No more drinking on Dumskaya Street in St. Petersburg

In terms of the number of bars, restaurants, wineries and nightclubs per capita, St. Petersburg noticeably outperforms any other Russian city. There are many establishments on Dumskaya Street, which have now been closed as part of a criminal case on the involvement of minors in antisocial acts. What happened there.
In St. Petersburg, the Investigative Committee sealed about 20 bars on Dumskaya and Lomonosov streets. According to Fontanka, this happened as part of a criminal case initiated under the article on the involvement of minors in antisocial acts.

Those who have been to Dumskaya know that such actions take place there regularly, but at the same time, Dumskaya with its bars is already a kind of brand, and the city may lose it. But many will breathe a sigh of relief from this.

The song “In St. Petersburg – to drink” was written by Sergei Shnurov for a reason. According to experts, in terms of the number of bars, restaurants, wineries and nightclubs per capita, St. Petersburg is noticeably ahead of any other Russian city. Even those who have never been to the northern capital have heard about Rubinstein Street as the main street of bars in the country. But at Rubinstein, although very noisy, it is more or less decent. At least in comparison with the Duma.

On Rubinshtein there are mainly restaurants and bars (some democratic, and some with very impressive prices). And on Dumskaya, a series of cheap, tiny (by the standards of the genre), but still nightclubs lined up in a line. With dance floors and sometimes even stages.

In the very center, a stone’s throw from the Kazan Cathedral, almost every night a real nightmare happens near these establishments. Endless fights, dirt and screams of visitors that spill out of these clubs, bringing to the threshold everything that splashes out of them. Inside there is trash and waste, people inhaling something from the balls, young girls dancing on the bar counters, who, sometimes taking off absolutely all their clothes, can fall from this bar. Telegram even has separate channels that publish videos of all of the above, filmed exclusively on Dumskaya. Everyone knows about it, but few people like it. Except for regulars and brave and desperate tourists. On the other hand, Dumskaya in this form is already part of the image of today’s St. Petersburg. Unpleasant, but part, says the guide Anna Soboleva:

“Of course, this place is very significant for St. Petersburg, youth, I would say, informal. But, to be honest, I have been there more than once – it’s scary to be there unaccompanied. Similar places, you know, in St. Petersburg, as always, something closes, and something opens. They will carry out some cleaning, some restructuring, and all this will open again. ”

Question: in what form? Can something decent, calm and safe open in the place of these establishments? The founder of the St. Petersburg “Ryumochnaya on Borovaya” Andrey Kobzarenko is sure that it is not:

– On Dumskaya, everything was always happening, you don’t understand what. My personal opinion: this kind of establishments should be somewhere on the outskirts, and not in the city center. In general, and God be with him. If there is culture and order and interesting authentic establishments, then thank God.

– What are the chances that some new bars will be opened, indeed, and of a more decent nature?

– You know, looking at how the leadership of our city generally treats our city – none.

– That is, everything will open back, as it was?

— Yes, of course, absolutely.

In St. Petersburg, this is really difficult. Suffice it to recall the pandemic, when bars and restaurants were supposed to close by decision of the authorities. But on the same relatively quiet Rubinstein Street, many establishments did not just work in a semi-legal mode (when everyone knew about it), some bars openly challenged the authorities and united in the so-called resistance card, saying out loud that they were not planning to close. The security forces came there and sealed the doors, then the owners came and broke the seals. The leader of this resistance movement, businessman Alexander Konovalov, was even arrested in 2022. True, in a completely different way. The case is related to bribery. But at the beginning of this year, the measure of restraint for the businessman was changed to house arrest.

And the chairman of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers Sergey Mironov, given the specifics of business and government relations in the Northern capital, also thinks that this raid will not bring drastic changes:

“We have all the legislation for this, all the rules for this. Everything is. The issue is the presence or absence of control. There is no need to change anything legally. Well, there is a bar on the street, it has opened. There is some district police officer, there is some department that belongs to him. Why is (it closed) twenty times? Why not one when the problems started? There are more questions than answers.”

It turns out that with the fact that in St. Petersburg – to drink, apparently, Peter to live …