The Russian boneless.

Considering that 15 years ago the Russians were molding their own skateboard trucks out of iron and sharing a hand-full of Ron Knigge's discarded New Deal everslicks among the entire nation, you can't really hold it against them that they can't be credited with much trick invention. Even the much-heralded Russian Boneless (demonstrated here by Carroll) was actually first revealed to the skate world by Per Welinder, a Swede. I'm not sure if Per named it himself (though, if he did it probably would have been called something like the "Per Plant" such was the ego-heavy style of the day), but it was a pretty advanced boneless as those things go. No, it was probably his severe Aryan crew cut and headband, not unlike Rocky IV's Soviet-engineered arch-enemy Ivan Dragoff, that made the kids at home conclude that Per was a Russian, and so was his fabulous new foot plant variation.

UNLIKE IN THE UNITED STATES where people are programmed to smile and mug when you point a camera at them, in Russia people will just stare you down or scowl. It makes for some great photos, all those weird looking kids gazing at you in disgust. A lot of people have gold teeth, too--and not the rapping kind, the kind you have when your teeth are truly rotten. It all makes for some truly epic photography. Throw some boners in the mix and I bet Ed Templeton would move there.

In addition to not smiling for the camera, employees of restaurants, shops and hotels feel no pressure to smile for their customers or to even be remotely pleasant. You'd pay for your beer or whatever and the person behind the counter would push the change at you and look away, frowning. Apparently it's a tradition left over from the days of Communism, when doing really shitty at your job was the only way to safely express yourself. As Americans, we are used to people having to pretend to be nice to us when we buy something from them, and it took a little getting used to having them honestly not giving a shit if we bought the damn bag of Doritos or not.

One day the dudes had a demo at a large indoor skatepark, which, in classic foreign distributor form, turned into not only a demonstration, but also an amateur contest in which the guys were required to act as judges. The team took it in stride, as usual, but there was some controversy when Carroll got a little confused on the scorecard. While everyone else was using a zero-to-100 system, with 100 being the highest score, Mikey chose to score in reverse, ie, 100 being the lowest score. When pressed on his technique, all he could say was, "Well, I figured first place should get a one, so the lower the score, the higher the placing."

This could have been one of those irregularities that get swept under the rug, but unfortunately the score sheets were pasted on the wall for all to see. Even more unfortunately, Mikey chose to write Rick's name on the top of his sheet, which might explain why one kid, who had pulled flawless kickflip boardslides on the rail in both runs but failed to make the cut, stormed over and spiked his board angrily on the ground right in front of Rick. Did I mention that the supposed prize for the winner was sponsorship by Lakai?

We flew to St Petersburg on a plane that looked like it had been retired by TWA in 1972. We boarded from a ladder stuck out the rear to enter a cabin with super-high ceilings, wooden paneling, and possibly even chandeliers. The foldout tray tables were made of wood--and I think it had a smoking section.

Unlike the St Petersburg in Florida, the Russian one is extremely beautiful and built along a series of intersecting rivers lined with grand buildings, including the Hermitage, a gilded palace home to a good portion of the world's most precious artwork. In St Pete we had a new driver, Arthur, a stern man with a pencil mustache and driving gloves who didn't allow us to open the doors ourselves. But what he lacked in hospitality his van more than made up for with its in-cabin microphone, which we used one evening in a spontaneous open-mic-style session. Marc beat boxed, I tried to tell jokes, and we entertained ourselves while our Russian hosts looked at us like we were retarded.

Early on in the discussion of the Russia trip, Dimitry had asked Kelly if we might be interested in meeting Marilyn Manson while we were in St Petersburg. "Well, YEAH!" Kelly immediately replied, and within the group there was quite a bit of talk about and anticipation for our supposed meeting with the god of fuck.

Closer to the date, our dinner with Marilyn Manson (which we had evolved it into) was replaced with free tickets to see the techno band Prodigy--that one with the dude with the Bozo the Clown Mohawks and the pierced nose. It was a nice consolation prize, but the only one really excited about it was Ty, who many will recognize as the man who brought electronica to skateboarding. "Oh yeah. I think after this show you are all gonna be big fans," he told us. "You guys are gonna trip on this!"

Though Ty slugged it out in the pit for a few numbers, the rest of us posted up in the well-lit beer garden area just outside and watched the techno sweat hogs pile in and out. Afterwards we came upon an impromptu go-kart track set up in the parking lot and paid our 500 rubles each to drunkenly slam a couple of rattle-trap karts around the precariously-placed lines of tires. It was great, as if someone had just sat around and thought, "Shit, I bet if we got three go-karts and about 200 tires we could have ourselves a goddamn business!" There are a lot of reasons why Russia can be described as the Mexico of Europe--the corruption, the pollution, the packs of wild dogs--and things like that go-kart track make the comparison both apt and extremely positive. After the races we were off to a party that Dimitry had organized for us. But before we headed out, JB and some of the other single dudes spotted some curious looking gals milling around the van, and despite Albina's repeated orders of "Guys! No girls!" they were eventually coaxed on board--only to get immediately scared and jump back off.

"C'mon ladies! What more could a couple of teenage girls want than to be in a van with five 30-year-old dudes, a crazy looking drunk guy with a red beard, and a horny Frenchman?"

One thing that you really appreciate when traveling outside of the United States is the overwhelming power of atmosphere. Not to say that bar at Bennigan's isn't a magical place, but it sort of pales in comparison when you venture into the bowels of some ancient building to get to a hidden club in Europe or Russia. At the party we were escorted to a special upstairs zone overlooking the bar and dance floor and a giant box of assorted liquor was parked in front of us. I never went on any of those DC Supertours so it all seemed quite generous to me. A few creative cocktails later and the single dudes were clinging to the back fat of some local gals, while Rick, Ty and I hit the smoke-machine-enhanced techno dance floor. You should have seen us when the strobes were going. We were on fire! Every so often, however, the normal lights would come on and our true form was revealed--like two hopped-up Randy Quaids and a Rick Moranis. You may get to see it in some bizarre Russian DVD, as the Fox filmed the entire thing. Regardless of my lack of dance floor presence, after being rebuffed by Marc and prematurely manhandled by JB, a maybe-18-year-old girl was practically trying to crawl up and sit in my lap.

"I'm 32 years old!" I told her, "And married!"

"I don't think so," she laughed back in my ear. "I think maybe you are age 25 or 23!"

"Yes, but you being a really bad judge of a person's age doesn't change the fact that I have a wife," I told her. She just smiled and laughed.

"I don't like your friends," she pouted. "They are mean. But maybe you dance with me."

At this point I think she may have thrown a leg up on me.

"I think you dance with me," she laughed. "You are a good friend to me!"

As I was pushing her off and she was simultaneously trying to get her other leg up, I had what recovering alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity: maybe there was something more than my dancing skills and boyish good looks attracting this girl. Maybe there was some other explanation why, in a page from an eighth-grade, math-class fantasy, I was fighting a high school cheerleader off my lap. I'd seen the battle axes working the dingy hotel bar, but they were all 50'ish tanks with way too much make-up sitting at tables waiting to suck you in with their filthy gazes. This delicate flower was nothing like them. Could she be? No! Yes? Well, it would explain a lot.

"Wait a second!" I said as I pulled her hands from around the back of my neck. "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but are you a hooker?" She pretended not to hear and kept bouncing her head along to the music.

"See that guy?" she asked, pointing to a dude standing alone along a wall. "He likes me, but I don't like him."

"Yes, but are you a prostitute?" I asked.

"I love this song!" she said in my ear.

At this point I knew I had to take action. Kelly happened to walk by and I grabbed him.

"This is my friend Kelly," I told her as he stood by confused, "I really want you to meet him."

"It's OK for you if I meet him?" she asked coyly.

"Oh yes," I said plainly, "because you and I are just friends." And with that I was done with either my first contact with a hooker or a very friendly and confused Russian girl.

I rounded up Rick and Ty and we grabbed a taxi. A few blocks away Ty remembered he was supposed to tell Mikey when he was leaving, so he jumped out at a light to walk back to the club. Then, as Rick and I were speeding safely back to the hotel, Ty got beat up and robbed by two 19-year-old Russian cops. "They just mowed me down from out of nowhere!" he later reported. They knocked him to the ground, roughed him up a little bit and then emptied his pockets, taking his money and phone before handing him back his passport. Finally, some real Russian danger like I'd heard about!

THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE a shop appearance in St Petersburg, which, in predictable form, had been advertised to the kids as a game of SKATE where they would be invited to compete against the Lakai team. When we showed up, however, it quickly disintegrated into the dudes skating around in a big parking lot with packs of 15- to 45-kids following each of them with camera phones, razor tails and magic markers aimed directly at their eyeballs. This was followed by an amateur contest and finally a demo, where the guys contended with some very challenging obstacles, including a novice Russian tapper milling around the course with a cordless mic while his DJ scratched and screeched at mind-scrambling decibels.

Despite its turbulent history, Russia's present-day teens seem remarkably normal and average. Though I'm pretty sure most of the skate kids we saw were from the more upper-middle-class families, language aside, they seemed almost the same kind of kids you'd meet at a demo in Des Moines, Iowa--fiddling ceaselessly with cell phones and iPods, desirous of free merchandise, wishing they had something to smoke, etc. A few of the kids were riding broken boards that had been sawed clean at the break and repaired by patching the two pieces together with a chunk of another broken deck (just like kids in South America make), but other than that things seemed largely on the up-and-up.

Though skateboarding in Russia might be slightly behind the rest of the West, it's light years from where it was before the fall of the Soviet Union. Dimitry, who is in his mid-to-late 30's, told me some great stories about thrashing behind the Iron Curtain as a kid.

"I knew every skater in all of Russia," he explained, "and everyone would know if someone got a new board."

Standard gear in those days was either crude handmade boards and trucks--"good for one day skate!"--or the few US-made boards that tourists brought in with them that were skated until they were splinters. And can you even begin to imagine making your own trucks?

"In USSR, a kid could ride a set of Powell wheels for a year and then sell them to another kid for 60 dollars US!" he said. Even tennis shoes were a luxury item, the only type available being cheap knock-off Chuck Taylors that were provided, like everything, by the state. If, by some miracle, you were able to save up enough money, the only way to get more modern sneakers was to buy them directly off a tourist's feet.

"I give 50 dollars and they walk home to hotel in their socks," he explained.

At age 19 Dimitry was even able to travel to the United States, when taking such a trip was as exotic as twoply toilet paper. To prepare for the voyage, he spent several months wandering out to the local Soviet military bases and begging for or buying bits and pieces of the soldier's uniforms, weapons, and medals.

"All the officers would sell;" he explained, "was only way for them to make money."

Once stateside, he took his haul, which included full flight suits and uniforms, to Army Surplus stores where the shocked hobbyists shelled out over four grand for his treasure. He then used the cash to pay for the trip and buy as much skateboard equipment as he could carry He and his friends rode the boards for the next several years.

"What did they say when you got back from California?" I asked him.

He thought about it for a second and then looked up, eyes wide, as though he'd just considered it for the first time.

"They couldn't believe it," he told me, laughing. "It was like I was a Cosmonaut! Going to California was like going to outer space!"

Now that would make a good movie.