Leader of World Proletariat with Female Gate Attendant Reflected in Security Mirror, SUV, and New Year’s Tree. December 18, 2016, 11 Lomanaya Street, St. Petersburg
Monument to V.I. Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (pseudonym – Lenin) (1870-1924) was a Russian and Soviet world-class politician and statesman, revolutionary, founder of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (Bolsheviks), and one of the organizers and leaders of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. The monument was erected on the 87th anniversary of Lenin’s birth on the premises of the former Proletarian Victory shoe factory. Unveiled on April 22 , 1957. Cast from a model by the sculptor P.I. Bondarenko.
Source: 2gis.ru. Photo and translation by the Russian Reader
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In Petrograd, “cryptic” messages like this one (spray painted on the fence of the now-defunct Krupskaya Confectionery Factory) are giving the sex ads stenciled everywhere on the pavements and walls a stiff run for their money. Basically, if you want to get whacked out of your mind on “bath salts” and then have sex with a prostitute, this town is the place for you. And it visually reminds you of that fact a thousand times a day, every which way you look. But don’t dream of holding a spontaneous political protest: then the law will come down hard on you. But gnarly, highly addictive drugs and prostitution (amidst an HIV epidemic) it can live with. ||| TRR, December 18, 2015
An important public service message from the kleptocratic post-fascist hybrid regime: Make your family strong, not your liquor! “In Russia, 16% of families break up due to alcoholism.” Uff da! ||| TRR, December 18, 2015
Post-Soviet “ethnic diversity” gone bad. Four “folk singers” from god knows what republic or “little people of the north” lip-synching a folk song at the New Year’s bazaar on Pioneer Square in Petrograd. ||| TRR, December 18, 2015
Forgive me, dear, For I’m a human being: Two lungs, two eyes And only one heart.
I took this snapshot during a long, memorable walk with Dima Vorobyev, Marina Maraeva and her dog through a gloriously snowy Petersburg five years ago today.
When I posted it on Facebook, Slava Popov pointed out to me that the graffito was a quotation from the 2013 song “Ships,” by the Petersburg “math rock” band Samoe Bolshoe Prostoe Chislo (“The Largest Prime Number,” usually identified by the acronym SBPCh).
[chorus]
Sadness is the place where the ships come
Windstorm is what we put in our tea
Dried apricots lift cars off the ground
When you cry, I go to the pier
Sadness is the place where the ships come
Hurricane is what we put in our tea
Dried apricots lift cars off the ground
When you cry, I go to the pier
[hook]
Where do the ships come from?
Where do the ships come from?
Where do the ships come from?
[verse]
Today is a really special day
Stupid, ridiculous and funny
I throw a t-shirt into a faded shadow
It’s so hot I don’t know whether to laugh or cry
Whether to stand or lie on the yellow grass
Prickly, withered and spiteful
You’re all dummies in my head
Who have swapped a night’s lodging for an overnight stay
To go to the sea through a steppe and a half
And another three along the way
Guys in underpants, kids in underpants,
Everything on the way in underpants
I look at a cow, at a dragonfly
It’s a pity that I’m a human being
At birds, at dogs, at a gray nanny goat
That life has slowed down
I’m sorry I brought you to this dump
I’m sorry, goat, for the dump
It could have been a kangaroo in your place
A koala chewing bark
But I remembered something from my childhood, from books
About the fleet and about a fraternal people
We’ll cut straight through the fence here
I remember there is a turn
Sorry for the scales running out loud
For joy that immediately turns to grief
But out loud, in front of the goat, because there are more than two of us
I swear the sea is there beyond the garden
In the meantime, there is the garden, where
Melons, plums and peppers live out their days
I’m sorry, dear, for I’m a human being
Two lungs, two eyes and only one heart
[hook]
Where do the ships come from?
Where do the ships come from?
Where do the ships come from?
Ааааh-аааh-аааh
[refrain]
Sadness is the place where the ships come
Hurricane is what we put in our tea
Dried apricots lift cars off the ground
When you cry, I go to the pier
Sadness is the place where the ships come
Hurricane is what we put in our tea
Dried apricots lift cars off the ground
When you cry, I go to the pier
Source: Genius.com. The refrain plays on the fact that the words pechal’ (sadness) and prichal (pier), and uragan (windstorm) and kuraga (dried apricots) are near rhymes. “Ships” was released on SPBCh’s 2013 LP Forest Oracle. Translated by the Russian Reader
Comrade Sharapov almost as immediately pointed out the striking similarity between SBPCh’s graffitoed sentiment and “Two Lips, Two Lungs and One Tongue,” a song by the venerable Vancouver punk band Nomeansno, released on their fourth album, Wrong (1989).
“You should love life more than the meaning of life.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)“A happy childhood is more powerful than war.”Image in the window of the Cafe Kabul
All photos taken on Borovaya Street in central Petrograd by the Russian Reader.
Leader of World Proletariat with Female Gate Attendant Reflected in Security Mirror, SUV, and New Year’s Tree. December 18, 2016, 11 Lomanaya Street, St. Petersburg
An important public service message from the kleptocratic post-fascist hybrid regime: Make your family strong, not your liquor! “In Russia, 16% of families break up due to alcoholism.” Uff da! ||| TRR, December 18, 2015
Post-Soviet “ethnic diversity” gone bad. Four “folk singers” from god knows what republic or “little people of the north” lip-synching a folk song at the New Year’s bazaar on Pioneer Square in Petrograd. ||| TRR, December 18, 2015
The Russian Reader 