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performances and live music. Great place to start the night. But if for some reason it’s not
happening in the Lyotchik you all have a couple of drinks, maybe accompanied by a plate of chicken wings, take a piss, walk out and flag another car, perhaps a Volga this time, that will take you
to Karma Bar.
    You want to hit Karma just before midnight, when the dyevs are drunk but not taken. If you are lucky, the Volga’s radio is playing old soviet songs, Vysotsky or Okudzhava, but most often
it will be blasting out trashy Russian pop, the kind of synthesiser sound abandoned by the West in the mid-1980s.
    Colin is in the front seat talking to the driver.
    Colin says, it’s from taxi drivers you learn about the real Moscow. Drivers are typically well-educated men – engineers, doctors, professors – whose jobs have become
superfluous in the new Russia, and who need the extra cash to make ends meet. Often, the driver will admire Colin’s proficiency in Russian and his knowledge of local customs – surprised
and pleased to hear he’s American – and, if we’ve grabbed the car after a few drinks, Colin and the driver often end up singing Russian songs, reciting poetry or telling anekdots,
which are the equivalent of Western jokes but without a funny punch line.
    Stepanov, Diego and I sit in the back seat. The car drops us outside Karma and we add a fifty-ruble tip to the agreed price. The driver wishes us a good night and we walk into the club.
    Two hours in Karma. That’s four rounds of drinks. Colin doesn’t like wasting time. With the first drink in his hand, and while the rest of us stand at the bar, he carries out a
complete inspection of the premises, scanning, taking mental notes. Then he returns and says, ‘Guys, let’s move to the back of the dance floor, between the Buddha and the small bar.
That’s the spot tonight.’
    We leave Karma and take another car, this one a zhiguli with a cracked windscreen and a chatty Georgian driver. Now we have Oksana and Irina squeezed into the back seat. Colin’s gone
– it happens sometimes, a brother leaves the group, only to be met hours later for breakfast at Starlite Diner or the American Bar and Grill. Oksana is clearly Stepanov’s, but, at this
point of the night, Irina remains up for grabs.
    Our nights begin at Stepanov’s place, a high-ceilinged apartment on a side street off the Old Arbat, lavishly decorated in the late soviet style: piano in the living
room, tapestries on the walls, a hand-coloured portrait of Brezhnev – chest covered in military medals. The tapestry above the couch depicts a popular Russian painting I’ve seen in one
of my language books – three knights on horses, wearing pointy metal helmets. The knight in the middle, seemingly the leader, is riding a black horse, his hand shielding his eyes, gazing into
the horizon.
    Stepanov’s flat is his grandfather’s flat. Stepanov’s grandfather had been important in the Communist party, a proud member of the nomenklatura, Stepanov tells us, but he
passed away in the early 1990s, together with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We often toast in his honour because, Stepanov says, his grandfather remains our host. At Stepanov’s
place we do vodka shots, play old vinyl records, decide which clubs to visit, talk shit.
    To make sure we are not missing out on the best party, Colin makes us spend a great part of the night on the road, moving across the city, following rumours, searching for the finest crowd.
It’s an endless journey, from club to club to bar to café, back to a club, exploring the hundreds of establishments that stay open all night, buying drinks, talking to dyevs,
collecting phone numbers.
    Colin says, in Moscow you don’t hunt, you gather.
    The problem comes at the end of the night. Visitors are not allowed into the university residence, so, if it turns out to be a good night and a girl I’ve met in a club wants to come home
for a cup of tea, I have to