Driving from the most northerly Baltic state capital Tallinn to Riga ’Jewel of the Baltic’s’ is 4 hours along new roads built with Brussels cash and backhanders. The landscape level, trees and then more trees it changes only a little when you cross the border between Estonia and Latvia. Snug in Schengen there are no grumpy border guards demanding papers. Things take a funny turn when you move between countries courtesy of the local law enforcement. Estonian cops drive unmarked Subaru, young energetic types, designer uniforms sometimes with a bottle blond co-pilot. Switch to the Latvian country cops, fat and shabby, sporting ill fitting food flecked uniforms hanging off stodgy bellies. They flag you down, behind an old Lada hidden in the shrubbery demanding €100 for speeding in ’town’, usually 2 or 3 houses spread over a km or so. In the back of a stale smelly car you can pass a 5 LAT note, €10 or even a crumpled 5 pound note (if you have nothing else) along with your license and they’ll kick you out of the car with a lop-sided grin, knowing their buddies are 20km down the road with the same routine. Official fines are rare up country, the police owed a small fortune in holiday pay, their salaries practically McWages you can hardly blame them.
Try the same trick with an übercop in Estonia and you receive the mech-warning, ’Our car has a built in camera, microphones, whatever you say is transmitted back to headquarters’. It takes 20 minutes write the ticket, receive a lecture and a €50 fine. Scando efficiency, officiousness and trendy outfits the hallmark of the most progressive new EU kid on the block.
On a sunny summer Saturday morning in Riga there was a new kind of cop on the beat – Riga’s riot police were out in force wearing elbow, shin, knee and chest plates, part man part robo turtle. The occasion? A dangerous collective of foreigners and local trouble makers, political activists and enemies of the state had taken to the street to march for their rights. Riga’s 3rd Gay Pride parade was in town, 300 plucky leather and rainbow clad locals bolstered by international gay stormtroopers keen to trumpet their rights and show solidarity in a country bristling hostile to queer. Central Riga was locked down as tight as Bush’s visit. 1000′s of cops huddled in vans or guarding streets to supervise the parade and the anti-parade. A parade not even public due to safety concerns and confined to a narrow strip of road in font of the river Daugavpils, and a few circuits of sealed off old town. Last year’s
Gay Pride parade was cancelled by worries about keeping participants safe. In 2006 an angry mob of 3000 showed up and counter demonstrated against the parade. Shit hit the fan and the parade (literally) in an event which shocked the liberal international community. This year everything is kept behind an iron fence, a line of police vans each side of the road and a chain of cops between them. Standing on the river bridge and you can make out some rainbow dots in the distance parading around a tiny enclosure.
“Fucking Zoo”, a heavily accented rabid faced young Latvian man screams and unfurls a home made banner continuing his tirade about aids, perversion, and how the tiny band in the distance are destroying the country. The parade can’t hear him but he is not the only voice, spread across the bridge stand a solid line of burly men and women holding sophisticated banners, wearing specially designed t-shirts, glassy eyed with rage they shout and rant at people nearly 1 km away. Then breaking into smiles as one new expletive after another is launched delighted with their visciousness. It’s an ice hockey match atmosphere with a carnival twist, – welcome to the haters ball. The counter-demonstration is highly organised, men on walky-talkies co-ordinating groups around town trying to find a way to
get closer to the parade. Many banners are also anti-foreigner adding to the hysteria as parade is fenced in by anti-parade surrounded by nervy riot cops on full standby. What to make of it all? Lots of back slapping and grinning accompanies the outrage as the anti-paraders charge around the city. Such a way to spend a sunny summer morning. Suits you sir! I wonder who picks up the bill.
Is life too serious to be taken seriously? Favourite animal is a dog, called Harry the Lurcher. Now somewhere in space.
Dive deeper:
divedivedive.org
Director Aliona Polunina's talks about her award winning film about revolutionaries in modern day Russia… Dive in
Tallinn, European City of Culture 2011, hosts Heliosphere, a psychedelic, experimental music and visual festival.… Dive in
For the third year running Docpoint Tallinn, a documentary film festival. Get edukated. Dive in
cops flags Gay homophobic hysteria Latvia madness parade police pride protest Riga riot
Wrought-iron gates, fences, railings
Our troop:
We are a junior, vibrant body with extensive experience blacksmith.
The kowalstwo artystyczne assembly’s collapse, our grandfather was absorbed in the Szczurek crafts and handicrafts from already performed in 1959. Therefore, in categorize not to lose the division convention, wrought also is the main quarry of our activity.
We profession according to our tender, and according to patient projects.
In casket if you would like we do or propose a cast, we are beneficial and unsettled to consultation.
We demand photographs and drawings of decorative elements, which you can ingest in their own project, railings, fences, bars or other.
Because a portion of exploit we do by way of help (fever, hammer, anvil), via our assembly you precious customers
accomplish the strangest, najwymyslniejsze patterns and structures.
