Dear friends,
just in case it hasn't become super obvious from past posts, your humble writer is broke. Oh, she broke like a joke. I live in a very cute apartment, in a phantabulous part of town, and as a result, have become the poorest chel in this city. Ok, I am exaggerating of course, but just the same, I thought that it might be fun to monitor my descent into poverty by seeing which cigarettes I smoked when I first got here and had money, and which smokes I'm down to now. So I went through all of the empty cigarette packs in my apartment and photographed them, to present you with this little smoking plunge into squalor.
Ok, so when I first got here, I was smoking these:
These are imported from New York, and cost 120 Rubles a pack. They're all natural tobacco and they were exactly what I smoked in NYC. And they were yummy.I also smoked the occasional expensive cigarillos. Or little cigars such as these:
These are 400 Rubles a box.
These are something like 100 Rubles a pack and they are cherry flavored. I just smoked them for the lovely smell. Hey, I could afford it.When I got a bit poorer, I couldn't afford the 120 Ruble a pack deal anymore, so I switched to these:
Perfectly respectable Dunhills. Not entirely natural or organic, but they seemed to be a good fit. These cost 60 Rubles a pack. I was ok with that for a while. I thought I was all fancy and could afford them.But then, I got even more poor and started experimenting with slightly cheaper alternatives.
Here they are:
These are actually called Diablo Nero, and they are black, and smell like coffee when you smoke them. They are 48 Rubles a pack. Fun!
I don't remember how much the Gitanes cost, but they were somewhere in the middle range too. I just didn't like them very much taste-wise. But they were somewhere in that 40 to 50 Ruble range that I thought I could afford back then, along with the Lucky Strikes.
So next, I had to move down to the 20 to 30 Ruble range. Here's what you can get for that:
Chesterfields are about 27 Rubles a pack. They're not that bad, but they made me cough a lot, so no, not my cigarettes of choice.
Ok, I think these are like 19 Rubles a pack, and poor people smoke them in America too, so I think that we all know just how disgusting they are. I also tried these whack-ass Pall Malls. They were in my price range back then:
Ok, someone actually brought these to my house, so I'm not sure how much they are, but I guarantee that they were also cheap because the dude that brought them over is also broke. Again, gross. But, of course, this is all before I realized that I didn't know the meaning of the word "gross" yet.Oh, but these by the way, are 27 Rubles and not all that bad. I mean, they're more smokable than the fucking Pall Malls:
And at least they're made right here in Russia. And they've got the lovely name of "Russian Style". Yeah, because it's really stylish to smoke cigarettes that cost less than a dollar a pack. Still better than Mores.Ok, now just watch the following regress of smokes:
"Our Prima"? 9 Rubles
Yeah, these are real. 9 Rubles a pack. The USSR is alive and well, and polluting my lungs.
These, I don't even know what the fuck hole these crawled out from under, or how much they cost, but they were disgusting. Someone brought them to my house. I think they're like 10 Rubles though. Just so everyone understands, 30 Rubles is like a Dollar. So do the math. "Alliance"? What are they the alliance of? Everything that lives in the bog of eternal stench?And finally, I had to hit rock bottom:
BelamorKanal. 6 Rubles a pack. These are not cigarettes. They're papirosii. I don't know the English word for this, but these bitches have been around forever, I'm pretty sure that the price hasn't changed since 1924, and also that while there may not have been food in Leningrad during the Blockade of '41, they did have these. So I'm basically smoking wartime blockade cigarettes. On the up side, the tobacco is actually pure. On the down side, they're so harsh that it's not unlike smoking exhaust fumes. Here's another picture just so you can see what a papirosa actually looks like:
So yesterday, I got fed up with it all and bought these:
That's right. I bought "Rich" cigarettes. Fuck it! They're brown and PINSTRIPED, like a rich man's pants, and taste like apples. They were 39 Rubles, so I can't afford another pack, but after smoking the USSR and Prima and Alliance and some random Canal, I figured I owed it to myself to be rich for a day.And that ends our tour of just how poor Plusha can get, as can be demonstrated by the cigarettes that she smokes.
Have a good evening folks. Enjoy your fancy expensive dollar-bought cigarettes. Hey, at least I can smoke almost anywhere I want, such as cafes and bars, and my job. So there!
12 comments:
I have a pack of these in my fridge! My friend Pete brought them from Maskva. The packaging is amazing. I'm up at 4:30, cause i'm having some panic attack or something.yeaaaay! i love those. especially being taken out of sleep for one. so i went on facebook to occupy my brain with mindlessness till it passes. and ended up here. and i have a a single nat sherman on my coffee table that my brother left. i'd wire it over if i could. i only smoke once in a blue. and oh, what else was i gonna say. oh yeah i drank a whole bunch of valerianka straight from russia to calm my pacing heart. hah! thanks for the entertainment...
Arbuz.
BelamorKanal, i mean... in my fridge. you're supposed to do something funky with the filter, right?
um. oh yeah. this is arousiak. by the way. my old russian co-worker christened me Arbuz.
Hey Arbuziak, yeah, Belamorkanal has amazing packaging. I just wish that the papirosii in it were just as good as the packaging. In general, I think that they had some good designers back in the USSR. I'm actually going to buy some Nat Shermans the second I get paid. Which I think is going to be in about a week. But you can't tell that sort of thing here. You never know when they're going to give you money. That's how come I'm broke all the time. I overshoot and end up spending all my monies before they decide to pay me. Get some sleep girl. Oh, and I can't drink valeryanka. That stuff makes me more anxious than the anxiety. I recommend real mint tea. None of that Celestial Seasons shit either. Go to a healthfood store and buy real mint tea. If you brew it strong enough, it'll knock your ass out.
Hehehe. still up! yeah packaging is everything to me. though they are real harsh little fuckers. valerian works like a charm for me. it has literally saved my life on many an occasion. i'm gonna make my own tinctures from now on. i love peppermint. i'm an amateur herbologist so all my herbs are the real deal. in summertime, we grow it fresh in the garden. plus regular mint. and then i dry it. it is so amazing, the fresh stuff rubbed between your hands and inhaled. but it invigorates me during the day, and only mildly settles me at night. so i guess everyone responds differently to things... Lemon balm is also fantastic. i have some growing on my windowsill. it is great for mild depression, and goes great with mint. same family. sorry. i was just reading about herbs in my book and online for the last hour! it relaxes me. i could read about them for hours. we have lost so much of the intuitive wisdom of our foremothers. Sleep eludes me. my day is fucked. CHEERS!
I am smoking stuff I roll myself!!! And I don't know how to do it! This is in part cause I'm poor, in part cause I'm trying to quit... I like the photo-story style.
Yeah, I have rolling tobacco too, but it's actually more expensive to get good rolling tobacco here than good cigarettes. Because that shit is all imported. But thanks for liking the format. Thought I'd try something a little different.
Hate to say it, but this cheered me the fuck up especially the part about smoking "wartime blockade...", I laughed and almost woke my son up arrgghhh I don't like brightening up on other ppl's misery but something kind of shitty happened here today and well... sorry to hear abt ur poverty descent, the entire U.S. economy's going downhill as well (as if that makes it any better!) Anyway, thanks for the ciggy pictures and your rise-above-it humor xo
No no, it's ok to laugh at my misery. That's why I write it funny. It's like therapy for me and everyone else. So this time it served it's purpose perfectly. Hope he shit thing that happened wasn't too horrible. Keep reading. It warms my heart.
it sounds like it's pretty awful over there.... it's not all roses here either but it's definitely better I think. why don't you come back?
Broke and smoking lord-knows-what totally seems like appropriate exile-in-ass-of-world style. Though I'm sure its much more pleasant to read it than to live it.
How long until your voice goes all Tom Waits and you start writing songs about being down and out with one-legged hookers?
Omega, to answer your question as to why I don't come back, it's simple. I don't come back because I want it this difficult. Heraclitus once said that "War is the father of all things." Meaning, to struggle is to create new thoughts, ideas, states of being. For every thesis there is an antithesis. Life it the U.S. was a bit too comfortable for me.
Mike, I don't know about the Tom Waits voice (I'd like to keep the one I've got for now), but I don't think that I'm too far from the one-legged hooker. For now, I've got some teenagers on the back burner. Is that close? I'm beginning to date people younger than me by double digits. I might be going native over here.
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