Virtually every unmarried person-and certainly every unmarried man-who reads Moscow newspapers knows what he’s looking at when he sees an ad for “Massage.” Though The Moscow Times long ago disposed of the word in favor of the even more meaningless euphemism “Introduction,” The Moscow Tribune and advertisers in a host of other Moscow papers (including our own) still insist on calling prostitutition services “Massage.” A man seeking “massage” in this town can specify the hair color, height and even bust size of his “masseuse.” But can he get a massage-particularly if, after contracting a mildly contagious disease, he really needs one? (more…)

Two Fridays ago, The staff of the eXile was shocked by the appearance of the Moscow Tribune’s “Time Out” nightlife section-a new club listings page which included snappy, no-holds-barred descriptions of bars and clubs making liberal use of such phrases as “it sucks,” “whores,” “cool,” and “16 Tons is the King Of Moscow’s Club Scene!” (more…)

On Monday, we mainly sent out letters. Among those was a letter to the well-known public opinion firm VTsIOM-the first ripple in what we’d hoped would turn into a media groundswell indicting new deputy premier Boris Nemtsov in a “Blimps-for-Cities” scandal.

The letter, sent on swanky letterhead we made for a fictional organization called the “Fund for the Defense of Nizhni Novgorod,” asked VTsIOM to estimate the cost of a poll gauging the level of public support for a putative sale of the territory of Kaliningrad-formerly East Prussian Koningsberg-to Germany. To add spice to the comedic soup we asked the firm to discover the exact amount of compensation ordinary Russians would expect in return for the city. (more…)