Jarvis, Russia and The Bins: A Side Dish

An aside. Imagine we're on the hard shoulder of my blog now. The periphery. We're making a quick tangential trip into the woods. The air is cold. Quick! Keep close behind, and don't look left nor right...

Why am I almost incurably ill with the want to visit Russia?

I am homesick for a place I've never been. Is that real? I am hooked. Perhaps because it still seems impermeable. Yet to thaw in more ways than one. And there's something intrinsically attractive about a closed book.

But then there are a lot of countries that are far more stand-offish (Dom Joly's accounts of North Korea are fascinating for one - he's been to Pripyat too, but that's got nothing to do with this, apart from the fact I want to go there). But for me, Russia (and it's former republics) just has something. It's like a real-life gothic fable I want to tumble head-first into, taking the lead role in a wool overcoat or something hooded (Fable Whore). There's something about the culture, the folkloric overtones, the architecture, the art and the elegance that I find bewitching. I like the cold, the darkness, the secrets, the superstition, the mythology. And at the other end, the grit and determination of a nation which endured years of censorship and repression.

I'm enthralled with the beautiful yet steely-faced gymnastics teams of the 60s and 70s (punctuated by the delightful and in some ways quite un-Russian Olga Korbut, when she dissolved in tears after a disasterous bars routine at the 1972 Olympics - left). It's no secret - I want to be them. And I love the beautiful form and athleticism of the mighty Bolshoi Ballet Company. I want to be them, too. 

I like the attitude to dress. People have a want to look sharp. And you can't argue with that. According to a cool Russian blogger I found, it's not weird to look as fabulous as possible just to take the bins out. I get this. It also reminds me of a quote from my teen hero, Jarvis Cocker, who declared to Smash Hits around '95 that he always wore a smart jacket as, 'you never know who you're going to meet.' The only folk likely to see me take the bins out in my South London Panstick-Refuse-Finery, would be 'Coolio' the Dwarf Tramp and his sometime aggressive friend, Bad Reggae Guitar Crazo (Stockwell's answer to celebrity.) But I love that that's not the point. Myself, Jarvis and the Russians - we need to dine.

Proving the jacket theory further (albeit a jacket for the face) is Ukrainian and former Soviet gymnast Tatiana Gutsu (left). At the height of her short career, she always made a plan to look as colourful as possible. In fact, so fierce was her love of liberal frosting and kohl (and poise of course) she was nicknamed by journalists at the '92 Olympics, 'The painted bird of Odessa.'

So I basically need to go to Russia. A bit like I need to eat, or I need the loo. It's not really a choice. I need to see the pomp. The hats. The military Ushanka with it's ear-flaps and turned up front - wolf-like. The People's Palaces...

I want to taste the history. A soup of revolutions, uncertainty, triumph over adversity, angst and relief, bribery, corruption, agents and spies. In GCSE history I half listened to nuggets on the Russian Empire, the last Tsar, Rasputin and the Bolsheviks - but never quite appreciated it at the time. Instead my friend and I spent lessons designing comedy Trotsky merchandise (bedspreads and lampshades). What a bonehead (me. She's still cool.)

If I fall in love with a country, I want to see the suburbs. I want to see where I would live, if I'd been born there. What local shops I'd go to. What adverts I'd be susceptible to and what toothpaste and washing powder I'd use.

I want to go to Belarus and see the apartment Korbut grew up in, and see inside the specialist sports school she attended (one of many, designed solely to produce Olympic champs.) I want to go to Siberia and see the world's oldest and deepest lake. I want to discover the old abandoned homes deep inside the Russian forest, laden with charm and woodworm, which look like eerie dolls houses (above), and the centuries old traditional wooden orthodox churches found in the North (top).

On the flip side I want to see with my own eyes, some of the brutalist monuments, palaces and buildings to come out of the 70s, 80s and 90s, where the architects sensed the loosening of reins and went mildly bonkers, yes and-ing parts of their imaginations long-repressed to create inconceivable and imposing buildings like the Palace of Weddings in Tbilisi, the polytechnic university in Minsk and the House of the Soviets in Kalinigrad (all featured in architect Frederic Chaubin's Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed).

For me, this giant place is like an insurmountable treasure trove. A place of past oppression and endless once-upon-a-times. A rich and detailed painting, layered with meanings and riddles I can't hope to understand.

And maybe it's also an under-dog thing. This is massively general, but I am definitely drawn towards countries or communities that haven't had it easy. Because when life is difficult, often what springs forth is determination and creativity. When times are hard, it's inevitable that people access their heart and soul more; they sing louder, they feel more keenly, they live with more verve, they are the cognoscenti of camaraderie... because who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Feeling marginalised seems to go hand in hand with a strong sense of justice. The need to be the best version of you possible, to offset the circumstances...

So, who is game for a holiday?

After I've taken the bins out in my ball gown of course...

Babyflot

'Where else in world do passengers start disembarking from either end of the plane, because it's structured such, that if you don't, the plane will fall over? Where else in the world do they not wake you up when you are about to land and you wake up in this froth, because you think the plane's going to crash? Where else in the world, does the captain get off the plane before you do? Where else in the world are there plastic cups that have got teeth marks on them? It's only Russia. It's got to be Russia.'

- Airplaneski

Once upon a time in early-90s land where satin low-rise flares flourished in the West and the Soviet Union broke up for good under more easterly skies, a national carrier called Aeroflot was going through some pretty insane changes. Like aluminium puberty, it grew from one organisation and blossomed into hundreds of different domestic airliners, dubbed Babyflots.

1. The word Baby does not sit well with my puberty metaphor.
2. Don't let the implied cuteness of the baby word distract you.
The safety record for many of these new airlines were so appalling, that the International Air Transport Association recommended train travel in the former Soviet Union as a preferable and less death-y option (closely followed by unicycling head first into an Amur Tiger's mouth and riding a Snow Sheep back to front through the Siberian Alps*)

Essentially, the amount of planes needed for such a huge Baby(Flot) Boom, just couldn't be met. So the crafts often used were geriatric, rickety and poorly maintained. Parts for broken planes often couldn't be located for weeks. Sometimes not at all. Documentary, Airplaneski delves into the murkiness, poverty and pilot frustration of 20-years-ago-Russia, with some incredible first hand accounts of flights that were at best bonkers, and at worst, foggy (inside the plane) white knuckle rides culminating in multiple and unscheduled pit-stops, often decided by bribe or passenger vote ('Can we drop our eldest and naughtiest off at Rostov-On-Don, please? He's being a dick. Yes, without the comfort blanket.')

In 1998, the Moscow Times announced the 'end of the Babyflot era.' But the safety debate inside Russia still persists. I appear to have found some like minded geeks on the Wings of the Web. According to one, the only carriers to fly with inside Russia these days are, Aeroflot, Rossiyer Airlines, Vladivostock, Transaero, S7 and Ural. All the rest are potentially a full-panted nightmare. In particular the regional jet liner, Yakovlev. I can't help but wonder how 'bad' it all is. Or if it's over sensationalised. A recent article in Forbes seemed to compound rotten safety issues up to the present day, but it received a complete belting on the Wings forum. However, according to the Aviation Safety Network, it's not that wrong. Inside Russia is apparently the most dangerous place in the world to fly (their international fleet of Boeings have a near perfect safety record). But so much for the 'end of the Babyflot era'...

Why is it all going so wrong? I learned today that Aviacor is the largest manufacturer of Russian planes. It makes the gloriously named Antonovs, Tupolevs, and Yaks - but it only makes one new plane a year. The government says, 'buy Russian.' But how, if there's nothing to buy? It's like saying, 'go to the soap shop and buy some soap. There's no soap in there. Just some rank old stuff. But make sure you buy it, yeah?' Most of Aviacor's time is spent servicing ancient planes, which clearly doesn't work as there have been six fatal crashes this year. Now I love a splendid retro plane, inside and out. But not one that's still in active service and being run into the ground. It's like making Grandma work a 50-hour week and then poking her with a stick if she sits down.

I sort of want to see the whole situation for myself. Aviacor has been described as a 'chilly hangar' not unlike a 'museum' (left). That's already a geek-win. I do wonder if there is a market for some sort of eccentric, tailor-made holiday encompassing a trip to Aviacor, a tour of a Tupolev-144 (my all time favourite looking creature inside - orange lozenge-seat o'clock) and a TU-95 (not a passenger plane, but my all time favourite on the outside - the most festive looking prop plane ever made, so definitely an alternative for Father Christmas, should the sleigh malfunction) and a stay somewhere remote. With lots of vodka. The proceeds of every trip could be used to make planes which aren't complete death traps.

The final Act
Shock. In the wake (turbulence) of far too much furrow-browed information-overload, now for something lighter. One thing I noticed on my tour of Babyflots, is the array of (sometimes endless) generally quite poetic sounding company names. Just for kicks, I have plucked my favourite sounding ones and listed them below. I base my choices and ponderings purely on the arrangement of letters and sounds my eyes and ears enjoy...

Flylal. Sounds like something you might say on waking from an anaesthetic. Pretty punky hot pink livery. Still exists.

Nikolaevsk-Na-Amure Air Enterprise. Well, it just rolls off the tongue, like a bag on a conveyor belt destined for Murmansk but labelled Scunthorpe International...

Novosibirsk. Twice bankrupt. The most juicily Russian sounding. Almost all their fabulous cargo lifters were Antonov 'giants.' One of which - the An-22 Antheus - was nicknamed the 'cock' and most of which were like rotund, obese airborne walruses. The others in this blatant trio of power- in- size, were named the Condor and the Cossack: which both sound like plausible, meat-head lead roles in an 80s action flick. And definitely starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In both parts.

Polar Airlines. Because I wonder how much vodka you'd have to imbibe to think you've seen a bear in a cockpit.

KrasAir - because I'm a child and it sounds like crass. And Crass in turn, happens to be a defunct 70s punk band.

Rock on.

*lies.

Aircraft Geekery Part 3 - The Flot Factor

Underneath this insane seventies promo video for Aeroflot on youtube, is the wry comment questioning why the airline with the monopoly over the Soviet Union at the time, felt the need to advertise. This incomprehensible advertising decision (one of many) just deepens my love affair with Aeroflot. I find retro Russian aviation culture baffling and fascinating beyond belief. There's something of the Grimm fairytale about it all. It's both glamourous and dark. And I frikkin love those outfits. This isn't the only promo vid I found. But all of them seem to feature the same subservient faux-aryan (check the gloriously dark bushy brows) all-singing, all-dancing stews, who like putting their hands on their hips and kicking their legs, ever so slightly off the beat. Wonderful. It's like the underground silver-screen. 50s Hollywood as Tim Burton would have had it.

I am still enthralled (though less so. But only like 5%. Or say, three chocolate fingers fewer) with post-Soviet era 'Flot ('92 onwards). In order to try and pick apart some of the hear'say regarding the airline's safety (so I don't find myself fibbing in later posts - and also sate my un-ending appetite for all things Slavic) I recently read through 26 customer reviews of recent flights. They oscillated from very good to dreadful to an 'experience.' The biggest gripe is the food, but isn't it always vapid slop with crusty blob-munch, whatever the wing-brand?

On the whole, Flotbags is a pretty good standard these days. It sort of has to be internationally, as there are rules and regs to adhere to if you want to land in foreign airports. The major thing that got most folk down, were the endless and often unexplained delays. And the fact customer service is a recent phenomenon and is deployed much like say, my rusty GCSE French when in Rome. In other words, it's not always spot on. And not always even there at all. But it's not for want of trying. I recently read that Russians have a 'different attitude to smile.' In other words, they don't. Smiling at strangers in Russian culture, is just not done. You don't do it. Stop. Put the smirk away. Fold those corners down. But looking serious is apparently a sign of intelligence. So, perhaps be thrilled when flying Aeroflot, that the stewards may glare at you on arrival. They probably do CPR better.

What I am most intrigued by though are Russia's internal flights. Deliciously, they don't have to conform to international standards. Some are still wobbly Tupelovs, with history for wings, bobbly curtains and a highly skilled Beluga-infused pilot at the helm. This is likely wildly incorrect, but it's what the romantic, dark and tundra-filled wilderness that is my imagination hopes for regardless.

I am going to bore you about this a lot. But for now, Scastlivovo puti. And feast your eyes on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c88f3Q32hJ8 - Airplaneski, one of the best documentaries on fabulous Russian flying machines I've ever watched. I tried to embed it here, but it failed. It's possible I might have been smiling too much...

A Tangent. Or a Tangerine?

In Hidden Treasure: Boac Friday, I referenced a 70s satsuma coloured Sindy bathroom suite, which met an untimely end in a fairly necessary loft cleanse. What delight and surprise then, when I stumbled upon the sink portion of said suite in the Cavendish Arms Pub ladies toilets. I laid it within the real sink for a better photo. And also because I've never put a sink in a sink before.

It went well.

It baffled me to the point where I wondered if Cavendish employed junk-foxes had been lying in wait in the woods outside my parent's old house two July's ago. Surely no one else would have owned and actively kept such a useless item.

But the bizarre co-incidence of blogging about, then discovering this obsolete home furnishing from Barbie's arch rival, further proves why The Cavendish pub in Stockwell, is such a magical den of nonsense.

Last count, there were two analogue TV's carefully arranged in the window, old books on everything from puberty to aeroplanes on the shelves, a pram, many pleasing fifties references and some banana cake. All clean, tidily arranged and carefully considered I must add. If something is next to something else, there's definitely a reason for it. I think...

It is a unique looking drinking establishment which I wouldn't be surprised to find had been made entirely by sentient bric-a-brac and candle wax which one day agreed to arrange themselves into four walls and a bar. Its grotto-like brilliance is unrivalled. It's like if Big Trak got drunk and mated with all your favourite board games at Christmas, then birthed a Happy Shrine. I fully expect to find Wee Willie Winkie drinking here. I see him as a Port man.

And because this has accidentally turned into a review, I might as well tell you to go there. Go there. Drink their good red, fail to play Risk properly, listen to what you keep mistaking for as your own i-pod and make sure you eat some Disco Chips. They're what paprika was made for. A light sprinkling of which is almost the same colour as Sindy's legendary wash bowl... Soap, anyone?

Braniff - A Meaty Appendix

On my short Braniff journey, I neglected to mention this: The Branwich (left).

In their heyday, Braniff were so successful in pretty much anything, they created their own glazed meaty branded sandwich, the Branwich. Yes, way.

If you flew Braniff, you got real food. Seventies real, anyway, which meant chunky hunks of moo, four miles of pastry, a clutch of sweaty onions and minimal greens. They prided themselves on having great chefs and had a specific ad campaign devoted solely to spreading the word about, 'the finest food you could ever get in the air.' Apparently the passengers totally dug it.

I'd love to have been in the marketing meeting which preceded the creation of the Branwich:

'Everything is branded, sir. The forks. The pilot's face. He even smiles in the shape of a dove. There's no room for anything else.'

'What about the disposable produce, Chuck? The goddam food? Let's have them taste Braniff. Let's imprint our logo on their frikkin' intestines. They'll be digesting our brand. It'll be in the very fibres of their being. Their fingertips, heart and soul. They will shit Braniff, Chuck. They will be shitting the best airline in existence. They'll be shitting 30,000 feet of success, Chuck. They won't even want to flush. I'll tell you what I want, Chuck. I want a branded sandwich. Something greasy that slides down nicely like a sexy stew on a popped evacuation chute. I hereby announce the creation of the Branwich.'

'...'

'Don't you "..." me.'

A Diversion: Sketch the Future

I was checking out Retronaut the other day for some exciting abandoned boats, and I came across these awesome sketches:

Check out more of them here. They are basically a collection of sketches from 1910 envisioning what life might be like in 2000, with particular reference to machines, transport and gizmos. They are ridiculously quaint, and made me think perhaps you can only conceive the future within the constraints of your current knowledge and surroundings. Everyone is still dressed like it's 1910 (how could they possibly fathom jeans, lycra, zips...pah) and a lot of the adorably daft contraptions have something of the Willy Wonka about them. Maybe, without a crystal ball, you really can't predict future design.

My mum disagrees. She said we already have conceived futuristic design concepts. We may have chosen jet planes over those firemen with foxy dragon-style flight packs as a more commercially viable option, but the wings are there on both. True. On closer inspection the sketch where the architect's vision is built by machines as he designs it from a booth, reminds me of our current ability to scan dimensions and get the computer to build 3D models. Some of the design is there in embryonic form, even if for the most part the depictions are fancy, ornate and hilariously tin-pot. But you've got to start somewhere, right?

My mum's trump card was Italian Renaissance visionary and all-round Big Beard, Leonardo Da Vinci. A very forward thinking engineer, inventor and designer for his time, Da Vinci was responsible for the first known helicopter design in 1495. Flying was the absolute summit of people's conception and Leonardo was obsessed with cracking it. He produced and tested countless designs long before anyone successfully took to the skies. And the 'helicopter' model, though designed within the constraints of the raw materials and knowledge available then had all the makings of a machine built for vertical flight - 500 years before it actually happened.

I'm a massive fan of L'Dav's handwriting. Possibly inspired by the long flowing strokes of his beard...

So hats off to my mum, for blowing my narrow mind. And really, in the light of Apple man Steve Jobs' death, we need more visionaries. However wacky-looking any blueprint might initially be; honed and modified, it might just turn out to be an invention that changes the world.

Whatever happens though, I'm definitely getting me one of these:

Sky Creatures

I said to my flatmate: 'What to write about next? There's too much. I'm categorising...

But how to categorise this?

'Being drawn to old fashioned planes, photographed in either a slightly oppressive black and white or

faded sepia tinted colour, that look occasionally eerie, sometimes wistful, sporadically monstrous, sometimes elegant, the design of which I will only ever see through the lens of someone else I'll never meet and the appeal of which, is that they were all probably a chancier ride back then, with laxer safety procedures, and the crew and passengers were undoubtedly embalmed in an overwhelming fug of tobacco smoke, excitement and hope.'

He said, 'that sounds perfect.'

So I bestow you my favourites. A bogie hued Braniff, two BOACs and two Aeroflots (one of which looks like it's powered by Christmas decorations). Enjoy.