IZO

New Year's dip in St Petersburg (drugoi)!

Kseniya Sobchak caused the removal of the pilot from a flight from Moscow to New York on 28 December because his pre-flight announcement indicated he was not sober (KP, in Russian).

Someone tells me that Dasha Zhukova doesn't like to wear a seatbelt in a helicopter. If so, how very Russian. It seems to me that once your wealth exceeds a certain level, life gets more, not less dangerous. You start travelling in helicopters, for example.

New Year's Eve: Mayak Cafe, 1 January 2009, 5.30 am.

The most stylish girls in Russia (spletnik, in Russian)?

Chelyabinsk is not only home of the pagan cult of Arkaim (IZO, yesterday), it's also a major heroin transit point and suffering from an HIV/AIDS epidemic: one in five prisoners, for example, has full-blown AIDS (NPR) (thanks, MK).

The Russians are pulling out of their favourite ski resort, Courchevelle, due to the Crisis (MK, in Russian).

"In the summer a group of top managers from Moscow booked a whole hotel in Courchevelle for the New Year. It cost them more than a million euros. They called recently with a request to cancel the booking. When we asked what had happened, the sad answer was: 'We've been sacked.'"

The import of American chicken legs, what used in the 90s to be known as "Bush's legs", will be banned from 1 January. This will hit the diet of the poor, for whom the cheap legs are a favourite food, because Russian producers cannot meet the demand (Stengazeta, in Russian).

The Bronze Age monument of Arkaim, near Chelyabinsk, is becoming a focal point of pagan gatherings, to the dismay of the church (Russia-ic).

Too much doom-and-gloom today. So here's an art-party in the Artefaq club (mnog).

The crisis has "reached the bordellos"; prostitutes' income is falling (pervoistochnik, in Russian).

Thee will be no more Russian winters in Moscow, and that's the truth (Pravda).

The USSR 1941-63 in photos from Life magazine (tema).

Nikas Safronov on love (radulova, in Russian):

I've got this teddy-bear, a girl, whom I've promised to call my wife, although we're not married formally, but nonetheless, she heard about, read about this option in the mass-media. So she's this teddy-bear, I come home, 7 am, she's asleep. At 8 she goes to work and I sleep to 12-12.30. Because I work at night. I like it this way. Sometimes she acts up and I buy her an expensive fur coat. I just bought her a fur coat that's so expensive I'm afraid to think abut it. I exchanged it for 2 pictures. These chinchillas cost 150,000 dollars. I think that now, in crisis conditions, it already costs less than I paid for it, but even so. So I've decided to make her a gift, she doesn't know about it yet. ... So, I spoil her, buy flats, cars...

From Art Lebedev's brilliant Idioteka (artlebedev.ru).

Russian woman gets her bust stuck in lavatory, apparently (Life.ru).

Ksenia Sobchak, at a seminar at the Millionaire's Fair in Moscow recently, stated that the crisis-look was the latest Moscow fashion. And how right she was: the Two Oranges marriage agency offers you the "anti-crisis wedding"; innovations include (2apelsina.ru, in Russian):

- an ordinary Merc S600 Super Pullman Stretch Limo instead of an Excalibur Phantom.

- the dress-fitting will take place in Moscow, not France.

- instead of exclusive congratulations from the Presidential Adinistration, congrats from the Moscow Mayor's office instead.

- streets will not be closed off by police around the registry office.

- no more dollar-bill-confetti, balloon trips or champagne showers.

Igor Markin has his Snob club (IZO, earlier) membership card (art4-ru).

The Book of Olga by Bettina Rheims (IZO, earlier) is out (Taschen).

By 2012 the single number for all emergency services in Russia will be 112; there is a pilot programme in Kursk (Kursor, in Russian).

Zemfira has been in a late-night punch-up with a porter (Life.ru, in Russian).

Citizen's Police (IZO, yesterday) update: "Moscow Patriarchate urges Muslims, Jews and Buddhist to form voluntary people’s guards" (Interfax):

Deputy chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin suggested that representatives of other religions should participate in organizing people’s guards in Russia. “I don’t see any obstacles to making people’s guards interreligious, at least, where followers of other religions will be ready to participate in them. It would make the guards stronger,” Fr. Vsevolod said. No secret, he said, “it takes Orthodox people too long to get ready ... and they are often too kind. Muslims are more decisive, real warriors. They can seriously frighten alcohol and drug dealers, who accustom youth to drinking and smoking. Jews are cool. ZAHAL, Mossad, Beitar – the very names should make skinheads take a run and start growing a pacific hair if not side-locks,” Fr. Vsevolod jokingly said. “The glory of Buddhist martial art gives confidence: one look of a Buddhist guard will trance any hooligan,” he further said.

The body of former Mashina Vremeni keyboardist Alexander Zaitsev has been found in Yurevets, Ivanovo region. Someone has apparently been arrested in connection with his murder. Zaitsev disappeared a few months ago (Sergei Stillavin, in Russian):

The press reported that the former musician, under the influence of narcotics, had been kidnapped in Moscow by unknown people and taken away in a car. Zaitsev's friends speculated that the reason for the kidnapping might be an attempt by criminals to get possession of his Moscow flat.

That's a nineties-style story: in that decade countless old men and women were murdered for their apartments. Well, if your business method ain't broke, why mend it?

The Union of Orthodox Citizens is an attempt to revive the old citizen-police active in Soviet times. Apparently the first church-sponsored druzhinniki will appear on the streets of Moscow on 1 December (mrparker, in Russian).

15% of prostitutes in Moscow are HIV-positive. Those infected are primarily from the Moscow region, Ukraine and Mordova (bosoj/moya_moskva, in Russian).

Dragan Klaic visits Moscow and Walter Benjamin's diary is on his mind (Sign and Sight).

Russians see a possible "ideological operation" in Google Earth (ru_politics, in Russian):

All the cities of the world are clean, shot in summer, in sunny weather, there are no rubbish dumps or building sites - beautiful! But Russia is shot in winter or autumn, there's scarcely any retouching, which a specialist wouldn't notice. Basically, it comes across as uncomfortable, unenlightened, dreary. A real Empire of Evil where only frightful people live.

(Lenta.ru, in Russian):

An attendant on the Moscow-Volgograd train helped to return 7,800,000 roubles [$285,000] to a passenger who left the money in a carriage. The inhabitant of Volgograd had prepared the large sum of money to buy a house, but during the train journey he drank three bottles of vodka and forgot about the money when he got out of the carriage ... the attendant informed the train superintendent and the bag was handed to the police on duty. Law enforcement agents managed to establish the identity of the owner of the money and his whereabouts: the luckless passenger was in the Volgograd drug clinic. ... the man only discovered the loss of his money from the police when he was given his bag back. "We imagine he was pleased," says the prosecutor's office in a press release.

Via mrparker, who comments: "After three bottles of vodka people usually end up in the morgue" (mrparker, in Russian).

Naomi Campbell to marry business magnate Vladislav Doronin. The pink and white gold diamond-encrusted ring has been in the making for months; Campbell has renounced her Brazilian cult beliefs and is entering the Orthodox Church (gazeta.ru, in Russian).

A study of Moscow's ethnic mix by Yu. V. Arutyunyan has been published by the Academy of Sciences (Regnum, in Russian).

They say that businessman Igor Vdovin, having left his beautiful talented wife Anastasia Volochkova, is devoting himself to yoga with all the attendant mystical teaching. They take yoga very seriously in Moscow these days. Too seriously for some. A friend of mine from London cannot find a yoga class that offers a simple work-out without additional spiritual instruction.

25-30,000 iphones sold officially in Russia; 100-500,000 grey-market phones in people's hands (dolboeb, in Russian). The reason for the discrepancy is the price: an officially-marketed iphone 3G 8gb in Russia costs 21999 roubles (about $820), as opposed to £199.99 in BestBuy, USA.

First snow expected in Moscow this week (Regnum, in Russian). Freakishly enough, London had its first snow last week. Below: Moscow summer sunshine at my local underpass.

I missed this: Gregory Feifer reports from Moscow on the Russians who invest not only in art but "a lifestyle". Interviews with Mikhail Kamensky and Marat Guelman (npr, audio).

The celebrated and notorious blogger viketz, once an important figure in the admin of Igor Markin's museum, is in hospital after a car accident. She cornered badly, wasn't wearing a seat-belt, airbags didn't work; she has an injury to her spine.

Russian crisis tactics and recipes (yandex-top-ru, in Russian), among them:

If you rub black bread with garlic it will smell of salami.

Ask for samples at the food market but don't buy anything.

Stop using Fairy Liquid to wash up with.

How do average wage-earners buy flats in Moscow (tema, in Russian)?

Today flats cost so much that I have no idea what you need to do to earn so much... I know that some people are really rich. But there can't be a limitlesss number of them. Maybe they all choose to live near Ostozhenka. But they can't fill the whole city, can they? Where can so many people all earn a million for a flat?

I often used to wonder what people meant when they talked about "making it" in London or New York. Now I realise that it must mean, above all, earning enough money to have a decent home and lifestyle, which means earning way above average. The same is true now in Moscow. In Moscow the blow was softened because so many residents were able to privatise their apartments for nominal sums in the 90s. Real estate worth hundreds of thousands or millions fell into their laps. Those who had emigrated too early and got rid of their flats for a few roubles on the black market were dragged kicking screaming and foaming at the mouth to the mad-house. Of course, prices will decline sharply in the Crisis, but the capital city effect will remain: an average wage will not nearly buy you a home. I keep telling everyone to move to Berlin because it's got a thriving art scene and real estate is about 4-5 times cheaper. You can get a presentable little flat here for 50,000 US dollars. Seems crazy not to buy something at that level.

Writer Zakhar Prilepin answers oligarch-turned-literary-critic Petr Aven (radulova, in Russian). IZO mentioned Aven's critique of Prilepin's book a couple of weeks ago (IZO).

A very modern marriage (Bild) (thanks, MK):

Sergej Rodionov (47), a banker and media tsar, had his wife Olga (34) photographed naked by one of the best photographers in the world, and then published the sexy pictures in a glamorous art book.

Star French photographer Bettina Rheims (55) shot Olga, a chat show host and mother of a 13-year-old daughter, in a French country house as a dominatrix, pin-up girl, Marquis and in both colour and black and white.

Pukirev's 19th century classic An Unequal Marriage and Ronnie Wood with his new girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova, taking a walk (I've put the two images together as a commentary on the photo of Wood and Ivanova). Life is stranger than fiction: unlike the poor girl in the painting, Ivanova seems genuinely happy. Is that because of or despite 150 years of female emancipation? I can't get my head round it (OK, I know, it won't last etc).

Simon de Pury will preside over a charity auction in the Kremlin at the end of November; in an interview with Kommersant the sum of €30 million is suggested, but not confirmed, as the price of Mercury Group's stake in Phillips de Pury (Kommersant, in Russian).

Cashing in on the caviar crisis (israelenews). I'm not sure how this dilemma is decided in Russia:

Most rabbis say sturgeon -- and by extension caviar -- are not [kosher] because the fish apparently has no scales, which makes it forbidden food under Jewish dietary laws.

But Hebrew University scientist Berta Levavi-Sivan, who has participated in the sturgeon-rearing project, begs to differ, insisting that magnification will reveal that the fish do indeed have tiny scales.

But sometimes I feel I might might appear a bit scaly under a microscope... Once upon a time you could get a one or two kilo (I forget which) tin of good black caviar in Moscow for about 200 dollars. Living in a one-room rental in the working-class suburb of Pechatniki, I used to eat it for breakfast, either with a spoon or on hot Georgian lavash bread bought from the back door of the Arakvi restaurant the night before. Now the only person I know who eats caviar with a spoon is a Bulgarian metals trader.

In Bolshoi Gorod magazine, in a piece on what and whom people hate, we discover that Dmitri Khankin, co-owner of Triumph Gallery, hates Bush, Moscow, Hummer limousines, price-rises at Kafemaniya coffee-shop [I think Khankin frequents the branch by the Conservatory on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, where the prices really are crippling! (IZO, earlier)], Marat Guelman's blog and the word "glamour", among other things. Be that as it may, an aura of glamour attaches itself to his gallery like to no other. Evgeni Ass, architect, also hates Bush and Hummer limousines. It also turns out that Russian women hate most of all in men empty dreams (95%) and empty promises (90%) but are surprisingly tolerant of drunkenness (hated by 5%), lack of money (3%) and cheating (hated by a hard-to-believe-by-any-standards 1%). Finally, the most hated people in Russia are old women in trams (Bolshoi Gorod, in Russian).

The first issue of the upmarket lifestyle Snob magazine is out, retail price 500 roubles ($20); the internet portal will open soon (Open Space).

High School Musical III - not! They'll All Die Except For Me (Все умрут а я останусь), a new youth movie by the twenty-something Valeriya Gai Germanika. I wonder how this will go down with the Orthodox Church; release date 23 October.

Mirax Group, the leaders in high-rise construction in Moscow and St Petersburg, is partying like crazy with the help of Madonna (Mirax) even while it is haemorrhaging vice-presidents: it's lost four in the last couple of weeks (Lenta.ru, in Russian). A couple of days ago Mirax Group boss S. Polonski signed a now widely-ridiculed open letter asking journalists to continue writing positive stories about the real estate market; among other things, it intimates that a real-estate crash might be bad for the birth-rate ;) (polonium194, in Russian).

Details of the Russian luxury goods market (Russia Blog).

De-boom-town, unboomtown Moscow (Daily Telegraph)

Tatler Artforum offers more on the Garage, Gagosian in Moscow etc (Artforum).

Hard to credit but, just in case it's for real, here goes: Ivershin's Luxury Assistants provides secretaries who as part of their duties will have sex with the boss (assistentka.ru, in Russian) (via mrparker). UPDATE: apparently the Russian word "intim" in this context doesn't signify sex, just "in team", which apparently means some kind of profound embedding in or commitment to the undertaking (mrparker).