Marta - roughly three years ago, in 2006, and now, in Pushcha Vodytsya:

Dniprovska Naberezhna:


"I'm proud to be a Ukrainian! - Ukrainians, fight for your rights! (Yuri Lutsenko)"

Here's more or less why I always feel I'm circling around the same block in Kyiv...


Image #7390



Image #7406



Image #7421

Backyards:

Poznyaky:

Kulttovary - Culture Goods or something... I had no idea this kind of store names still existed in Kyiv...



And this one I don't even think I've ever seen as a Soviet kid: Bumtovary - meaning Paper Goods, stationery...

"Fresh meat - always"

Friday evening, at Poznyaky: a man on the way home (possibly), with some green seedless grapes in a plastic bag, and (maybe) some dahlias or asters...

The way we live, part 2:

A few more random shots from my first walk - the leftovers:













(The exchange rate has grown from something like UAH 8.28 to something like UAH 8.35 for $1 in four days, actually.)

I wrote about the Gorky/Antonovych St. confusion, and there's also the Krasnoarmeyskaya/Chervonoarmiyska (Red Army)/Velyka Vasylkivska St. confusion - and the Artema/Sichovykh Streltsiv St. confusion:



According to this article (RUS) in Expert.ua, Artema has already been renamed, and, as in the cases mentioned above, the problem is with re-signing, not re-naming.

Citizen activism, sort of:


"Take the kiosk away"

(I can't make out what else it says on the first kiosk: spalim? - "or we'll burn it down"?)

I've been on three very long photo-walks already, and today's was the longest: from Darnytsya metro station, via Leningradska Ploshcha, to the railway bridge over the Dnieper (the Left Bank side of it), then marshrutka to what I think was some part of Poznyaky, and then some more. Yesterday, I walked from Besarabka to Lybidska along Gorkogo/Antonovycha, and back along Druzhby Narodiv, Patrisa Lumumby, something else, and Lesi Ukrayinky... And earlier this week, I walked from the point where trolleybus routes 16 and 18 separate, to Kyyivska Rus movie theater, and then to Ploshcha Peremohy... Don't ask me why I'm doing this. Definitely not because I need exercise, though I definitely do need some.

My pictures don't tell much. If I didn't know where I've been these days, I'd think I was circling the same block. It says something about my pictures, yes, but it also says something about Kyiv. I like walking through backyards - and they look more or less the same everywhere: rundown, dirty. Cheerless.

I keep thinking of a story that I heard from Kyiv friends who emigrated to the States in 1994: their U.S.-Kyiv friends once brought their pre-teen son here, to show him where they were from, and, back in the States, his grandparents asked him if he'd liked Kyiv. "Yes, I liked it," the boy said. "But why does everyone live in the projects there?"

This, I guess, pretty much says it all. Unfortunately.

Chestnuts grew rusty too early this year...

Yatsenyuk's campaign:









I kept wondering why all this fake military stuff from a candidate who is so deliberately non-macho - but then I recalled that the entity he heads is called the Front of Changes, so it's actually all very simple. Now, are we expected to play along?

A few marshrutka shots:




Waiting for marshrutka next to a restaurant called Pozitivia... on Gorky St., which has actually been Antonovych St. for years, but this new name just doesn't stick for some reason, and they keep calling it Gorky St., and keep making new signs with the old name.



Inside marshrutka #14...



Couldn't help it - even though the door had already closed by the time I turned the camera on...