This article was first published in The eXile, April 2008

Last summer, The eXile took a safari journey in search of the legendary Gopniki, Russia’s underworld answer to the OGs of South Central, Long Beach, and the Bronx. Those notorious shaven-headed toughs in their kepki-tabletki and track suits, with their bad-assed “cho blya!” faces and their greasy-haired sluts, were our heroes. In our journey through the podmoskovie ghetto of Lubertsy, we discovered tragedy rather than adventure: the Gopniki, those proletarian toughs and kings of the petty crime margins, had all but gone extinct in the Putin Era. They’d survived Stalin’s Terror and flourished under Brezhnev’s Stagnation, but in the end, they were no match against the soul-sucking effects of capitalism and bourgeois Evroremont. Today, the nearly-extinct Gopniki are little more than irony fodder for urban Russian hipsters in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Word has it that this summer, the “Gop-Stop” look is the Cool New Thing. (more…)

This was first published in The eXile in March 2008

On Friday, a group of Russian performance artists stripped off their clothes and started fucking in the middle of Moscow’s Biology Museum in an act they called “Fuck For Medvedev!” (Actually they used the word “cub” as a play on Medvedev’s name, which means “bear” in Russian.) The Russian-language version can be seen here.

The performance artists are from a group called “Voina.” They managed to gather a few photographers and a banner, popped a bunch of Viagra, and fucked on the floor for about 10 minutes before getting thrown out. As you’ll see in the photos, one of the chicks was pregnant, making this an “extreme hardcore” show. The dudes are hilarious looking, real porn star types, especially this one hairy little bald dude who looks like Isaac Babel, and the flabby dude with the ponytail. There must be some skank requirement for the International Performance Artists’ Guild…

Their slogan “Fuck For Medvedev” was first unveiled at a “Young Guards” pro-Kremlin protest rally on February 23. They held their banner up in the background until a grumpy cop took it away and threw it in his car. (more…)

This article was originally published in The eXile on November 13, 2002.

No, we’ve been censored, by, of all people, David Johnson, a squeamish Quaker who runs the once-highly-influential Johnson’s Russia List… acting on the orders of his sponsor, a Democrat Party wonk and Stanford professor whose dedication to promoting democracy in the former Soviet Union is matched only by his relentless four-year campaign to censor and marginalize the eXile.

Johnson hadn’t posted an eXile article in months. I didn’t pay attention because his list isn’t important to us the way it used to be. The JRL has fallen into relative obscurity (it seems he begins at least one mailing a month with a pleading note like “Is this too much?” or “Any comments?” or “Would appreciate some feedback from JRL recipients”) and our newspaper is less focused on Russia than a few years ago. But recently I noticed that even our Russia pieces weren’t making it onto the list. That seemed wrong. I wanted to find out. (more…)

Her name was Wana. My first and only slope.

I boned her last night. I done-did her right here in Kentucky, in the heart of the Bible Belt.
Wana didn’t say, “Me so hoh-nee, me love you long time!”
Instead, it went like this:
“You so hai-wee.”
“What?”
“You hai-wee. You hai-wee man.”
“Oh yeah, I’m hairy. Like a bear.”
“No-no-no. (more…)

In the Reagan years alternative culture trends came and went with such speed that only a desperate fool tried to keep up. I was a desperate fool, and I tried at times to keep up, but I was too slow and too angry to succeed. The trends were more radically different on the surface than in substance — from post-punk to goth to ska to psychedelia, shockabilly and hardcore. Those and about a dozen other faggy trends exploded between 1978 and 1983. Some of it was great — Joy Division, The Cramps, Butthole Surfers, The Specials, Husker Du… By the end of the horrible Eighties, my generation had exhausted itself and made corporate collaboration a religion. As a going away gift, it gave to the country retro-70s, ecstasy-fueled rave parties, and that ol’ shocker of shockers, girls acting like big fat lesbians. Those trends took the least amount of effort to cook up and seemed almost fresh at the time, in the late 80s; it was the most an exhausted generation could hope to produce after a decade bleeding at the nose. (more…)

In the autumn of 1998, I got a call from Edward Limonov asking me if I could do a favor for him. His newspaper Limonka—known for its mix of extreme politics and avant-garde aesthetics—was preparing to celebrate its fourth anniversary at the Mayakovskaya Museum.

“My boys begged me to bring Johnny Rotten to the party,” Limonov told me, laughing. “I know it’s a small chance, but maybe Mr. Rotten will think it’s interesting to speak before a group of radical Russian youths who worship him.”

(more…)

I can tell you God’s plan for this place very concisely: God created this place as a critique of me.
– John Dolan

I hate this time of the year. Being stuck in the Moscow heat is like unpaid overtime work. Have I mentioned how much I sweat? It’s bad, and it’s ready to come back. Like Mike from last issue’s Tipper’s Tips, any being that has had the misfortune of having my Moroccan torso pumping away on top of them has had to endure gutter drains of sweat… What a sight I must make! I’d hate to have me on top of me! Looking up at me! How many times have I heard:

(more…)