Worried that bad meat and dirty plates will turn the stomachs of revelers at City Day celebrations, the city's health inspectorate announced a ban this week on street sellers of shashlik, but traders have found ways to keep their stalls in business.


Natalya Sukhinina, spokeswoman for the inspectorate, said previous efforts to regulate shashlik sales had failed.


"They were just unwilling to trade in a civilized way," she said in a telephone interview. Many shashlik vendors could not prove where they had bought their meat, while others ignored even the most basic hygiene regulations, she said.


On City Day, Sukhinina said, health inspectors will join police patrols to enforce the ban in recreational areas such as Gorky Park and the former VDNKh, now called the VVTs, or the All-Russian Exhibition Center.


But she added that licensed cafes, restaurants and bars will not be affected by the ban, and a spot check in VDNKh on Friday revealed that this exemption was applied broadly.


Although some of their competitors were forced to close shop on Friday, dozens of shashlik stands did a brisk business outside the grandiose Stalinist pavilions, handing out paper plates with charcoaled pork smeared in tomato sauce, with a few slices of tomato or cucumber on the side.


"You can't ban anything in this country," one woman vendor said with a smile, as she turned the skewers on her grill.


Igor, who like most salesmen declined to give his last name, said he expected to sell at least 30 kilograms of shashlik on Saturday, twice the usual sales. Despite reports of dog meat ending up on some grills, he said Muscovites showed no signs of tiring of shashlik.


"They don't worry about a thing," he said. "They just buy and eat."


Like many traders, Igor said his stand had been allowed to stay open because it was part of a chain run by a licensed cafeteria in the park, which was exempt from the ban.


Sergei Yefremenko, deputy head of the economic department of the center, said most shashlik stands in the park were likely to fall under this exemption.


He said the health inspectorate in his district had closed only 20 stands at VDNKh, giving the remainder until Monday to apply for a new license.


"If we closed them all down, we would not be able to feed all our visitors," he said.


Nikolai, serving shashlik to customers outside the Dynamo stadium, said his stand had been allowed to stay open although it had no ties to any restaurants.


"We got special permission," he said, pulling pieces of meat off the skewers with hands that had not seen water in a long time. "You just have to pay everyone off."