VDNKh is best known for its eponymous Soviet-era exhibitions center (which features the famous worker and kolkhoz woman statue) and the Museum of Cosmonautics.
While I recommend visiting both, I was more amused by the concentrated SWPL in the VDNKh, which is the area where I’ll be working from October. As in the rest of Moscow, it’s a huge change from a decade ago – the gentrification tide is inexorable.
Renovated park with modern design elements.
People on those one wheel scooter things. (You can just make them out if you enlarge the image and squint).
CRAFT DOMINATION.
Exotic ethnic minority restaurant.
One of those meaningless bugman coffee slogans at one of the cafes.
Ukrainian?
Are they selling specialty (3rd wave) coffee? Browsing the web, Moscow is just slightly ahead of Budapest in it, despite being a much bigger city. Good coffee and good food are important benefits of having SWPLs around. (I’ve just realized that I’m a SWPL myself, just a peculiar right-wing SWPL, or RWSWPL. Or call that politically contrarian SWPL, PCSWPL. I think Anatoly and many of his commenters are SWPLs, too.)
I adored Moscow when I visited, made Dublin (hometown) look like an absolute shithole and we’re supposedly the 4th most developed nation on Earth (HDI).
If SWPLisation can continue while retaining Russian values and nationalism, then you’ve got a recipe for a successful future.
Speaking of silly slogans, that Japanese space tourist guy’s company has one: Be unique. Be equal.
Maybe, it has a different meaning in Japanese.
Good food–yes.
Good coffee–no longer. You can get a perfectly decent cappuccino at any McDonald’s now. An increasing number of gas stations have good coffee as well.
See Wawa’s coffee offerings here for instance: https://www.wawa.com/beverages/coffee
In my part of the country there’s a gas station chain called Kwik Trip with good coffee (their website doesn’t show this, hence the Wawa link).
Bismarck stated that his patriotism stopped at his stomach (in reference to his liege’s habit of drinking German wines for economy). The idea that right-wingers don’t have refined tastes is a silly artifact of W-era patriotardism.
I’ve just realized that I’m a SWPL myself
You like raw fish?
Pro-tip for Americans:
The frozen yellowfin tuna (branded as ahi tuna) in the Walmart freezer aisle makes for perfectly good sashimi.
Just make sure your home freezer is set below -4°F to ensure the annihilation of parasites.
Yes. It’s a chain in Moscow. The one near Pushkin metro on the boulevard used to have an African guy wearing Ukrainian native costume outside of it, as a costumed advertisement.
It’s acceptable but not great, they’re one of the worst culprits for burning the crap out of their beans thus allowing them to be stingy with the quantity used. Most people aren’t fussed because they’re drinking it with lots of milk, but it’s bitter and unpleasant without. Starbucks is the other one, but at least McD’s are cheap. They’re partially responsible for driving instant coffee out of uk cafes, so, on the whole, they’ve been a net benefit here.
Thanks for the advice, but I am not a SWPL.
I like the albacore in the can, out of the can, with mayonnaise or not, with pickles or not, in a casserole, etc. My wife whines about the mercury risk, but I tell her that my temperature is variable anyway.
I’ve always favored dark roasts so not a problem for me. And like you say–you can take it with milk.
McDonald’s will also add extra espresso shots (if you’re getting a cappuccino or latte) so you can have a strong brew (certainly if you order a cup of coffee at McDonald’s it’s weak).
In addition to being cheaper than Starbuck’s, service is far faster whether in the store or at the drive-through. The efficiency of the McDonald’s drive-through is truly miraculous and involves:
• Two dedicated ordering lanes
• Separate windows for payment (with sign asking you to have payment ready) and food pickup
• Overflow window for time-consuming food orders
• Overflow parking area in the event there’s a problem
The only other operation that compares in efficiency is Chick fil A.
Instead of being a “pagan” or “wiccan” we should be “Maccans” (after Aussie slang for McDonald’s–Macca’s) and worship the miracle of McDonald’s.
https://succeedfeed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/47-ray-kroc-quotes.jpg
Canned tuna is perfectly serviceable and even delicious in many dishes.
Out of the can isn’t very appetizing but will do in a pinch. And the price is right.
The mercury thing is true but overblown for an adult man unless you go nuts like Jeremy Piven. He was eating something like a dozen cans a day and had to be hospitalized. The same softcock fool gave himself manboobs by chugging a gallon of soy milk a day.
Little Russian
LOL
Moscow is a showcase, and where the wealth is concentrated, the wealth of all of Russia. Dublin is not even comparable.
Out of the can isn’t very appetizing
In water, not oil.
I like to imagine I’m one with the great prole hordes who elected Trump, but it takes enormous willpower to drink…Foldgers brand coffee when it’s offered to me by a prole. SWPL pride world wide.
Lol I even like Dublin, personally – but it is just a city with population around a million.
Moscow is 17 million megalopolis capital, of Europe’s most populous country, of a population of 146 million, and the world’s largest country.
Dublin is a million population city (equivalent population of Chelyabinsk), which is capital of half of a small island with population of around 4 million citizens.
Ireland is a now fully civilized country, but much of its GDP figures are not reflective of the actual population. A large part of this is “fake GDP” reflecting the income of multinational corporations, that incorporate in Ireland, due to its having lowest corporation tax policies in the EU.
Budapest is a historic coffee center, like Vienna, Milan or Rome, so I imagine coffee culture of Hungarians (with their centuries of coffee history) must be much better, and one of the most developed in the world.
In Russia, connoisseurship of coffee – it’s a relatively recent fashion, so with many more years to develop.
And with very high price difference to drink away from home, relative to cost of making it at home.
Ireland is a now fully civilized country,
As someone born on that island I’m curious to know what you meant by that.
Folgers is floor debris.
Stick with something from Juan Valdez.
Similitude nowadays is a kind of insult in my view – though naturally unintended.
You who haven’t lived out West haven’t experienced In-N-Out, the best of the fast food places.
It had even faced a boycott from Democrats, that backfired:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-in-and-out-donations-20180830-story.html
I recently watched a few ’90s Hollywood movies which seemed to have been filmed in Moscow. I think there was a rush to get cameras in there when relations thawed.
Very picturesque scenery – one of a kind. It is a shame not many of them were very good movies. But I find you can still enjoy a movie on a low level, if it is a unique visual experience.
As you can imagine, I travel.
In ‘n Out has exceptionally high quality hamburgers and service for a fast food place. That said its french fries are poor, which is not important as I almost never eat them anymore.
I make a point of getting In ‘n Out whenever I am out West.
There are comparable chains elsewhere however. Shake Shack and Culver’s come to mind.
I’m impressed by McDonald’s as a business, not their “cuisine” (serviceable and reliable, but obviously not remarkable). But their coffee really is pretty decent. Does In ‘n Out have good coffee?
Why don’t you commit to becoming American instead of obsessing over the Ukraine? Were you born there?
Powerful take:
Moscow should de-SWPLize! Complete removal of all culturally Western things now! Shut down all coffee shops, patio cafes, bars, nightclubs, and cool restaurants!
Moscow is the Sovok capital of the world after all, and being a client state of China, Moscow must bend backwards to accomodate up to 10 million Chinese maozuo tourists a year, with Western old school lefties like Godfree Roberts the icing on the cake. No more evil SWPL!
Chinese parastatals shall be the exclusive and sole foreign companies that can do business in Russia. All other foreign companies immediately seized and transferred over to Chinese parastatals. All the former SWPL establishments shall be immediately seized and sold or leased to Chinese businessmen, requiring them to open authentic Chinese restaurants with elderly tastes in mind or knock-off Chow Tai Fook stores in their place.
We can go further and that only Chinese shall be allowed to operate businesses in Moscow! Russians can either work for the govt or work for the Chinese.
On a serious note, Chick-fil-A is not bad. Unlike McDonalds, you can at least confirm that the chicken is real.
I’m also a big fan of Cookout’s sides and milkshakes, though their burgers are meh
Talking about southern fast food, while SWPL culture enhances Russia’s competitiveness, SWPL culture is single handedly responsible for stomping out Southern culture in the US, and removing it from the premises of even big cities. Its pretty sad to see how neoliberalism.txt that SWPL transplants (and local converts) brought with them the wholesale permanent destruction of southern culture in pretty much all of the major cities. Now the entire US is the same bugmen crap that’s the same in every single city.
The chicken is perfectly real at McDonald’s. If you disagree and are right, you can win a very lucrative lawsuit. The McChicken is made from “mechanically separated chicken”, but it all comes from chickens. This is a ridiculous idea.
The sins McDonald’s commits are committed by nearly all other restaurants other than very high end ones. They do this because it’s legal, customers largely don’t care (or even know), and it saves money.
SWPL culture incidentally, while not without its downsides, has embraced Southern barbecue and is spreading it around the world. Chicago for instance now has several truly excellent Southern barbecue restaurants. Take this for instance: https://lilliesq.com
Their pink lemonade is freakishly good also (and normally I just have water at such places).
Likewise.
I’ve never tried it…
2nd generation born outside the homeland, father born in western Europe, but I didn’t speak English until I went to grade school.
I don’t do much with Ukraine outside these comment boards, it’s a hobby and interest, but not a lifestyle. I’m not as obsessed as I present on here.
Could just be that this is a Russian nationalist blog then.
If my urheimat faced similar threats perhaps I’d be invested as well.
That said I rarely see comments from you agitating for America, which is now our country.
I do care about Sweden still as you do the Ukraine, but we must now commit to our new homeland. Which is itself under very serious threats.
Nah, not really. Grew up in the South my entire life – Southern culture is multiple parts. The “country” culture, rather cannibalized by parts of SWPL, still exists and arguably spread by SWPL. Same goes for black soul culture, which also has gotten pretty consumed by SWPL and you can get chicken and waffles anywhere. The refined tidewater culture, despite its beauty, was never really going to survive modernity – it basically required agrarianism(or at least, a non-migratory population), gender roles, and class structures.
That’s pretty impossible these days, there’s no stability.
Regarding “Tidewater” culture, you still see some vestiges of it in the white upper class all over the Deep South (see for example, the state of top tier Greek Life in the SEC). They have managed to largely assimilate into SWPL while retaining their own identity and restrict dating/marriage to their own kind.
Country culture has been really diluted if you look at the state of country music nowadays. Kane Brown, really? I even like Florida-Georgia Line, but the new diversity in country music has reached levels impossible.
And Nashville has a surprisingly large and vocal neoliberalism.txt population, but its still my favorite city in the US; the larger deep South city I live in is far, far worse which at this point is a cultureless lost cause cesspool with blacks and neoliberalism.txt running the show.
Even with the creeping neoliberalism.txt, the southern upper class in Nashville is very noticeable, and white country people with their southern accents are at least half of the working class jobs. Unlike where I live, where the working class is almost exclusively black with some wiggers, and the upper class is extremely diluted by rich New Yorkers. Southern accents are extremely rare here too.
My dad used to call McDonald’s “Macca-doo”. He’s never been to Australia.
Not low enough for Bono-U2. Their corporations are domiciled in Netherlands. Obviously they are not a huge multinational (like Apple’s Ops in Ireland) but the Double Dutch Sandwich works out better for them. They moved from Ireland to Netherlands about 12 years ago. The Stones have been domiciled in Netherlands for decades. Legend goes that Keith Richards told Bobo about the Dutch tax avoidance scheme.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Double+Dutch+Sandwich&pc=MOZI&form=MOZCON
That’s a part of it.
America seems to be taken care of, it’s not an underdog historically and always comes through. Bismarck’s quote (apocryphal?) – “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America” rings true.
(hid because this will be boring personal stuff for most readers)
My relationship with this country may be different from yours, I’m more of a rootless cosmopolitan than you are. No English in my house growing up. In college I mixed mostly with foreigners. It was not long after the Berlin Wall came down and my school actively recruited kids of late-era Commie elites, the type who a few years later would be going to much better places in England or Switzerland. They were from various post-Soviet republics, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania. No one from Ukraine for some reason. In this group I met and later married a Russian girl. She was never interested in politics despite or perhaps because of her family’s political background. Some others of us used to sometimes debate politics and history. Most of us have gone our separate ways. Karlin’s blog has something of those late-night discussions that I miss. Usenet used to be good for that but it was taken over and destroyed by people obsessed with Holocaust denialism.
I afterwards spent years living outside the USA before returning.
I may be rootless, but I am on the side of the nativists. My kids have second passports but will probably stay here. I consider it to be indecent to go against the wishes and interests of the people whose ancestors built the country where I live. But America isn’t a focus of my political interests.
I’ve known people who invest time on fantasy football, researching players stats, etc. I spend my internet time discussing eastern Europe with Russians, Hungarians, etc, here on Karlin’s blog.
I’ve visited Charleston; I know it is packed by outsiders who have moved in but I came across some people who seemed to be native Southern aristocrats. They were rather impressive – thin, attractive people, conservatively yet expensively dressed in a way that one doesn’t see in the North, very polite.
Yes, if I must do fast food it’s Chic Filet. Unless I’m out West or in Dallas – then its In-N-Out.
As Thorfinnson observed, SWPL has really spread Southern barbecue food. I live in a very SWPL suburb up North and we have a fantastic new southern barbecue place.
Moscow has plenty of beautiful pre-Soviet buildings and areas, and has developed spectacularly post-Sovok.
Some place like Donetsk is the Sovok capital of the world.
Not in my experience. I knew some of the Nashville elite, dated a girl who definitely fit in terms of status and she even called herself a Southern belle – which I thought was entirely unfitting of her, since I actually did know some old belles and she really lacked their mannerisms in spirit if not entirely in content. Sure, they were SWPL but it didn’t feel like they were any different at all after a short time, she was pretty hardcore Neoliberalism.txt with slight differences. There’s also the overall weakness – there was a land dispute, as happens a lot, and her mom’s animals got shot up by people trying to force her to sell. The usual TN corruption and crap, and of course they thought that they’d just hole up with their guns and I suppose there was that, but overall it felt really quite weak. No posse. Not even other family.
The Georgians felt far more coherent in that sense, but I’m biased perhaps because that’s my best friend’s background. Three generations of air force, clear lineage to their plantation, making quite a bit of money off their agribusiness and with field hands of “their people.” Some kids tried to mess with them and stole gasoline from a tank, and they sent guys with shotguns and had a nice talking with the parents of the hooligans. That, I’d say, is serious and akin to actual aristocracy.
But in many ways, this is pretty much the end for them as well. My friend is going to pursue his computer ambitions in California(Georgia wasn’t paying him nearly enough for his degree), his sister is going to NASA and the agribusiness will be increasingly left to a cousin, the only one still interested. Eventually mechanization will remove the need for their employees, so that relationship is going away too. It all feels quite moribund in terms of an unique culture.
The best burger chain in the world in terms of food and the application of technology is a Swedish one.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2016/05/05/how-max-burgers-is-becoming-swedens-latest-breakout-star/#4b0f702263c8
Zaporozhian Cossack?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8lcUHQYhPTE
Lol. Is there an article or something about it?
We shall rebuild the image of the reactionary aristocrat one castle at a time!
As I recall it, Ireland used to be extremely favorable with taxation on artists. As in no taxes. When this regime ended, U2 moved their IP to a jurisdiction that is famously friendly to intellectule property.
If nothing else, I love trolling globalists with these stories. Whatchu complaining about, globohomo? This is what you’ve been fighting for (and muslims everywhere) so just relax and enjoy it, hombre.
Ask them if they employ authentic southern cooks or just are appropriating the culture.
USA doesn’t need help in terms of geopolitics but does in terms of politics. As you probably know since you have children. My little rustbelt town signed a very stupid agreement with a big city to house negro prisoners here, which is resulting in a slow but steady increase of that highly deficient population. Leaving is not an option as I have my factory here and employees to think about, whom I do really care about. I’m worried about the future.
I grew up speaking Swedish at home, but in an otherwise highly American environment. My family background led me to reject cosmopolitanism in order to cement my identity and feel comfortable and at home. But I’ve known others of similar backgrounds who embrace cosmopolitanism as a result. I don’t see cosmopolitanism as a problem per se as many exist in my family–it’s more of a personal choice.
It is very difficult to meet people IRL who are actually interesting. My father (boomer) has succeeded in finding interesting niches where such people exist. Auto racing and entrepreneurship. Probably the intersection of money and an independent spirit is a great filter. There are interesting people without money, but generally above a certain age people without money are either dumb (which is fine–I love the proles) or defective (which is not fine).
Max Burger is good but not terribly impressive. Unless something has fundamentally changed since I last went there (couldn’t peg the year but it has been more than five years). The tech is clearly a change but at the end of the day it’s still about the food (other than Macca’s that is).
This one doesn’t have all the gory details, but it does mention the hospitalization: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/theater/19pive.html
Found on Bing.
One of many reasons I recommend that all men of our stripe to become financially independent and focus on aesthetics.
From what I’ve seen, we have to speak of Georgia as 2 distinct places: Greater Atlanta, and the rest of Georgia.
Atlanta is the city I have been talking about: There’s almost no trace whatsoever of a proper southern/country white working class left unless you’re in the far-flung exurbs; blacks and Latin American gasterbeiters do all the working class jobs here. The local wealthy class are essentially white neoliberalism.txt transplants especially from New York and New Jersey. The wealthy southerners still exist here and you do see them in decent numbers in the SWPL places, but its clear they are a minority even in their own social/wealth class, with many being reverse-assimilated into NY/NJ neoliberalism.txt norms.
On top of the largely white transplant suburbs, there’s a massively growing Korean and Indian population here, especially the Koreans who pretty much form their own ecosystem in the area where Gwinnett, Fulton, and Forsyth counties intersect.
Essentially, don’t expect to see or experience much, if any, southern culture here, except for a greater concentration of southern BBQ and chicken and waffles.
The rest of Georgia, especially coastal Georgia and to a lesser extent, South Georgia, still has an established aristocratic and even white middle class that has traditional conservative southern values and dress/look the way AP has described. Again, top tier Greek Life in the SEC is where they all congregate when they are college-aged. South Carolina has the greatest such traditional southern gentry, followed by Alabama, Georgia outside of metro Atlanta, and Middle Tennessee.
It could be worse. Look what happend to this rustbelt city:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/chain-migration-comes-hazleton-15832.html
Article is well worth reading. City-Journal in general is a great thing. Theyhad a classic article about Obama-era education “reform”, No Thug Left Behind, and what it did to schools in Minnesota:
https://www.city-journal.org/html/no-thug-left-behind-14951.html
You are a real Lord in your Midwestern village, in the best sense of that word, very nice.
I grew up in a midwestern village, half woods and half farms, in the household of a country doctor. Not quite rich enough to be sent to a boarding school out East, but enough to be different from everyone else in school (visiting Europe and other places). Had “simple” friends who can fix things I can’t and still do, people I used to bury treasure with in the woods, or later go shooting with. I respect those people but wanted to and did leave that backwater forever. Place has been ruined anyways, by exurban sprawl (we may or may not have once gotten into the local paper by in the middle of the night shooting out the windows of some of the construction vehicles that brought the invaders whom we disliked and called “yuppies”).
My niche as I indicated was with foreign students, kids of political figures mostly, at university. Moved to a cosmopolitan place in the northeast, great schools, safe, good demographics, great restaurants, theater, etc. but ridiculous leftist political ideology; I imagine moving to Sweden would be similar, although we don’t have migrants at least. I guess I was part of Murray’s geographic cognitive sorting he described in Coming Apart. Still have more sympathy, poltically, for my old neighbors back home than with my neighors now. But the eastern Europeans I hang out with in my current social circles do too.
If my urheimat faced similar threats perhaps I’d be invested as well.
He just told you that he wasn’t invested.
America, Love It or Leave It
Some things from the ’60s can’t be improved on.
I’m invested, in the way that someone who follows a sports team watches their games and supports them is. I did send a few hundred dollars to buy stuff like bullet proof vests when my cousin was mobilized and served in Luhansk (things were sent to his unit through people our family knows, I’d otherwise be suspicious); thank God he came home uninjured.
Well, okay, at least you are invested with your immediate kinspeople.
Au contraire, I think the fries are excellent, tasting as they do of freshly peeled and fried potatoes.
I don’t think those are the values which I truly identify as Southern – like I mentioned, I knew a few from the genuine past and if nothing else, religion is a huge factor in it. I know what you’re talking about with Greek Life, but in my opinion that’s basically pretty weak LARPing and always has been. The elite in this sense is just usual SWPL with slightly shifted values, rather than the actual combination of land-holding values, religious focus and skills expected in the traditional South.
When you can’t even count on family to put things right for you or even protect you from thugs, its all pretty much an extended joke. Let’s not even get into the riding saddleside for girls, the notion of responsibility to local community, or the myriad tiny aspects of “living proper.” The close association to the military and MIC is probably the only thing that is still really distinctive.
It lingers only because the older generations still live, but its really not being passed on.