Tashkent Day Two

 With a gentle hangover I make my way to Yangiobod Bozor. I’m due to meet Asalya and her boyfriend, the helpful camera people I mentioned yesterday who have kindly offered to show me around the bozor and make sure I don’t get screwed. Yangiobod is on the outskirts of the city and the ride over is a long one. Sitting on the train I’ve devised a new theory of ‘civilized’ cultures. Any culture that can sustain upholstery on rapid transit is civilized. Uzbekistan 1, USA 0.

The Bozor is more chaotic still than Chorsu and Dalniy. For reasons beyond my comprehension people are trying to drive in and out of this dense cobweb of stalls. This means the bargaining in the Bozor is bookmarked by bargaining your way in and out. A cacophony of honking and shouting buzzes in the air as Ladas with toilets peeking out of their trunks and Damases loaded with people pass through each other like two opposing streams of water.

My two guides appear and we make our way over to hunt for cameras. None of them have been to this bozor before and just figuring out where to be in the crowded chaos is an art. Between the two of them they speak English, Russian, Uzbek, and Kazakh with smatterings of other things as you’d expect to see with a collection of that size. After a few conversations with random people we’re pointed first in a general direction, then to a building, then a booth. A middle aged man in a dark, cold warehouse stands guard over a mountain of cameras collecting dust. The majority of the rangefinder are made by FED. This means they were junk when new and age has not been kind. His wares are not ready to rock and we dig through the pile looking for something working. Failing that, I settle for a Zorki 4K in ‘it wants to work’ condition. Barring the self timer lever which is broken off, everything is ready to rock and it even has the original case. We settle on a price, about a tenth of what the same unit would go for stateside in good shape. A visit to another camera seller yields a wide angle lens. Job complete we exit the fray.

They ask where I’m staying and kindly offer to drive me back to my place. Partway over they’re kind enough to include me in their plans for the day. Head for the hills where the air is cleaner for some Turkish Kebab and a good view. We pile off into the sunset. He tells me about his work, an assistant director in the country’s budding film industry. With the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the cinemas in Uzbekistan were converted to other uses at the behest of the new government. Today, there are about two dozen or so movie theaters in the entire country. Naturally this has stunted the growth of the local film industry but things are starting to move. She’s from Kazakhstan and shares what brought her to Tashkent. Her love for film photography let her to do development in her home. She even went as far as getting her own enlarger set up to make prints. Through the small photo scene, she learned about a man in Tashkent who was setting up a commercial lab and went to work for him. Here we have our love story. Boy shoots film. Girl develops film. Boy thinks girl is cute. Boy is nervous and moves a little slower than girl might like. Girl catches on and tells him to just date her already. Timeless.

We get to the restaurant and enjoy a fabulous lunch which in spite of my protesting I was not permitted to pay for. I suppose if I see them in the states I’ll make it up. We continue on to a reservoir for a view and naturally, a photo op. In the car I’ve been fiddling with the stubborn Zorki and the sticky shutter is starting to loosen up, seems I might have to push some film through it while I’m here.

Of course there was a photo op

They drop me at my hotel and we say our goodbyes. After a brief (very brief) rest I change and head for the opera. There’s a lovely old theater here and I managed to snag a ticket to see a Pushkin novel set to music by Tchaikovsky. Not something you see in the states. The production was fantastic with excellent singing and a wonderful orchestra. Too often in the US these productions are whittled down to a barebones cast and recordings, not here. Well worth seeing.

Since it’s late and rainy, I decide to splash out a little and see what kind of car picks me up if I go for the Premier option in Yandex. It’s cheaper than riding the subway in New York, why not? A long black Hongqui glides in to pick me up. This thing is fantastic, the premier car brand of China that traces its lineage back to the limos that ferried around those ‘more equal’ than others. The US auto industry is planting its head in the sand by not competing in the EV space. The moment these things come to the states, and they will, we’re going to get our asses handed to us just like the Japanese did in the early 1970s.