The Muscovite went thick like a fish to spawn. Musicians and actors, ministerial and Kremlin officials, directors of parent companies - everyone is planning business trips to St. Petersburg for the White Nights. Vacation schoolchildren from Cheryomushki and Kuntsev clog McDonald's, students from the Russian State University for the Humanities and Moscow State University rush to "Tsinik" and Fish Fabrique, managers and their wives, having stood in line at the Kunstkamera in the morning, enjoy the risky jokes of Roman Trakhtenberg from "Hali-Gali" in the evenings. By Sunday, eight thousand Spartak fans are expected - the “people's team” is entering the next list with Zenit.
St. Petersburg has never been particularly considered a tourist city. Before the revolution, the idea of leisure travel was generally new: noblemen and merchants of the first guild went to Paris for an exhibition, traveling salesmen went to the provinces to distribute Singer sewing machines, religious people made pilgrimages to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra or to Valaam. They went to the capital of the empire to resolve matters: to give bribes in ministries, to place their son in the Corps of Pages, to receive a government contract.
In Soviet times, Muscovites came to St. Petersburg to hang out with fellow soldiers, see their beloved aunt, and walk around the Hermitage. The material difference between them and the Leningraders was not too noticeable; they settled with friends. Among the crowds of provincials with wallets, whose main goal on the banks of the Neva was raw smoked sausage, and Finns who wanted to slam a glass and attend the ballet, the residents of the capital were hardly distinguishable.
This summer is a turning point. And the love for the fatherland that awakened in Russians two years ago, and fatigue from the reefs of Hurghada and the bays of Limassol, and the powerful PR of the approaching 300th anniversary - everything worked in unison. Moscow suddenly perceived St. Petersburg as a wonderful place for a weekend getaway, a kind of Prague of the north, an inexpensive and pleasant summer adventure.
Muscovites find our prices ridiculous. They live in a different civilization. In fact, our level of consumption of any expensive products in relation to the Mother See is scanty. With approximately half the population, we eat only 17.9% of the meat consumed in Moscow, 13.1% of snacks, buy 2.6% of perfume, 6.1% of animal feed, and smoke 9.9% of cigars. In cheap product groups, the ratio changes: dumplings - 47.1%, margarine - 99.8%, vodka - 40.3%. The difference, of course, is not yet the same as between California and Mexico, but it already allows us to consider a trip to St. Petersburg as something reasonable from the point of view of saving the family budget. So Finns go to Estonia, Germans go to Poland.
St. Petersburg is becoming a fashionable city. The center where it is being renovated is already quite decent. Tsarskoe Selo and Peterhof are polished like Versailles. Guests do not wander into Kupchino and Grazhdanka. All the labels that were stuck on St. Petersburg - “cultural capital”, “Venice of the North”, “the most beautiful city in the world” - were suddenly noticed by the consumer and turned into brands. With the trips came an interest in real estate, a fashion for local rock bands, theaters, and publishing houses.
In political economy there is a term “natural rent” - income received not because of the labor invested, but due to a special geographical location. In the USSR, say, Georgian peasants had such a profit - in the absence of Lebanese and Greek mandarins, they felt like monopolists; Farmers from Cognac and oil workers from Surgut receive fertility rent.
Previously, nature was more of a hindrance to us: sinusitis, rain, floods, bridges being opened, December darkness, an angry mosquito in June. Today our delta, subpolar position, crumbling pre-revolutionary housing stock have finally begun to generate visible income, rent. Crowds of Muscovites, feeling St. Petersburg as a kind of new Serebryany Bor, promise advertising, investment, and an increase in the budget. Money to money; The earth is full of rumors. You see, soon it will become simply indecent not to visit St. Petersburg, not to have an apartment or dacha bought there in advance. Maybe something will happen to us too.

Newspaper "Kommersant St. Petersburg" No. 112 dated June 29, 2001, p. 4

St. Petersburg as Serebryany Bor