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Bandit Wars: A Riddle

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During the bandit wars of the 1990s, the first bars, restaurants, and coffee-shops started appearing in FSU countries. Obviously, only the bandits and their entourage could afford to visit them. Regular people lacked money for such visits and also had no tradition of eating out.

All of these public eateries used to turn up the volume of the music they played intolerably high. There was a powerful reason why their owners never lowered the volume.

Question: why was it so crucial to have the music play very loud in the first public eateries in FSU countries?

22 responses to “Bandit Wars: A Riddle”

  1. n8chz Avatar
    n8chz

    So as to make it difficult for the authorities to record conversations between bandits?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Remember that there were no actual authorities in place, though.

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  2. ladyleahjane Avatar
    ladyleahjane

    So that rivaling bandit gangs couldn’t listen in on each other’s conversations? 🙂

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  3. el Avatar
    el

    So that police and people outside wouldn’t hear the sounds of fights?

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  4. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Loud noise distorts your ability to gauge how sweet or salty something is. It might be to disguise the taste of the horrid food?

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  5. el Avatar
    el

    Disgusting eating sounds?

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  6. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    To ensure that the owners never “knew” anything that went on with regards to fights and conversations (thus ensuring their safety) and to encourage the bandits to eat and drink quickly and leave as soon as possible. The more anyone lingered, the more ominous the visit. Also the more anyone lingered, the higher a bill the owner would have to try and get the bandits to pay. I’m sure they demanded many things “on the house.”

    When you say intolerable, do you mean “intolerable to sensitive people” (aka nightclub levels) or “noise as a weapon levels” (wear earplugs or lose your hearing)?

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  7. el Avatar
    el

    Two pieces of middle East news:

    1) The Moderate Rohani:
    Rohani reaches out to Hezbollah, Assad, Hamas in bid to reiterate Iran’s commitment to aiding allies against ‘enemies in the region, especially the Zionist regime’.
    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4405874,00.html

    2) News of EU decision to legally differentiate between Israel, West Bank. (The European Union’s decision to restrict any Israeli entity beyond 1967 lines from EU funding and grants.)
    PM on EU decision: We’ll not accept external dictates regarding borders.
    Lapid: EU signaled to Palestinians there is no sanctions for refusing negations.
    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4405854,00.html

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  8. el Avatar
    el

    Now found:

    Партия регионов Украины и консервативные блоггеры в США
    http://scholar-vit.livejournal.com/332992.html?mode=reply#add_comment

    The Poppi Book is a vertically opening single bed with bookshelves above the bed.
    http://www.resourcefurniture.com/space-savers/twin-space-saving-beds/poppi-book

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  9. Lear Avatar
    Lear

    Rock and Roll, heavily repressed in the previous years to the SU collapse, and “Free market” eateries clearly belonged to the same culture of “liberation.” from the soviet regime. It should be no wonder that it was played very loudly in these venues.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      This answer shows a true romantic. 🙂

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      1. Lear Avatar
        Lear

        Just throwing in some BBC fantasy reporting! That’s pretty much the way the media portrayed the FSU at the time. I remember the long queues reported at the opening of the first mcdonalds in russia, and quite a few similar news.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Yes, when the first McDonald’s opened in my city, that was a super big deal!!! It was very expensive by our standards at the time. Consider if $50 a month was a very respectable salary, then how affordable can the McDonald’s prices be?

          So we thought it was the height of chic. Only the well-to-do could visit the place maybe once every few months. 🙂

          In the Soviet Union, going out to eat was not a practice that even existed. There were school and work cafeteria with abysmally bad food and no service at all (unless you count food being literally thrown in your face service.) At McDonald’s we were shocked by those smiley hosts and hostesses who all had badges with their names and greeted every person who came in. That was absolutely unheard of.

          The very first time I visited what I can safely call a restaurant was after I moved to Canada. I lived in the second largest city in Ukraine but by 1998 we still didn’t have anything like a sit-down restaurant for normal people, not bandits. There were places for bandits, of course, but normal people would be terrified of going there. They were known for spraying each other from machine guns in broad daylight, so one did not want to be around.

          When my sister visited Ukraine in 2005 (or was it 2006?), first restaurants had already appeared but the service was still very Soviet style which traumatized the poor kid to no end.

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          1. Lear Avatar
            Lear

            Very interesting! For me eating out has some touch of what you speak of. As a child my family was very poor, and eating out was next to impossible, like you said, only once every few months. The whole deal became kind of traumatic to me, and even though I can cook I avoid it as I need to eat out, as otherwise I’m reminded of those difficult days.

            We didn’t eat McDonalds though, but it’s true how different it’s perceived in different countries, in the US & Western Europe is the cheapest thing you can get, whereas in certain countries still keeps a kind of a special place kind of thing.

            Italian food was/ and still is the deal for me. Wood-oven baked pizza & lasagna!

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      2. el Avatar
        el

        // I remember the long queues reported at the opening of the first mcdonalds in russia

        Was it really so, Clarissa? I don’t remember any mcdonalds in my small town, but in my childhood there were good cafes with much tastier food than mcdonalds. One shop sold great cakes (пирожные) and different unusual breads, f.e. shaped as a hare. Another small dining place had a tasty soup I once ate and loved.

        May be, people did visit mcD out of great curiosity for everything foreign, which was natural after the Iron Curtain regime, but it’s not like FSU didn’t have cafes, eateries, etc. My mother ate out quite a lot in her university days, afterwards, closer to SU collapse, most people had no money, which was a different issue.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          “but in my childhood there were good cafes with much tastier food than mcdonalds.”

          – It’s like you grew up in a different country, to be honest. Cafes where you could sit down and have coffee??? Never seen such a thing. I was so innocent in that regard that the first time I visited Tim Horton’s (Canada’s version of Starbuck’s), I was completely lost and had no idea how to get around.

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  10. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    When I was in Mutare in Zimbabwe, which is near to some notorious diamond fields, a friend of mine once cautioned me not to look too directly at a group of guys, as he said they were basically involved in diamond smuggling.

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      This was at Nando’s

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  11. el Avatar
    el

    // It’s like you grew up in a different country, to be honest. Cafes where you could sit down and have coffee???

    No, I don’t remember coffee. But f.e. that great cake shop had a part, in which you could sit, eat and probably drink (tea?). While still living in Ukraine, we visited Russia and were eating ice-cream, while sitting on a table in the street. How is it called, if not cafe? I mean, tables on the street and you can order something from a shop / kiosk / cafe (?).

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      There were cafeteria-style places where I learned that coffee was a light beige beverage that smelled intensely of chicory. 🙂 It was served in glasses and a very unhygienic lady would slop the beverage into them from a huge pail. The pail looked exactly like the ones used to wash the floors.

      Oh, the Soviet eateries. . . And most crucially, the Soviet service. . . I hear that waiters and shop assistants are still as rude and condescending as they were in 1980! 🙂

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      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        Chicory was a standard in Rhodesia, during sanctions.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          The first time I tasted actual coffee (at the house of a rich seamstress), I thought I was being made fun of because the beverage didn’t taste like the “coffee” I knew. 🙂

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