Dissenters' sticker

Image: LJ user drugoi

The sticker says:

THEY ARE GROWING FAT ["During the time of Putin's rule, the army of bureaucrats has grown by 4,000,000 people"]
WE ARE DYING OFF ["And the population of Russia has declined by 7,000,000 as a result of poverty and insufficient availability of medicines"]

DISSENTERS' MARCH - 14 April starting at 12.00 on Pushkin Square

At least I'm pretty sure that's what it says, but as you can see some of the words are blurry. I'm not sure if the first claim is correct, and the second one is obviously an exaggeration - Russians are dying off for lots of reasons - but it seems like an effective bit of marketing for the event.

SPB stenciller gerdaa...

...has a photopage with a few of her works. On it, she describes her location as "Saint-Putinberg, Russian Federation." I have photos of some of her stencils somewhere - very creative work (and yes, I know it's half-assed to just say I have them and not post them - maybe later). You can read more about her at her LJ.

Education is what remains...

Photo taken April 1, 2006.
The stencil says:

"Education is what
remains after one
has forgotten
everything he
learned in school"

-some dumbass
named Albert
Einstein

My favorite part of this photo is that the high school in the background is the very same one I graduated from almost 13 years ago (that bit is the rather unattractive newer wing, the older portion of the building is a classic red-brick schoolhouse with a white clocktower). The stencil appears to be a paraphrase of a genuine Einstein quote, though it may be apocryphal. "Forwarded around the internet" does not always = correct, and I can't find it on Bartleby.

Hometown flavor

View of the Potomac River and Key Bridge (looking from Washington, DC, across the river to Virginia) from an old bridge piling, Oct. 15, 2006.

Dissident street art, Russia, circa 2005

[Source unknown, file dated June 13, 2005]
This one is self-explanatory, unless you are a poor soul who has never heard of Bob Marley.

St. Petersburg, Dec. 25, 2005.

This one takes the Russian word for victory (победа) and crosses out the first two letters to arrive at "беда," which means "misfortune" or "disaster." The sticker is promoting an opposition website, Diktatu.net (cleverly making use of the .net domain name to say no to dictatorship).

Graf and bums

Sadly, this is not an April Fool's Day joke.

Moscow, Russia, April 29th, 2005

Paris, France, Aug. 17, 2006.