Moscow’s bored rich seek thrills as bogus beggars

The Sunday Times ^ | January 12, 2003 | Mark Franchetti

[MadIvan]

THE novi Russki, Russia’s new rich renowned for luxury cars and grand villas in the south of France, have a new pastime. They pay thousands of pounds for a taste of life as a beggar, a prostitute or a traffic warden.

Bored with their gilded lifestyles, wealthy bankers and businessmen are seeking new thrills through elaborate pranks organised by a company that allows them to be poor and filthy. In one entertainment clients pay £3,500 to play at being homeless. They are disguised by costume and make-up artists who dress them in rags and smear them with rotten turnip.

Players go to a Moscow train station and stake out a place for a few hours. Bets are placed on which bogus beggar can earn the most money. The company pays off police and real down-and-outs to ensure its clients are not arrested or abused.

Another popular game is to pose as pimps and prostitutes. Wives or girlfriends wear revealing clothes and stand on the street. The men bet on whose companion will be approached by the most prospective customers. A policeman hired to provide security intervenes to send real punters packing.

“Rich people who have travelled the world need new thrills,” said Sergei Knyazev,whose company organises such games. “I provide a chance to be someone else and have fun.”

Knyazev was inspired by The Game, a Hollywood film in which Michael Douglas plays a bored businessman who pays a firm to spice up his life with a series of dramatic events.

Knyazev appears to have no shortage of clients. One woman paid £2,500 to become a stripper, and surprised her husband by performing at his favourite lap-dancing bar.

The friends of another businessman have paid £13,000 for “surprises” on his birthday. He will be stopped in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes by actors posing as police. They will plant “drugs” and take him to a police station for questioning.

Other games include shoplifting at supermarkets to see who can escape with the most expensive item, and posing as one of Moscow’s notoriously corrupt traffic wardens.

“We have been accumulating wealth for more than 10 years. We have everything — the cars, the villas, the diamonds, the bodyguards,” said one Russian who plans to use Knyazev’s services. “It’s pretty boring. So why not be a beggar or a pimp with a few mates just for a laugh? It’s all good fun.”

[MadIvan]

I wonder if this will ever be shown on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"? ;)

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Bump!

[Mo1]

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[facedown]

I wonder if this will ever be shown on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"?

They'll need a new show called "Lifestyles of the Rich and Stupid"!

[Jhoffa_]

This is both ridiculous and stupid.. However, it would be interesting to see if charitable donations of said rich men increase after such an excersize. [posing as a homeless beggar for a period of time]

[dighton]

The Man with the Twisted Lip

[Fintan]

Those darn Clintons...anything for laughs.

[Archangelsk]

Until recently, I don't think there was a word for "homeless" in Russian. That recently changed when I checked a Russian site and found the word borzh. I had no clue what it meant and I searched several of my dictionaries and orographics, which didn't contain the word either. I finally found it on another Russian site and was really astounded my its pathology.

The times have definitely changed.

[AntiGuv]

Yep - this was already firing up when I was working in Moscow. You could find a lot of them especially around the Okhotniy Ryad & Teatralnaya metro stations (outside the Kremlin walls and up near the Bolshoi Theatre). There were also a good number of them mixed in with the informal bazaar up around the Komsomolskaya train station.

[widowithfoursons]

Too much money and nowhere to go?

[ricpic]

Nothing new here. It's called slumming.

The French have a phrase for it which roughly translates: Longing for the gutter.

[isthisnickcool]

In Moscow the rich and famous become street trash. In America the street trash become rich and famous and President or Senator from New York.

[Cicero]

Nostalgie a la bou? (Longing for the mud.)

[Archangelsk]

orthographics vice orographics

[SeenTheLight]

Better yet, send them to San Francisco where they can experience the authentic life of a bum: the stench of urine, sleeping in their own feces, drinking night and day and screaming to themselves on street corners! It might be just the thing the city needs to boost tourism.

[Charles Henrickson]

Other games include shoplifting at supermarkets to see who can escape with the most expensive item. . . .

Winona: "Yeah, that's what I was doing! It's this game, see. . . ."

[razorback-bert]

Didn't Martin Sheen start this trend?

[Jorge]

I would glady trash their lives for an appropriate fee.