Nothing Says May Day Quite Like...

Happy May Day! Apparently it's a big deal here, so I went to a festival-y thing yesterday. Unfortunately I didn't come until the end when most of the events were packing up. But there was some sort of hip-hop gymnastics thing that I don't know the name of. Three guys against three girls doing all sorts of fly-through-the-air flips of every variety. The guys won. It was pretty apparent. They deserved it. The girls would have been impressive on their own, but just didn't quite have it. After that we went over to the concert stage where some guy was rapping and everyone had their hands in the air. It was pretty fierce. Something about being in Russian makes everything just that much more entertaining. We continued, passed the monster trucks parked there (I'm pretty sure they were there purely for aesthetics and to take pictures with) and went to the skate park that had been set up. Half of it was occupied by... scooters. I don't know when scooters became an extreme sport. Maybe I'm old fashioned but there's something slightly less hard-core about a kid racing down a halfpipe on a scooter. On the other side of the park there were bikers though. Then there was the woman wearing flesh-colored leopard print leggings and having a photo session doing a handstand against a tree, perching on the edge of a fountain, etc. They started packing up the skate park and the powers-to-be wanted everyone out. Seriously. I'm talking armed cars. Russians don't fool around. We made some Russian friends... well, I don't know if I'd go that far... but they oogled at us for a while before working up the nerve to talk to the Americans. It started with just one and then one-by-one their little posse shifted over to us. As we left, we were told "You... good girls..." I'm not sure which sense of the word "good" he was implying, but that's probably for the best. We made our way toward the exit, passed a girl in an Eeyore track suit, and left. And to complete the experience, while ascending the bridge over the Moscow river there was a coke bottle filled with... well... not coke. What a party. Good thing I have now been properly instructed in First of May festivities.

I'm not sayin'; I'm just sayin'.