Just the Facts

Facts gets up on a bin holding, according to the sign, an "Emergency reserve of anti-ice materials." In the background is the imposing Ministry of Foreign Affairs building.

Assorted Moscow tags

These are some photos from last summer - hardly the best of the bunch, but they're the ones I happen to have already uploaded and saved as a draft post, which is important when you're working with a 30kbps dial-up connection. I'm just trying to shake the dust of a 3-month hiatus off of this blog.


Doors of the Aeroport metro station. The tag seems to be "SME," but I doubt the writer had in mind the standard meaning of that abbreviation - "small and medium enterprise."


Bigud' on a vent. The word is the singular form, which doesn't exist in the dictionary, of "bigudi," which is how you say "hair curlers" in Russian, although of course I have no idea whether that has anything to do with the tag's intended meaning, if any.


FET on an ad placed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs advising citizens to "Inform [the authorities] about suspicious people before you see them on the news" and providing telephone numbers to enable people to do this. On the Boulevard Ring, near Nikitskie Vorota.

Taxman

This is the entrance to the tax inspectorate on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, photographed on December 23. A witty writer has inscribed the words "We spend your money" below the organization's dignified plaque. In Russian, the word for "to spend" - tratit' - can also mean "to waste."

Of course, the implicit accusation is not true, strictly speaking; the tax inspectors only collect the public's money, and they don't spend very much of it at all. But, as with most bumper-sticker-type slogans - or allegations in black PR campaigns - this one doesn't have to be true for it to be effective.

The sign on the trash can says, "Citizens for a clean city."