Trekhprudny Lane

Moscow looks so lovely lately, especially its crumbly parts. A man in an underpass played Hello Dolly on the balalaika.

I braved OBI and Auchan at Mega Mall today. ("Khimki," a Russian friend once shuddered. "People touch you.") It's a huge, tacky, frequently crowded place that requires a metro ride to the end of the line and then a marshrutka or minibus. But it was okay.

I try not to react anymore to the usual air of distrust and suspicion with which customers are greeted. Everyone is probably going to pocket some valuables and try to smuggle them out: this seems to be the operative assumption driving Russian retail. Today I unpacked all thirty-something of my OBI purchases at the entrance to Auchan, so that a heavily made-up woman in a miniature sailor cap could roll them into plastic bags and seal the bags closed with a heated bar. Muscovites very often walk around their malls and grocery stores with their possessions (purchases, purses, portfolios) wrapped up in these rustling clear bags -- anything you bring into a store is supposed to be hermetically sealed before you grab a cart, so that you're not tempted to try to squirrel merchandise away. Russians line up quietly and obediently at the sealing station before beginning to shop. Normally I sail right past such inventory control, harrumpf, but today I was carrying too much (a laden two-wheeled shopper) and got stopped. So I submitted. Then at the check-out, the Auchan cashier eyed my wheeled shopper suspiciously and wanted to see my OBI receipts. Which were sealed into the anti-theft bags.

Once, in the pet supply aisle at Auchan, I was handed a box of cat treats by a Purina rep handing out samples. A few minutes later, when I failed to place it on the conveyor at the check-out, the cashier snarled and refused to believe it had no price.

What a pleasure to be in a hardware store again! Been a long time. Paint brushes, wire bundles, huge rolls of ready linoleum, hundreds of tiny plastic drawers containing large and small nails, pipe fittings, sledgehammers, potting soil, buckets, mops. Little Allspaugh Hardware in Ladue always smelled beautifully of grass seed and brooms when Dad let us tag along. OBI, with all the auto carpet and foam moulding, smells more like carcinogens, but still, I walked around and imagined making something, I mean assembling something, piecing and sanding and painting and smoothing and measuring. I remembered my brothers making models, the glue gun, tiny jars of paint, and decals. I even missed This Old House.

Sarah Sze, work from 2004 (Kanazawa, Japan) and 2005 (New York).