CurlyDarling
04-02-2010, 09:27 PM
I arrived in Moscow as someone with the highest of ethical standards. For example, I was the kind of person who turned up my nose at the idea of buying a pirated video at the Izmailovo market.
"It's against the law," I remember intoning haughtily to my mate as she purchased an illegal copy of Sex and the City, a movie we were simply dying to see. For about two days, I resisted the urge to watch the movie with her, feeling that if I did, I would be condoning her illegal activity.
And then I broke down.
I note that two years later, all that's changed. Today, I dabble in the black market pretty much on a daily basis. And I blame that initial viewing of Sex and the City.
The black market in Moscow, my friend, is a slippery slope indeed. And you can't resist its Siren's lure as you slide further and further down.
Recently, my date, a European man who has lived here for 10 years, was driving me home from dinner in his all-tinted-windows-and-leather-interior Lamborghini.
We were driving near Patriarshy Ponds and I asked him to stop at the European Medical Centre so I could pick up my AIDS test results for my visa.
"You actually get the test done?" he asked me in surprise.
"Yeah, don't you?"
"God, no. I buy a certificate off the black market," he said carelessly.
From that exchange, I gather it takes about 10 years to slip to the very bottom of the slope. After all, getting the certificate from the EMC is not the hard yards - it takes about 10 minutes and probably costs less than the black market certificate does.
The guy just couldn't be bothered. It was far less burdensome, he explained, to have his driver simply purchase a phony one for him.
After Sex and the City came what I now think of as The Lost Temptation.
I am one of those people who is highly addicted to the American television series Lost, and when the new season started in the States in 2008, I was jonesing bad. My mate P. noticed my agony and turned me on to The Illegal Download.
I started small: just Lost. Then a little Grey's Anatomy. Now, I watch movies recorded by a handheld video camera on opening night.
I have heard that the reason we in Moscow don't get the American blockbuster movies as early as every other country is because Hollywood fears that the Russians would immediately bootleg them for mass distribution.
They must really think that Russian bootleggers are stupid if they think that works. The Russians merely go pirate the movies somewhere else. And thank God for that.
If it wasn't for my beloved Russian pirates, I'd be waiting a long time to watch Chloe, the new Liam Neeson thriller, which was released back home today.
Instead, I'm watching it tonight. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest; Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Once I started living outside the law due to the necessities of entertainment, I found it morally easy to expand my forays into the black market. These days I buy all my gin there.
Bootleggers give you really great deals on booze. All you have to do is say the magic word, and a bottle marked "Only for Sale in UK Duty Free" is produced from underneath a chair for one-third the price you'd have to pay at Azbuka Vkusa.
"Everything's for sale in Moscow," my European date continued when I got back into the Lamborghini with my HIV Negative stamp of approval from the EMC and a big bottle of black market Gordon's Gin.
"Except for one thing," I smiled.
"Please don't say love," he pleaded. "That's the easiest thing to buy here."
I shook my head. "I wasn't going to. I was going to say: Me."
"Is that true?"
I ran my hand lovingly across the Lamborghini's plush leather car seat, took a swig of gin and laughed. "It's Russia baby, of course that's not true!"
xxoo
DD
Deidre Dare
Moscow News
"It's against the law," I remember intoning haughtily to my mate as she purchased an illegal copy of Sex and the City, a movie we were simply dying to see. For about two days, I resisted the urge to watch the movie with her, feeling that if I did, I would be condoning her illegal activity.
And then I broke down.
I note that two years later, all that's changed. Today, I dabble in the black market pretty much on a daily basis. And I blame that initial viewing of Sex and the City.
The black market in Moscow, my friend, is a slippery slope indeed. And you can't resist its Siren's lure as you slide further and further down.
Recently, my date, a European man who has lived here for 10 years, was driving me home from dinner in his all-tinted-windows-and-leather-interior Lamborghini.
We were driving near Patriarshy Ponds and I asked him to stop at the European Medical Centre so I could pick up my AIDS test results for my visa.
"You actually get the test done?" he asked me in surprise.
"Yeah, don't you?"
"God, no. I buy a certificate off the black market," he said carelessly.
From that exchange, I gather it takes about 10 years to slip to the very bottom of the slope. After all, getting the certificate from the EMC is not the hard yards - it takes about 10 minutes and probably costs less than the black market certificate does.
The guy just couldn't be bothered. It was far less burdensome, he explained, to have his driver simply purchase a phony one for him.
After Sex and the City came what I now think of as The Lost Temptation.
I am one of those people who is highly addicted to the American television series Lost, and when the new season started in the States in 2008, I was jonesing bad. My mate P. noticed my agony and turned me on to The Illegal Download.
I started small: just Lost. Then a little Grey's Anatomy. Now, I watch movies recorded by a handheld video camera on opening night.
I have heard that the reason we in Moscow don't get the American blockbuster movies as early as every other country is because Hollywood fears that the Russians would immediately bootleg them for mass distribution.
They must really think that Russian bootleggers are stupid if they think that works. The Russians merely go pirate the movies somewhere else. And thank God for that.
If it wasn't for my beloved Russian pirates, I'd be waiting a long time to watch Chloe, the new Liam Neeson thriller, which was released back home today.
Instead, I'm watching it tonight. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest; Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Once I started living outside the law due to the necessities of entertainment, I found it morally easy to expand my forays into the black market. These days I buy all my gin there.
Bootleggers give you really great deals on booze. All you have to do is say the magic word, and a bottle marked "Only for Sale in UK Duty Free" is produced from underneath a chair for one-third the price you'd have to pay at Azbuka Vkusa.
"Everything's for sale in Moscow," my European date continued when I got back into the Lamborghini with my HIV Negative stamp of approval from the EMC and a big bottle of black market Gordon's Gin.
"Except for one thing," I smiled.
"Please don't say love," he pleaded. "That's the easiest thing to buy here."
I shook my head. "I wasn't going to. I was going to say: Me."
"Is that true?"
I ran my hand lovingly across the Lamborghini's plush leather car seat, took a swig of gin and laughed. "It's Russia baby, of course that's not true!"
xxoo
DD
Deidre Dare
Moscow News