People and pigeons on the boardwalk, Brighton Beach 

The Starbucks in Brighton Beach, where people play chess and a poster on the wall describes what lattes, cappucinos, mochas etc. are in Russian 

Ida and Zoya sit under a sweet leopard-print umbrella near the boardwalk, Brighton Beach 

Fruit shopping in Brighton Beach. Just a few moments after I took this shot, the woman pictured ate whatever she was about to pick up and walked away 

For starters, Superpope

Read this.

It's just funny. I can't seem to get over my addiction to Yahoo! News. As a budding journalist I should probably try to start an addiction to a healthier news source, like, say, the Wall Street Journal. I do read The Times, New Yorker, Harper's and New York Magazine regularly, and I listen to NPR (my latest radio craze, though, is Democracy Now!) Still, Yahoo! News? I guess it's a good way to keep up to date on important events like the death of Hogzilla, the trial of Michael Jackson, and Heidi Klum's impending marriage to Seal. Or it's a waste of time, depending on how you look at it.

I received a wonderful compliment tonight from Wale, my Nigerian friend. He said if I were being married off in Kenya I might draw a dowry of one hundred cows. According to a girl who was intially told she would draw ten cows, I should be pleased with that assessment.

I think I played well last night at the Underground. I played two new songs, Ghost and Arthur. Another one started to brew in my head today as I was running. It was so nice outside, especially in Riverside Park. I had a nice long talk with Mara as we ran downtown, and stared at people as I ran uptown. I saw a homeless man with his socks full of holes, a couple sleeping head-to-head on a bench with one big hat over both their faces, readers, thinkers and kissers. I saw dogs of all shapes and sizes, and I saw a fat, neon-yellow snake wrapped around a guy's neck. I saw parents pushing kids in strollers and on swings, playing catch with them, eating ice cream and talking to other parents. I stared at the buildings on the other side of the water.

I can't believe I have to move away from this glorious place in less than two months.

Newsday story

This story of mine is in Newsday today. I really like the head they put on it: Lost in translation: Russian 'Harry Potter' mere muggle for some city immigrants, but magic for others

Because it's only live and free for a week, I'll paste it here...

On the cover of one book, Tanya Grotter rides a double bass and brandishes a bow. On another, an armor-clad Porri Gatter stands beside a dwarf with hairy feet. On still another, a Woody Allen look-alike named Parry Hotter runs from the gates of the Warthog Approved School of Magic and Wizardry.

In city neighborhoods populated by Russian immigrants, these characters compete with J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.

Mike Ize of Midwood is a passionate fan of the "Tanya Grotter" series, authored by Dmitry Yemets and published in Moscow by the Eksmo publishing house. He is not a bit put off by the charges of plagiarism and copyright infringement brought by Rowling and lawyers for Time Warner Entertainment, which were validated in November 2003 by a court in the Netherlands.

"They're great, and they're funnier than 'Harry Potter,'" said Ize, 42, as he flipped through a "Tanya Grotter" book at Mosvideofilm on Brighton Beach Avenue in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach.

"They are largely based on Russian folklore," he said. "Rowling was writing about magic characters that existed, before her time, all over Europe. Yemets did the same thing, but his characters existed only in Russian folklore."

Russian bookstores in Brighton Beach and Rego Park carry a Russian translation of Rowling's series on Harry Potter - or, as he is called in those books, Garri Potter. Lined up near them, in many stores, are parodies and spin-offs. The Belarussian "Porri Gatter" books and British "Parry Hotter and the Seamy Side of Magic" are among them.



Tangle over copyright

The court fight against a Dutch publisher that had planned to release a Dutch translation of "Tanya Grotter" was part of an effort to stop unauthorized versions of "Harry Potter," said Neil Blair, a lawyer and business manager for Rowling's British literary agent. During the legal battle, lawyers for the Dutch publisher, Byblos, unsuccessfully argued that the books were parodies. "We have taken considerable steps to protect J.K. Rowling's copyright both in the U.S. and elsewhere throughout the world," Blair wrote in a recent e-mail. "We believe, and the Dutch courts agreed, that the Tanya Grotter series is both copyright infringement and plagiarism."

It is legal for "Tanya Grotter" books to be sold, in their original Russian, in the United States, but the Dutch court's decision "has actually had the effect that no potential licensee has dared to bring a translation on the market," said Eric Keyzer, a lawyer in the Netherlands who worked on the case.

Such books have been available in New York's Russian communities for years.

"Everything that has a fair amount of readership in Russia makes its way to New York because there are enough Russian speakers around to want it," said Eliot Borenstein, chair of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University. "Russia has a huge reading public."

Borenstein said the Russian market for rip-off books is small compared with the market for more expensive fakes such as videos and CDs, but nearly impossible to control.

"In Russia, there is a long tradition of piracy and not respecting copyright," he said. "There's very little being done to stop it and very little that can be done to stop it."

Leo Gindel, 33, who owns Mosvideofilm at 227 Brighton Beach Ave., said the "Tanya Grotter" books have dipped below most of his customers' radar. "When they came out at first, people were buying them because they were curious," Gindel said. "Now they are not that popular."

He said the real Russian-language "Harry Potters" sell much better - so much better, he said, that his store was sold-out at the moment. (In fact, a lone copy of "Garri Potter i Kubok oknia" - "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - was hidden behind a row of Yemets' "Grotters.")

At a nearby bookstore called Dom Knigi Sankt Peterburg, saleswoman Svetlana Cheryachukina gestured toward a row of "Tanya Grotter" books and said, "We buy these books rarely. They're interesting, but I do not think they are popular."

Cheryachukina estimated that the store sells one to two "Tanya Grotters" each week, compared with a half-dozen Russian-translation "Harry Potters."

At another Dom Knigi farther down Brighton Beach Avenue, a manager named Oleg echoed those sales numbers. He would not give his last name.



The classics

In addition to being sold in stores, four of the "Tanya Grotter" books are in circulation at the Brooklyn Public Library.

On a recent Sunday at the Multilingual Center of the library's Central Branch, Tatiana Chkourenko, 23, who is Russian, knelt contemplatively in front of a shelf of Russian-language books.

After a few minutes, she pulled out a volume by Fyodor Dostoevsky. When it comes to Russian literature, she said, she reads the classics. She has not so much as glanced at Yemets' books. "Personally, I find it odd that people would be trying to expand on things from abroad or do spin-offs when they can come up with perfectly good ideas of their own," she said.

None of the copies can woo Tatyana Albert, 41, from "Harry Potter." She and her daughter, Aleksandra, 13, spent part of a Saturday browsing the Russian titles at Mosvideofilm. Albert said she has read Rowling's books in both Russian and English.

"She buys the books before they come out," said Aleksandra, who clearly is not a "Potter" devotee like her mom.

"I read all five of them," Albert said proudly. She said she has glanced through a few volumes of the "Tanya Grotter" series, and she spoke of them with disdain: "I think the copy is always worse than the original."
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