One of the more interesting of these is Manezh Square. Many years ago, the small Neglinka River served as a kind of moat for the northern approaches to the Kremlin. (The much larger Moscva River constituted a natural defense on the other side.) In the early 19th century, the Neglinka River was driven underground, running through a decidedly unromantic pipe beneath the pavement. During Soviet times, the area above remained relatively undeveloped. In the early '90s, the popular mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, decided to renovate the area. He uncovered part of the river and transformed it into a long, flowing fountain studded with bronze statues of Russia's favorite fairy-tale heroes. He also built Moscow's first modern shopping mall, complete with a food court serving all manner of junk, and he lined the newly uncovered river with a kind of promenade upon which one can find cafés and, in a final gasp of surrender, a McDonald's. At the far end of the whole shebang, he erected a fountain featuring three horses, with a little circular walkway around half of it, over which spout streams of water, which are just unruly enough to get you seriously wet if you decide to walk underneath them.
This has become a mecca for the youth of Moscow. While the shopping center is already somewhat passé ever since the creation of newer, larger temples to consumerism, the long fountain that is the Neglinka, and the cafés and restaurants that line it (including the McDonald's), serve as an evening meeting point for thousands. The majority of these seem to be between the ages of, roughly, 18 and 25. The men are accompanied by cans of beer and the women are accompanied by the men, who are doing the kinds of silly things that young drunk men do in an attempt to impress, or at least capture the attention of, young women. The young women seem to put up with this and even giggle from time to time, which spurs the men on to do even sillier things, such as wading out into the fountain to speak with a bronze Ilya Murometz, or some other fairy-tale figure.
It is an appealing fountain, this little stretch of the Neglinka River. The bottom is tiled with mosaics of fish, and groups of multicolored lights shine up through the water, giving the entire thing an otherworldly glow. The fairy-tale heroes strike interesting poses: crowned frogs affront witches, bears battle wolves, swans rise from the depths. If one can ignore the drunk Russian males wading among them, they make a very pretty tableau.
Little marble staircases lead down to the water's edge, and the fountain itself is spanned by white bridges, leading over to the cafés. On the other side is a wooded park, between the fountain and the walls of the Kremlin. Between the trees are expanses of grass, upon which couples sit or lie in various stages of relationship-building, ranging from stilted conversation to sucking on each other's tongues. Either way, cans of beer are nearby.
At the end of the Neglinka Fountain stands the fountain with three horses, with its spouting walkway. There's a little plaza here, where on two occasions I observed impromptu tattoo parlors, where a bare-chested man painted images onto those willing to part with a few rubles. (I had better things to do with my own rubles.) His patrons were generally well-pierced, sporting neo-punk hair. Behind them, people hesitated before walking along the curved walkway behind the statue, under the spouting arcs of water: some people squinched up their eyes and ran through, emitting little shrieks as they got wet; others hunched their shoulders and walked through forcefully; yet others (all males) pretended not to notice, sauntering along as if to prove their immunity to water. All of this is unnecessary, of course, since one can just as easily go around the fountain on the other side and not get wet at all.
There is a noticeable lack of older people at Manezh Square in the evening (not during the day, when the mix is more typical, and the shopping center is bustling with all kinds of consumers). Of course, all cities have their young spots and their old spots, places where the different generations go to lead their different lives. Moscow is, perhaps, somewhat extreme in this. It's been almost 15 years now since walls started falling, and many of the evening denizens of Manezh Square don't even remember what it was like when the dead man in Red Square was still a hero, instead of simply a tribute to the embalmer's art. They don't even recognize the irony of having a teenage mutant turtle slumming for rubles in front of Zhukov's statue. Just as my own generation became rapidly sick of hearing how tough things were during the Great Depression, they may be losing patience with their parents' tales of the Soviet era, and simply want to go someplace different to show off their latest eyebrow stud and get a picture of Elvis painted onto their calf. Who can blame them?
