In today’s Gandul.
On all things touristy and Bucharest
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, now I understand, it probably was a striptease bar!
It wouldn’t write that way at the entrance but clients know and who doesn’t know – understands rather sooner than later if trying to enter.
Striptease bars have whores, it’s impossible to go to a striptease bar and not find whores willing to satisfy their clients with more than a lap dance.
Yes, their reaction is understandable now
You still haven’t said what the name of the bar was? Where is it?
Parmalat, thanks for the info and perspective. I didn’t see it when I took the pictures, but there is a sign in the entry way to the bar that says that ‘this establishment is interzis to minors’. So, I don’t know what they were doing upstairs. . . The Rolls had a driver and then a guy in the front passenger seat you was the one who approached me. So, would this guy pre-1989 have been just driving a Dacia 1310?! You know, I guess if I went from driving a Dacia to a Rolls Royce I might act a little nuts as well. The sort of massive changes that have taken place in Romanian society effect people psychologically. Just as Ceausescu’s repression and manipulation affected people’s psyches, the frenzied capitalism that has taken hold in Romania has obviously done the same thing but in an opposite way making them arrogant and wild.
About the Rolls, I believe it’s owned by Marius Locic, a real-estate mogul, business partner of Gigi Becali and owner of Cancan newspaper. You probably got to deal with his driver because I don’t see him chasing people around
About the picture taken at the bar… really, that guy overreacted, even for Bucharest the reaction is way out of line! The problem is that the press in Romania puts its nose into many things and likes to make scandal regarding whatever they can get so people with a more-or-less grey past hate the press. It’s the only explanation I could find – that bar was owned by who-knows-what dirty businessman who ordered his bodyguards to keep the press 1 mile away from his premises.
I believe you can publish the pictures safely in your country. It’s really difficult to assume what business is owned by what kind of businessman, but I can tell you that 85% of them stole whatever they could before they could start a real business.
For example I know the owner of a pizza restaurant in Berceni and before he entered real business, he used to disable peoples’ electricity counters for 100 Euro so that people would pay nothing for the electricity bill. He built a villa in Jilava, he bought 2 cars and he started a pizza restaurant with money gathered this way.
Unfortunately it’s your job and it seems that people here don’t make it very easy for you
Thanks Craig for the offer to post the photos. But this guy was absolutely nuts. He was demanding to see my passport and commanding me. I mean he said in front of the police that if I ever were to publish them online, he would come and find me. He had this diabolical look in his eyes as i said and just kept looking at me for an hour at the police station. I took 9 frames of the doorway to the Tea House/club/bar over a period of 20 seconds. I took the photos just because the doorway was radiating this great saturated red from a dim light source and red walls.
Geronimo, that’s a good point. I mean the reason I take certain photos here–and the very reason I am living in Romania–is to capture things that “stick out” if you will, things you wouldn’t see in a Western European city.
-The brand new Rolls Royce with huge rimmed wheels in front of the Athenee Palace Hilton Hotel.
-The one little lit room way up on a Communist Bloc on a side street.
-The fitze girl entering a cafe with a BMW M6 on the right of the frame parked on the sidewalk.
-Mafiosos looking hardcore.
-The Communist buildings and infrastructure with dogs and Roma and then cute girls walking about.
-Simply the chaos of the street that is Bucharest with downed wires and trash and Dacias next to 100,000 Euro cars.
That’s all I am photographing and more when I am out an about, not really to place a judgement on what I see, but just to record a piece of history. To record a singular place–Bucharest.
So, I guess it does make sense that I get reactions from people since there are very few people out taking photos–especially at night–and very few who linger on a scene and take more than a frame or two. I can do what I do in Paris or any other Western European city and never really get any reaction from people. I lived in Paris for 4 months and London for a year and never had one single negative interaction with anybody over my street photography. Here in Bucharest I average a few a day. But someone has to be recording this interesting place going through this interesting time! So, I will soldier on! I just wish some of these guys telling me what I can’t do would tell the guy with the Porsche parked across the intersection what he can’t do! It seems that here in Bucharest, the straighter, more humble a guy you are (me) the more of an issue you have. If you are an arrogant fitze dude, you get the women and you get to do anything you want. Somehow I am magnet for people wanting to exert their authority upon me.
I don’t know how Bucharest really could handle more tourists than it gets now. How are all these paranoid men going to handle foreigners taking pictures all over the place of the interesting relics from the Communist era?!
You know, Ceausescu visited North Korea after which Romania turned for the worse in the 1980s, so saying Bucharest is a softcore version of Pyongyang is not so far fetched. Obviously, in 1989, Bucharest really was close to Pyongyang. Today, though, there are certain aspects of Communist era Romania that haven’t gone away even 20 years later. To think Romania is in the European Union but has such paranoid and irrational people around and a countryside that looks straight out of a Breugel painting is dumbfounding to me.
I suspect it’s because they can’t think of a good reason why you would be photographing them so assume there must be a sinister motive.
That or they all fancy you of course. Being such a sexual magnet can make life a little difficult at times.
Davin: which bar was it? Shall we post the photos here and have some sport with them?
It’s never the police telling me not to photograph, it’s random men. Last night at the police station with this nutcase bar manager I had to finally tell him that I am not a woman and that he needs to stay further away from me. He was obsessed with me. People always say Romanians are homophobic, but I am beginning to think that a lot of these Romanian men who are constantly coming after me are repressed homosexuals .
There is something going on here that is definitely unique. These Romanian men lock onto me and my camera on my shoulder and don’t let go. It’s either male sexual attraction and/or a desire to conquer the intimidating male (me with the Canon or Leica). I must represent a threat to them. I don’t know what the heck they think I am going to do with a picture of a doorway on a side street, but there is level of paranoia and irrationality amongst these men that is pretty extreme. It’s all just so bizarre, I mean I don’t have these issues anywhere else but here.
Parmalat: the police were indeed nice and what I just loved is that they actually said it is perfectly ok to take pictures of everything from a sidewalk! Proving that all the people who constantly yell at me are wrong! That this idea is just a hold over from Communism.
The Rolls Royce was right in front of the Hilton and had special, I am going to say 24 inch rims. I mean it had Hummer rims basically and looked like a tank. It was a customized Rolls Royce. I could barely focus my camera from 20 feet away before the guy leapt from the car and ran at me. It’s all beginning to be like a film for me here in Bucharest. I don’t know what it is with me. I mean would he have ran after a 60 year-old professor type from the UK, would he have ran after a young woman and yelled at her?!
Wow, you got to interact with a guy from a Rolls Royce!
If you can remember his number plates there’s a 70% chance for me to tell you who it was
Don’t worry about the police, they usually protect foreigners because they don’t want any scandals involving foreign embassies. They’re nice guys
Just as things were starting to go well here for me, Bucharest reared its ugly head today and seemed more like a softcore Pyongyang.
In the past day pretty much every time I have gone to raise my camera here in central Bucharest on the street, I have been immediately reprimanded by men. I feel as if I am 12, like a kid, constantly being told what I can and cannot do. Tonight I guy jumped from his Rolls Royce and chased me asking to see my pictures. Then, as I approached my apartment I took a few frames from the sidewalk of the entrance to a bar, there were just stairs and no one around. Suddenly I was approached by a guy from the place telling me that we must go to the police and I must delete my pictures. Was at the police station for 1 hour. I ended up keeping my files but the guy had such a diabolical look on his face the whole time. The police said that since I never entered the place I had a right to take pictures. The experience tonight was pretty scary actually for me having all the corrupt Romanian police around. I just feel I have no clout here in Bucharest. I can say I am a tourist just taking photos and it means nothing to people.
WOULD-BE TOURISTS TO BUCHAREST: GOOD LUCK! You will need it!
The writer also contacted me re: my thoughts on Bucharest not having a tourist office. It’s fine with me. The longer Bucharest stays under the radar, the better. There are few places in Europe where you can still genuinely have adventure. The fact that Bucharest remains pretty much undiscovered by Westerners in 2009 is absolutely dumbfounding to me. Yes, if you are just interested in an easy, relaxed vacation, go to Italy. But for a real trip full of unexpected things, a trip that will make you better as a person for having done it, come to Romania. These past few weeks I have had the time of my life at art/cultural gatherings. A hell of a better time than the semester I spent in Paris while at University for instance. Because Romania was so oppressed and psychologically manipulated by Ceausescu, the pendulum of life just had to swing the other way. Bucharest is wild and the younger generation in trying to come up to speed with the West is outdoing itself. Romanian youth seem to be having a much cooler time than I ever had coming of age in the 1990s in America. I would have loved to have had 3 girls in tow as a 20 year-old like the guys do here! Bucuresti rocks!
Bitter and uncomfortable are my middle names
Looking good Turpster. And slightly bitter and uncomfortable