the eXile - bar-dak - Vijay Maheshwari

Issue #10/91, May 25 - June 8, 2000

When Cool Meets Nirvana

By Vijay Maheshwari

The recent mad masked raid on Media-MOST made me muse: who shut down the once-promising club Gramophone, which last summer had spearheaded Moscow’s intrepid return to local nightlife? Was it more of Putin’s putative men-in-black? Or the meandering market forces, so unpredictable that they could even unsettle a Pinochet (or a Put-nochet!)?

Like so many cryptograms wrapped in Russia, I guess we’ll never know. However, one thing that is certain is the present, the process of becoming. Which is where I come in. To the Buddha Bar, which opened on the former territory of the now exanimate Gramophone. The club’s super-cool, multi-plex design is based on the concept of Paris’s ultra-trendy Buddha Bar restaurant, where the beautiful and the damned congregate for mutual appraisal. For the pre-opening party at Buddha Bar last Thursday, I was supposed to meet some of the eXile staff to get in, since the VIP list was so strictly controlled. A super-fashionable catwalk-like dyevushka with claw-like hair extensions and Paris model-show golden makeup on her eyes and cheeks stopped me at the door and asked me who I was.

“I’m Vijay Maheshwari,” I said. “Are you a model, man?”

She looked for my name on the list, but couldn’t find it. Off in the distance, I saw The Shah in there, casually checking out a crowd of young women.

“I know I saw you at the catwalk show at the Hotel Rossiya, right?” I asked her. I could tell that the girl with the list was interested in me, but she was being a real bitch because she wouldn’t let me pass through. I figured that perhaps she was some sort of lesbian or a washed-up, frustrated model. I tried to get her phone number, but she told me to just wait at the side of the gate.

After waiting for like an hour, I went home and returned the next evening to the jam-packed opening night party. There were girls everywhere, and I met one girl whose bodacious bellybutton beamed from her tight halter. Exposed stomachs and shorter skirts look set to be the mode for dyevushki this year, which is good for me.

Excepting the long walkway, you notice change the minute you enter the club. A garderob upstairs when you first walk in, and a “Blue Room” bar, waxed in blue and pumping music, are two of the first most noticeable changes. You can see that the managers of Buddha Bar—Paris’s own Jean-Michel and DJ Stanley of Hungry Duck fame—understand what it means to be upscale in the Third Millennium, and that going upscale in Moscow is going the right way. I’m sure that they’ll easily attract the coolest of the cool crowd, which is already tiring of Tsirk and disingenuous with Tsepellin. I know this because a lot of my friends are people who go and hang out there, and we talk about this a lot.

The crowd at Buddha Bar isn’t full of so many snobs and jerks as those places, but it’s more sophisticated than, say, Thursday at Propaganda, making it one of the better crowds going. Babes are not in short supplyu.

The semi-grungy Gramophone’s main bar area is now a good shade tastier, while the VIP room is set to be enlarged and revamped.

I’ve been promised a VIP card soon, and I told this to one chick who sort of looked like a Russian Kate Moss.

“If you want, I’ll take you to the VIP room,” I told her. She laughed, and I wriggled my finger in her exposed bellybutton.

She slapped it away, but I could tell she was impressed with my audaciousness. Her name, ironically, was Katya. I told her that she looked like Kate Moss, and insisted that she take up modeling. She told me that she was a student at the economics faculty. Her friends tried to pull her away from me because they were a little bit jealous.

I hit the barman up for some free cocktails. “Come on man, I’m doing a review of your club, you don’t want to get in trouble with Stanley,” I told him. “I could have you fucking fired, man.” He obliged, although he made threatening gestures.

The dance hall that was the pride of Gramophone is little changed, though improved just right: a giant golden Buddha statue watches over the dancers, while the DJs play a mix of hip-hop and Tibetan/Goa-trance. I saw the Katya girl again, and danced close to her, pulling her towards me. This technique usually works with girls, because they are turned on by men who aren’t afraid.

We made out a few times, and I took her back to the VIP room and felt her up near the back couch.

Later, I took her and her friend home. I was sure that we’d do a two-on-one at my apartment, because they were very drunk and I gave them each a ruffie just in case. But the bitches only wound up feeling up each other, then passing out before I could get anywhere with them. In the morning, they stole my black life-like dildo and 210 rubles. It was a pretty cool evening with top-quality music, and I’m making Buddha Bar one of my top three “Spots To Visit” every weekend.

Links