“Cultural revelation and a good soak in St. Petersburg - Chicago Tribune” plus 1 more |
| Cultural revelation and a good soak in St. Petersburg - Chicago Tribune Posted: reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia — I tell Valentina it's my first time in a banya and that I've forgotten to bring birch branches. "Oh, I'll flog you with mine," she says, offering typical Russian hospitality.She begins whacking my back as we sit on long wood benches in the parilka (steam room). Whack! Whack! Whack! The beatings continue for a minute or two as green bits fly about. I wince. "Now it's my turn," she says. I return the favor but am timid. Valentina could be my mother. "Harder!" she says. I quickly locate my inner peasant and flog away. "Aaaahhh," she says, sighing. Well-worn paths to understanding the Russian soul suddenly feel inadequate: Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, Stravinsky and "Swan Lake," root vegetables a hundred ways. To get under the skin, if you will, of Russian life, get thee to a banya, or bathhouse. During two previous youthful visits to St. Petersburg, or "Peter," as residents call it, the occasional vodka shot provided well-being. But now in my middle age, a creaky back led me to seek restoration of a different kind as I attempted to resuscitate the language I studied in college 20 years earlier. Sure, luxury spas and private banyas favored by novye Russkie, the new rich, now proliferate here. But I wanted to feel one with the proletariat, whose spirit still lurks just steps from the trendy cafes and boutiques lining Nevsky Prospect, the city's main thoroughfare. Thus only an old-school, Soviet-era public banya would do. Worried about the spread of disease, Vladimir Lenin had ordered these built to cleanse the masses who poured into the cities and cramped communal housing after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Long also an important social ritual, the banya traditionally marked births, weddings and deaths. And it still provides a relaxing afternoon out with friends. Poet and author Alexander Pushkin called it "a second mother" to Russians, offering renewal and comfort. (He never met Valentina.) A quartet of giggly, middle-aged women join me at the entrance to the Coachmen's Banya. They enter through the door marked "Luxe," a fancier option increasingly available. But as a woman of the people, I eschew upscale surroundings in favor of the standartny. The friendly clerk takes my rubles and assigns me a metal locker. After disrobing, I enter the cavernous, utilitarian red and white washroom as water trickles from taps and showers. Even on a Monday afternoon, the place buzzes. It feels like the Khrushchev era with a "Workers of the world, unite!" vibe: Wash, flog, relax … then climb back on the tractor or assembly line. Do I appear a decadent Westerner despite our union in nakedness? Nyet. Paunchy older women predominate, but all ages, shapes and classes are welcome. The women are friendly but focused on relaxation. And no one cares about an extra 10 pounds caused by a runaway blini habit. It's freeing. Most of the women arrive in pairs. I'm solo, finding no takers among my bemused friends, who looked at me as though I were crazy, begged off with previous commitments — the Hermitage! the Amber Room! Laundry! — and took off faster than a Moscow taxi driver. Meanwhile, Valentina, a veteran, notices me looking discombobulated and approaches. "Here's a free bench, there are the buckets," she says. My toiletries now settled among the rows of metal benches, I shower, then enter the steam room. The fresh smell of venik, or birch branches, permeates the thick air. The wet heat seeps into our muscles as we recline on hot, long benches (don't forget a towel) in the dark, wood-paneled room. I'm slowly, pleasantly, turning into an inert lump. After steaming for a few minutes, I return to the washroom for a dip in the ice-cold pool, then a brief rest. Enter Valentina and the flogging, after several trips between hot and icy. The cycle repeats for nearly two hours until we're thoroughly relaxed. Bathers control the temperature in the steam room by throwing water onto rocks heated by a stove. (Wood-burning are considered best.) It's similar to the Finnish sauna, also thought to have arisen in medieval times. The principle? Sweating out toxins is hygienic, improves circulation and promotes a sense of well-being. In Russia, the flogging process further contributes. At one point, a red-capped Amazon enters the infernal parilka and barks something indecipherable at two women who had begun to flog each other. She ladles water into the stove, the temperature spikes and steam spews forth as if a volcano had erupted. I quickly cover my face, and my back feels as if it's on fire. Borscht, ballet and Bulgakov suddenly seem preferable routes to the Russian soul. No one moves. Then whacking begins in earnest and green bits fly. Is this why Russians tolerate life's vicissitudes better than the rest of us? This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Grammys 2011: Arcade Fire at the Ukrainian Cultural Center - Los Angeles Times Posted: "It was 40-below when we left Montreal to come here," Win Butler said during a break in Friday night's Arcade Fire show at the Ukrainian Cultural Center, simultaneously L.A.'s best- and worst-kept musical secret of the weekend. "So L.A., let me tell you that we are really, really happy to be here." Weather aside, it's weird to think of Arcade Fire needing a reprieve, 48 hours before the most high-profile set they've ever played, performing in a prime slot on the 2011 Grammy Awards. But while the band has always aimed huge -- dozen-strong harmonies, choruses that feel like hymns, headlining major festivals the world over –- its heart is loyal to the small things -- the tiny terrors of suburban blight and tunnels carved in snowfalls. So on the eve of the most scripted, self-laudatory night in popular music, Arcade Fire got out of Dodge and threw a punk show. The firewall blocking information leading up to the show could have repelled Julian Assange, so the genial non-chaos of the show's logistics came as a welcome surprise. Lines moved quickly, sodas and cotton candy were free, the all-ages vibe befitting Arcade Fire's "us kids know" youth-noir, and credit goes to promoters Goldenvoice and FYF's Sean Carlson for not overselling the show. If someone hasn't reclaimed the Ukrainian Cultural Center as a full-time concert venue (hmm?), they need to do so soon. The eight-piece Arcade Fire is a spectacle from any distance, but the most revelatory thing about this close-up set was the chance to watch their faces. Regine Chassagne plays with the coyness of a prowling panther, the crazy gleam in her eye tempered by the pagan joy in her ribbon-twirling. Win Butler got a lot of Springsteen comparisons on "The Suburbs," and live they're even more earned when he turns his back to the mic and rips through baritone jibes at "kids with their arms folded tight." And his little brother Will plays, well, the consummate little brother, taking breaks from synth duty to scale the rafters and batter everything he can get his hands on with drumsticks, including Win's torso. From 50 feet away, even the band's longtime violinist, Sarah Neufeld, revealed a flinty, beatific charisma. The hour-and-a-half set stuck to the heart of their catalog: "Rebellion (Lies)," "Month of May," "No Cars Go," and an unexpectedly early run through the band's anthem "Wake Up." And it's a testament to their editing powers that three albums into their career they already have what amounts to a greatest-hits set. The sound was, naturally, a little foggy on the string section and more delicate synthetics, but the band seemed truly thrilled to be in a bunker like this, holed up with a few hundred fans who slept outside record stores to be here. And the payoffs were unlike anything we're going to see from Arcade Fire in this kind of space again -- a long-form disco take on "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" with a concussion bomb of strobe lights and a jubilant "Haiti" that felt like it could save Chassagne's country of ancestry with sheer will. By the time a brave teenage-looking soul broke every rule of L.A. hipster decorum and crowd-surfed through the entire audience on the encore of "Keep The Car Running," the room went berserk and the band members grinned like they hadn't seen this in years. It was one unbridled reaction they won't see Sunday night, and you can't help but think that even when they get 70,000 Coachella-goers at their disposal a few months from now, they're going to miss this. -- August Brown This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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