Wanted

Night of the Metallurgists isn't the most inviting party name. Indeed, Night of the Living Dead sounds more tempting.
By Kevin O'Flynn
Published: July 18, 2008
Night of the Metallurgists isn't the most inviting party name. Indeed, Night of the Living Dead sounds more tempting. After all, there are never any separate VIP areas for zombies. You attack humans together and you eat human brains together. It won't be like that Friday when the Night of the Metallurgists begins at Rai. It's 60,000 rubles for the basic table for six -- you get to spend that money on food and drink -- and 300,000 rubles for the top table where food and drink is included.

The night will be metal themed: Expect inside jokes about who was wasted in the stainless steel wars of the '90s, boasts about the size of your deposit and a DJ punning that it's time for some real heavy metal -- cue introduction of the top lead oligarch in the country.

There's not a week that goes past when you can't see a sign up on a Moscow street congratulating one profession or another on their sainted day.

The famous ones are those involving mass booze-ups and brawls in parks by various parts of the uniformed branches, but the other professions take their day just as seriously. Especially if the profession is a particularly profitable one -- Constructors' Day oozes complimentary ads in newspapers where companies try to outdo others with their flattery of top construction officials, those men who can crush your company like a bug with one much-feared sentence: "You will never construct a shoddy building on Tajik slave labor in this town again."

The sign for Night of the Metallurgists was hanging near Kuznetsky Most, close to the Dianne von Fßrstenberg and Stella MacCartney stores and, something that will surely be sorted out one day, Yolki-Palki. Still, Day of the Metallurgists is one of the least sexy days. Especially when connected to Rai, or heaven, a club famous for promising that all sins committed inside its walls receive instant absolution from all leading churches (except for those fussy Pentecostals).

Still, you might not get away with the night completely unstained. As my mum noted when told of the price of a table, "That's a mortal sin."