Soundtrack – Stereo Maracana, Combatente
By now, my fair reader, you must be wondering about the famous, riotous Moscow nightlife – especially knowing me. I have yet to post anything about that because, while it is famously interesting and fantastic, it is not the most striking thing Moscow has to offer. That said…
In Moscow you can find anything you’d like. You can eat sushi every night of the week, be it in a high-class restaurant or a coffee house. You can find 3 and 4 tiered dance clubs playing house, trance, pop, rock, hip-hop – every kind of music. My favorite part is that in nearly all of these you can find a man in a colorful hat who will bring you a hookah in every imaginable flavor, (kalyan po-russki) which you can sit and smoke while watching the endless parade of nonsense swirling at a dizzying pace around you.
You are more likely to find yourself in an exclusive spot, sitting at a reserved table with excellent service if you travel with a local – somewhere with huge, comfy, high backed couches, unnaturally tall tables, mirrored walls, low ceilings, perfect lighting enhancing the already cleverly designed look of it all, sweet music that is seemingly composed only to be played in this space, and beautiful waitresses who will bring you brilliant drinks until well past the sun has come up. (If, however, you are looking for a vodka or whisky with soda water, or some other simple drink, forget it. Soda water, and simplicity for that matter, does not exist in Russia.)
You can accidentally find your own rarity, usually after giving up on your initial evening plans either because you are lost, or tired of traveling. At this point you could even find yourself in a large warehouse with hundreds of people dancing to the beat of a famous dj (who, admittedly, you have never heard of.) One time, this warehouse also housed a bowling alley and billiards hall, and was encircled with full bars and attentive bartenders (this truly was a find!)
There are more chill places in Moscow, of course. Perhaps an unassuming coffee shop and bookstore that on the spur of the moment converts to a music venue and features an awkward, yet true, Russian reggae band in bright tie-dyed smocks with a variety of percussive instruments and a smooth and melodic Russian voice. It is possible to wind your way through a typical looking, empty nightclub/bar in the early evening and find yourself in a magical rooftop café, painted all white, and with lofted platforms, hammocks, deliberately placed sheer white panels hanging from floor to ceiling yet concealing nothing, small café tables and a variety of mattresses, pillows, and low tables on which to recline and chat and sip wine and eat cheese. These sorts of places you can only find by accident, usually when walking the exact wrong way from your search of some other destination.
There are also loud and smoky bars and clubs with music in varying shades of the obnoxious, familiar, distorted, and adored. Just as in the States it will take you 5-15 minutes to get a drink, including the time spent shouting your order at the bartender. The only difference here – the necessity of approaching the bar armed with a back-up drink order for when the bartender does not understand either your Russian or how to make the item you are ordering. (Nine times out of ten you end up with a beer for just this reason.) The guys that pick you up in these bars are markedly different. They don’t want your phone number or the chance to take you home that night, they want your email written carefully in their iphone so they can email with you and practice their English via the world wide web– very unnerving.
You find these places everywhere you least expect them. Up winding staircases, in basements at the bottom of dilapidated brick steps, sharing the building with a grocery store, or even, sometimes, past the three guards who will check, not your ID, but your attire before letting you enter. Upon entry, they, (the clubs) without fail, explode and then completely disorient you with a tangle of tables and benches encased with blacked-out windows to keep you from running for the metro when the sun comes up unnaturally early. They will consume you for as long or as little as you’d like, and usually only become tedious when the smoke or music is too much to handle.
It is interesting. I find the people watching to be much like that in the U.S., but with much shorter skirts, longer eyelashes, and higher heels. Any and all avoided public displays of affection in the States have been saved up and shipped abroad in order that they take place in Moscow. Incidentally, the men say the women are all prostitutes, and the women say the men are all underhanded scum, but they fight for each other’s attention all the same.
And the moral of the story of Moscow nightlife – wherever you go, you will not end up where you planned. When you get there you won’t know where you are, when you exit you won’t know what time it is or the direction of your house, if you have intended to go home. At some point you are guaranteed to find yourself at the mercy of the night. The best strategy at that point – cross your fingers, shrug your shoulders, and give in. I have yet to have a bad night in Moscow. And I imagine that if I felt one creeping up I would just switch it out for something more suitable to my tastes. It isn’t just what you make it, it is anything you want it to be.
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