to have run out of decent names - "Altuf'evo" and "Bibirevo" sound funny even to Russian-speakers, and "Petrovsko-Razumovskaya" is a mouthful for foreigners.
I went out to Altuf'evo on Saturday, November 20, in the midst of a snowstorm, and around 4pm when it was already getting dark.
If you look closely here, you can see (in addition to the snow-induced gridlock) windblown snow cascading off the roof of a building in the distance:
Here we can observe two key elements of contemporary Russian civilization - a mobile phone store (Evroset')and a slot-machine hall (this one operated by Dzhekpot - www.jackpot.ru - probably the biggest operator of these socially damaging establishments; they boast of operating almost 10,000 slots on their website):
No self-respecting metro station can be without these two items in its immediate vicinity.
Inside the station, which appears starkly and unpleasantly designed only by comparison to other Moscow metro stations (in the Washington, DC, metro, for instance, this would be one of the fancy stations):
That color, by the way, is the way that the fluourescent lighting in this station photographs - I didn't use any exposure tricks or filters in any of these photos, although the first two look bluish, this one looks green, and the last one looks yellow.
Leaving the station - the station name through the train window:
_________________________________
See previous installments in this series here and here. Metro enthusiasts everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Artemii Lebedev for constructing an outstanding site on the Moscow Metro, including maps going back 70 years and images of farecards & tokens going back decades.
The Moscow Metro gray line (officially known as the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya line) has something of a split perosnality. It's one of the newer lines, so it is bereft of the grandiose design which enriches the ride on the ring line and the downtown stations of many of the older lines; however, it intersects with one of the best examples of such fine design - the Novoslobodskaya station, a.k.a. the stained-glass station.
This line boasts stations named after Chekhov and Mendeleev closer to the city center (though even these stations are nondescript architecturally), but as they got out to the end of the line, they seem to have run out of decent names - "Altuf'evo" and "Bibirevo" sound funny even to Russian-speakers, and "Petrovsko-Razumovskaya" is a mouthful for foreigners.
I went out to Altuf'evo on Saturday, November 20, in the midst of a snowstorm, and around 4pm when it was already getting dark.
If you look closely here, you can see (in addition to the snow-induced gridlock) windblown snow cascading off the roof of a building in the distance:
Here we can observe two key elements of contemporary Russian civilization - a mobile phone store (Evroset')and a slot-machine hall (this one operated by Dzhekpot - www.jackpot.ru - probably the biggest operator of these socially damaging establishments; they boast of operating almost 10,000 slots on their website):
No self-respecting metro station can be without these two items in its immediate vicinity.
Inside the station, which appears starkly and unpleasantly designed only by comparison to other Moscow metro stations (in the Washington, DC, metro, for instance, this would be one of the fancy stations):
That color, by the way, is the way that the fluourescent lighting in this station photographs - I didn't use any exposure tricks or filters in any of these photos, although the first two look bluish, this one looks green, and the last one looks yellow.
Leaving the station - the station name through the train window:
_________________________________
See previous installments in this series here and here. Metro enthusiasts everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Artemii Lebedev for constructing an outstanding site on the Moscow Metro, including maps going back 70 years and images of farecards & tokens going back decades.
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