hello yello
Klub na Brestskoi has risen from the ashes under the new colorful name of Yello. Friendly staff, cheap drinks, a central location and agreeable dancefloor grooves are offset by a severe deficit of bathroom space. But nobody’s perfect.
PHOTO COURTESY OF YELLO / TEXT ROWAN KENNEDY feedback
SCENE: Where do you go if you’re a discerning arty type who’s outgrown the grinding, sweating meat markets beloved of Moscow students? Who likes to chill out in the company of other people with an expensively eccentric dress sense in a place that’s different enough to feel exclusive but won’t ravage your wallet? Yello aims to provide a solution. Right from the door, the atmosphere is unusually relaxed — they even get by without the neanderthal doormen. Instead, they prefer to rely on a hefty 400-ruble cover charge and the sheer impossibility of finding the place (the address is on 2-aya Brestskaya Ul., but you enter from 1-aya Brestskaya) to keep out the riff-raff. Although the club was short on staff when we visited, with both the bar and the cloakroom woefully undermanned, everyone who was working there was very friendly, and actually looked like they’d rather serve you a drink than bite your head off. Judging by its website, the club seems to do a lot of its business by staging private parties, concerts and arts events. So it’s got its artsy base well covered, which might help to explain some of the more outrageous outfits on display on the dance floor on Saturday. LAYOUT: Like its inexplicably truncated name, Yello has a distinctly unfinished feel to it. From the unpainted entrance corridor to the shambolic bathrooms, it gives the bizarre impression of being a place whose owners ran out of money during its construction but opened anyway. Although perhaps “repainting” would be more accurate than “construction”: Yello is the same venue that used to house Klub na Brestskoi, and unless my memory fails me, aside from a cursory cosmetic makeover not much has changed. The bar and the dance floor are embellished with a sort of technicolor bar-code pattern that seems to have been adopted as the club’s stylistic calling card. It’s nicely restrained and minimalistic, but otherwise nothing spectacular. GROOVE: Dropping in on Saturday night, we were treated to a mixed bunch of beats, ranging from poppy house and dancefloor classics to some slightly more interesting techy stuff as the night progressed, with several welcome excursions into breakbeat along the way. Marginally better than in your average Moscow club. PRICES: At 140 rubles for a half-litre of Baltika, 150 for a Red Bull and 260 for a whisky and coke, Yello is pricing itself at the reasonable end of the scale. There’s a short but comprehensive cocktail list featuring most of the favorites. Prices range from 150-300 rubles. BATHROOMS: Herein lies my biggest beef with Yello. Opening a 450-person capacity club with only two working toilets is idiotic, and results in filthy floors, dripping loo seats and lines longer than those outside a Murmansk brothel on sailors’ payday. A 20-minute wait to pee is nothing unusual here. Whoever’s in charge has obviously just failed to remember the golden rule that what goes in has to come out somewhere. If the toilet queue is your favourite place to hang out and make friends when you’re out at night (and this is very much a unisex toilet queue) then this could be the place for you. If, though, you prefer to spend your time drinking and dancing and hanging out at the bar like most people, you should think about getting a catheter inserted before you check this place out. HOURS: Open on Friday and Saturday only Exact opening and closing times vary depending on the event. | 
