All right, you can't quite see the Hudson River in this photo, but on a clearer day and without those people in the way you just might. OTM senior producer Katya Rogers snapped this pic of Brooke and me on the roof of the Municipal Building, iconic Roman Imperial marvel and longtime home of WNYC. The view, in the misty light of yesterday afternoon, is directly west along Chambers Street, out onto TriBeCa.As mentioned, this is a return visit for Brooke, who lived in Moscow for three years in the early/mid '90s. As for me? Well, the closest I've been to Russia is the Q train.* As Steven Lee Myers pointed out recently in the New York Times:
OLD-TIMERS always marvel about how much Moscow has changed since the stultifying days of the Soviet Union. That's ancient history. What's really worth marveling about is how much the city has changed in the last year or two. Few places in the world have undergone such a rapid, dizzying and cacophonic transformation as Moscow, and it shows no sign of abating.
And so we're returning to a very different Moscow than the one Brooke left. That goes not just for the new cafes and hotels and other manifestations of physical transformation, but also for the political climate. But in the latter regard, it's more plus ca change than real progress. The "stultifying days of the Soviet Union" cast a familiar shadow over many under the stultifying days of Putin's managed democracy.
*For those of you not in New York, the Q train runs through the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach, which has been thoroughly Russified since at least the 1980s.
1 comments:
You'll discover, in Moscow, that you were closer to sovok Russia on the Q, where comically trashy dress and giddiness in trivia ("chewing gum!") still prevail.
Stayed near Tverskaya last summer for a wedding. I had been in Moscow in 2001. Then, aside from being arrested twice for no identifiable reason, feared for my life only a few times between momentary bouts of sobriety. The dinge of the city and topography of homeless Afghanistan veterans, dead dogs, and street construction was more depressing than frightening. Being a pedestrian -- that was scary. Otherwise, you just stare at the girls. Oh, the girls.
But in August, 2006, Moscow -- the inner ring, at least -- was ... ummm ... pleasant. New Russians and their energy $. It felt a lot more like Riga (where Krushchev's Muscovites longed to migrate) or Stockholm or even Paris. The roads are mostly fixed. There were no bums. No trash. Beautiful architecture and parks and girls, still. You could cross a street and cars would not speed up to hit you. Strolling the Arbat was like walking through Georgetown, chain clothing stores and all.
Didn't they know how good they had it in the heady days of Brooke's Russia?
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