Is Moscow the new Big Apple?

[Exeter]

Is Moscow the new Big Apple?
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 24/04/2008

Moscow is being hailed by some as the new New York. Celia Walden samples its excesses

If you've ever worn tight shoes, you'll know that the relief you feel when you take them off is so akin to euphoria it leaves you dizzy. Imagine a whole capital city, hobbled for 72 years of communism, united in that sense of deliverance.

Ceilia Walden finds Muscovites are suicidally serious about fun
Then try to imagine waking up after a night out in that city - or don't: it's a painful business. Inky nightclub stamps in Cyrillic script brand the back of my hands; my hair and, by proxy, bedclothes reek of cigarette smoke: and my head reminds me why, even in binge Britain, we choose not to chase each glass of wine with a thimbleful of vodka.

"This city is a sick place," shrugs Elena, the biggest party girl I know and the perfect companion as I set about uncovering whether Moscow lives up to its claims as the new New York.

She means sick in the LA sense of the word: when a place, style or person is so outlandishly hip, cutting-edge or viciously innovative that it prompts only that most contrary of adjectives. Others may prefer to use the same word in its original meaning. Not for nothing, I am about to discover, has Moscow been named the capital of excess.

My first night was gentle enough: dinner at Turandot (a new £30 million restaurant built in the style of an Italian palazzo, complete with waiters in 18th-century dress), followed by two bars and three nightclubs.

"We'll ease you in," laughed Elena as we arrived at a rave in an old factory where pornographic pop-art lined the walls and strobes bounced off eyeballs avid and dry from drugs.

Two £25 drinks later and we were off again in search of transport. Nobody takes taxis in Moscow. So far, so very un-Manhattan. Instead, they hail down any car that will take them: a Skoda, a Lada or, occasionally, something fancier, courtesy of a dignitary's chauffeur doing a spot of moonlighting.

We were in luck: a black Merc with leather seats and a siren on the roof pulled up. MPs in Russia are allowed them "for emergencies".

"Can we have the siren on?" I joked, as we sped, at 120 miles an hour, past endless construction sites, towards Solyanka, Moscow's answer to Soho House.

"Nyet," came the gruff reply. Two minutes and a 500 rouble note (£10) later, we were wailing past grey, gridlocked streets.

On arrival we were ushered through the VIP zone, into the VVIP zone, up a fire escape and through a kitchen into the VVVIP zone. You're nobody in this town unless you're forced to walk through a kitchen to get your shot of Stoly. There, a gaggle of women with machete-like cheekbones were dancing on the bar-top, below them a troika of men, looking skywards in awe as they guzzled champagne.

Muscovites have waited so long for their time to come that they act as though it will all be taken from them come morning. "See those trapdoors?" grinned one clubber. "People climb on to the roof to have sex - even in December, when it's minus 10."

Dimitri, my taciturn photographer, shook his head. "Is any of it really making these people happy?" Looking at the knicker-gazing businessmen by the bar, I'm fairly certain the answer is yes.

"You guys seem to think our women are all prostitutes," said Artemy Troitsky, an outspoken music critic and writer, often described as the Russian John Peel. "And you're sort of right. They will establish early on what you can offer them and tell you what their previous boyfriends gave them. Russian men have grown quite wary, but foreigners are easy prey."

The women are clearly high?maintenance: in clubs and bars, miniature chairs ensure that designer handbags - often worth as much as £2,000 - never touch the floor.

Culturally the capital is a frenzy of amorphous creativity, with one art form bleeding into another: bars are selling books, nightclubs sell clothes. All-night contemporary art museums (with their own DJs) are springing up across the city. Norman Foster has been commissioned to build 20 new buildings, and Philippe Starck is designing a whole village just outside Moscow.

"People forget that what Communism left behind was a skilled workforce," explains Tony Brenton, the British ambassador to Moscow. "Add money to that and it's an extremely productive combination."

And one that is attracting Brits with dollar signs in their eyes, such as Tony Blair, who is rumoured to have secured a £125,000 speaking engagement in the capital this summer, and Damien Hirst, who is to take his diamond-studded skull to Russia in June.

One detail says it all: Moscow is the only place in the world where movie billboards have the film's budget in the same-sized type as the title, as though the fact the new George Clooney epic cost £65 million makes it worth seeing.

Contemporary art is also big business. "Over the past seven years we have had this new class of people who want to buy and collect art," says Igor Markin, owner of Moscow's Art4 museum. "Some chose to buy football clubs instead, of course… I just heard that Roman Abramovich's girlfriend, Dasha Zhukova, has bought a space to open her own museum."

Abramovich's name is on everybody's lips: he is the ultimate success story, and a great supporter of the Russian contemporary art scene.

The following night, at the launch of the Moscow Photography Biennale, I met John Mann, Abramovich's PR director at his company Millhouse: "New York isn't as 24-hour as Moscow. I have two bookshops near my flat that are open all night, two supermarkets with everything you could possibly need, and I can have a drink at seven in the morning. In a few years' time, New York will be claiming it's the new Moscow, trust me."

Even fashion has caught up. Tsum, the gigantic Moscow department store modelled on Selfridges, has a greater collection of Balenciaga, Miu Miu and Lanvin than Harrods or Harvey Nichols, as well as exclusive ranges designed by Daria Werbowy and Naomi Campbell. The clothes cost 40 per cent more than elsewhere, but people still buy them.

"Don't forget that Russians lost everything three times, in 1990, 1993 and 1998," said Natasha, a Russian model shopping for the latest designer gear in perilous stilettos. "Now they are happy with their lot and happy with Putin. Everything is not affordable but it's available, and that's enough."

Russians are filling the capital's restaurants: at Sky Lounge, a huge New York-style eatery, businessmen tuck into millefeuille with sorbet of foie gras and fruit jelly. Vostok, another celebrity haunt, offers its cheapest starter at £30. Sushi is the latest craze.

Luxury has bred a new physicality. Men and women now work out, cut carbs and get mani-pedis in their lunch hours. But the real beauty staple is their weekly steam bath.

"The winters are harsh on our skin," said Sandra Vermuyten of marka:ff, a Moscow-based arts PR company, as she led me into a room heated to 120 degrees and full of naked beauties. It looked like a slaughterhouse: 40 women, like me wrapped in sheets, were draped across benches or lying on the floor, trying to escape the crushing temperature.

"You can't be the first to leave - it's a matter of honour," whispered Sandra.

Minutes later she started beating me with a birch branch - "to get the circulation going". I looked at her in disbelief. "Oh, I'm sorry - would you prefer me to use pine?" she replied.

When I finally escaped I felt two kilos lighter. "Vodka cocktail sound good?" chirped Elena and we hitched a ride to Krisha Mira - a club filled with giant Buddhas, where, at 6am from a roof terrace, we watched the sun come up over the Moscow river.

I've spent all-nighters in New York and LA and been disappointed to discover only a forced, self-conscious attempt at hedonism. Muscovites are suicidally serious about fun.

But if this is New York, then it's the New York of Brett Easton Ellis and Jay MacInerney, or the Chicago of the Twenties, where corruption and decadence, though spectacular to witness, can be a heartbeat away from despair.

"The thing I have come to love about Moscow," says Ambassador Brenton, "is that it is a highly urban, highly unpredictable place with a slight undertone of danger."

"As long as the oil prices stay the way they are," sighs Troitsky, "the lifestyle will continue. Politically we are in limbo, but for you guys, for visitors? It may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit a capital that burns money."

Is Moscow the new Big Apple? - Telegraph

[meadhbh]

Well it was bond to happen sooner or later. I think a lot of cities go though that phase where things get crazy for a while. It'll pass or it won't.

[Llywarch Hen]

It must be said that this is a very specific section of society, hated too! The old Russia is still there behind the glitz and sleaze. There are still lots of good wellbred nice girls apart from these predatory creatures! I call the ones in the article 'giraffes' or 'horses instead of women'! I'm not a short man, but there does seem to be an odd crop of incredibly long young girls that hang around certain areas!

I dress to blend in, and have a rather old fashioned style of hat and coat, and once as I pushed my way past a crowd of such fashionable girls in the McDonalds on Manezhnaya Ploschad' in the centre of Moscow, I heard a few of them mock me as a 'country bumpkin'. Had I waved my passport at them they would have changed their tune...

Nevertheless my friends among the struggling students out there do go out to cafes and the like more than I ever did back home in England.

[drgs]

I have mixed feelings about this

On a slightly different note
Moscow: new world capital for billionaires

[svin]

apart from these predatory creatures! I call the ones in the article 'giraffes' or 'horses instead of women'! I'm not a short man, but there does seem to be an odd crop of incredibly long young girls that hang around certain areas!

I thought that was a trend among modern European youth. No tall girls in England?

[Llywarch Hen]

Originally Posted by svin

I thought that was a trend among modern European youth. No tall girls in England?

Hard to say, the width of them mucks up the perspective...

[Susi]

Oi! ,-, Maybe I'll come to change the perception. I'm sort of tall, but really tall when I wear my heels and I AM NOT WIDE ,-,

Hum, on this Moscow-party thing.. I think I've done something similar here (toronto), nothing special.