visited a friend who worked for awhile in St. Petersburg, back in the tale end of the Boris Yeltsin years. seemed like kind of a Wild West period, with homemade vodka kiosks and lots of little old ladies selling their possessions on the street alongside gangster types with price tags hanging off their expensive sunglasses who were exploiting newfound "capitalist" freedom. a brand new Nike store on main drag Nevsky Prospekt with a total of about 10 pairs of sneakers on the shelves. middle of the summer, so it was white nights, where you'd come out of a bar at 10pm and it would still be light outside.
some beautiful women, a few of whom were eager to marry a then-single lanky American dude.