"Let the Universe figure it out"

The artist Nelson, a good symbol of St. Petersburg, leaves the city. He was deprived of housing - a small closet in the basement

Nelson Iskandaryan, the most famous St. Petersburg street artist, poet and musician, 12 years inhabited in a small basement on Petrogradka, in May the city authorities decided to evict from the closet. Her owner, having made several unsuccessful attempts to preserve housing, decided to leave everything and leave Petersburg, taking only a guitar with him, a dog Volchka (tossed with a puppy), a cat Milka (born in the basement) and Vorona Vasilisa (a sick bird, incapable of flying, selected on the street).

The dungeon is promised

- The purpose of your visit? - Nelson asks with pretense seriousness, as soon as we opened a wooden gate (on one side it is written “inhale”, on the other - “exhale”), we go down one and a half meters underground.

Before they stepped over the threshold of the basement, the goal was one - to do everything so that the bard and the artist were not kicked out of here so that the city would not lose it. However, in the basement of house No. 8 on Polozova Street it becomes clear: these 16 square meters contain too much to limit themselves to such a small goal ...

Nelson's basement is stylized for a regular well -maintained apartment. There is an entrance hall (area of ​​1 sq. Meter) and a shower combined with a toilet (also about 1 sq. Meter), Raven Vasilisa lives here. Next - a kitchen with a sink, stove and refrigerator. A study where the owner has a workbench on which he makes something made of wood. The “heart” of the dungeon is a living room, and it is a bedroom where the most expensive is stored - a guitar and a computer on which in recent years he records the texts of his songs (there are more than two hundred of them).

Everywhere - from floor to ceiling - with the paint weatered quotes. First of all, everyone who included reads the saying of Nelson: "Life is not equal, but fair." On the ceiling above the bed in large letters - “UFO”, “vanity” and “energy”. Near the wall: “God is not destined”, “any, but not everyone”, “thought, the most expensive”, “who understood life is in no hurry”, “laziness grief”, “faith in oneself”, “time dictates the events in which we will determine”, “our salvation is an earthquake”, “there is nothing more important than ourselves” ... all the objects of the interior (lamps, hours, hours, hours, hours, hours, hours, hours, hours, hours Souvenirs) are unusual, and everyone came here in an unpredictable way.

“I live without complaints about anyone,” says 63-year-old Nelson. - I studied from this. I had the only claim -

To be in the quality in which I liked to be: for the good of people. I cannot exist differently. I was doing this every day: I made good out of good. It was my goal.

I thought this is the status in which I can live ... Different people come to me: both businessmen are cool and outcasts. They come and behave here completely naturally - with respect and respect. Already some kind of genetic code has formed: Nelson is a good dude who has served, but now lives like everyone would like ...

But suddenly it turned out that not everyone wants to live like that, and not everyone needs good, beauty and good.

"Portal of the Earth"

A boy from an Armenian family, born in 1959 in the Azerbaijani city of Kirovobad (now - Ganja), became Nelson with the light hand of his aunt - a woman with the character of the commander. When the Great Patriotic War began, the aunt turned 17 years old, her parents went to the front, and she replaced her father and mother to the younger brothers and sisters.

- And after the war, when the brothers and sisters acquired children, Aunt, by the right of the eldest, designated all her nephews. We have Hamlet, Felix, and Lenin in our family, ”Nelson laughs, who was honored to bear the name of the British admiral. By the way, on the roof of his basement, he built an impromptu “deck” with a flag, an ass and a chair in which Milka was naughty on sunny days.

Nelson dreamed of Leningrad even when he had not seen the city even in the photo, but only heard about it.

“I grew up in a military town where people from all over the Soviet Union lived,” Iskandaryan spreads his hands wide. - There I had a friend - Andrei from Leningrad, we studied together from the first grade. He left for a vacation to St. Petersburg, and when he came, he began to boast: “I saw Aurora, I saw the blossoms ...

And I was directly drawn to this city. As a child, I could not correctly pronounce the word "Leningrad", said: "Lengagrad."

The wives of the officers were often bored with me: “When you grow up, where will you go”? And I thought: now I will say "Leningrad"! But I didn’t succeed, I again issued Lengagrad, and they laughed.

The bard begins to play the guitar (from the very beginning of the conversation he did not let her out of his hands) and hum: “ Fontanka, washing and channels, Neva and Ladoga arrogance ... Portal of the earth, the soul of the planet, the dream of great Peter ... ” This is one of the dozen songs of Nelson dedicated to St. Petersburg.

He moved to the city of dreams immediately after the army. At first he lived in a student dormitory with friends, then he took off the house in the suburbs, then married. The wife worked in the hospital, from which the newlyweds were given a room. And then the second - two daughters were born in the family.

"Border" to Siberia

By that time, Iskandaryan earned good furniture on the repair of furniture, became a red -ruled person. But it was precisely the passion for money, which took possession of the man in the 90s, which led him to the scaffold.

“I was very grip,” says Nelson, “and if somewhere some interesting topic arose regarding cash dividends, I immediately fit.” Well, he finished that he ended up there ( in the colony. - N.P. ).

He daringly and got into prison at the age of 40.

The deadline for robbery was sent to Siberia.

“The irony of fate,” he smiles, “I really wanted to get to Siberia to prison.” When I read about Grishka Rasputin, I thought: what are the conditions there should be so that such a jigsaw is born, a fraudster, but with very strong brains? In Siberia, I haped in full! - sharply changes his tone and claps his knee Nelson. - It’s just unimaginably, nowhere else I would have received such qualities. No! In this life, nothing just happens, and in vain either.

In prison, Nelson began keeping a diary that he still stores.

“This diary is a very valuable thing,” the artist extracts a small thick book, painted with clumsy handwriting from some kind of procurement. -I recall the condition in which I wrote then, and I have some kind of source of forces ... That condition-you are waiting for liberation at the stop. You have a term as a press over your head.

But I rethought everything so much, rebooted on a different way of life that it became much easier for me than everyone else to sit in that camp.

Iskandaryan spent 8 years in the colony. In 2009 he freed himself and returned to Petersburg. During this time, the wife managed to divorce him and sell the apartment with him. After that she and both daughters left to live abroad.

Go and with music!

Getting free, Nelson rented a room from a friend and took up a scrap metal.

- In Petrogradka, then the housing removed the old fences from kindergartens. They had to take them out and dispose of them. I took everything from them, carried away, handed over, earned normally.

For two years, at a hard work, the man tore his back and was already thinking of changing something in life. But the changes happened by themselves.

“There was my friend Vitka on Sytninskaya Street,” Nelson recalls. - I went to him. And suddenly a guitar appeared from somewhere there. Someone left. I took her, played something, and Vitka (he died in the Donbass on February 2) gave the guitar.

Nelson learned to play the guitar as a child, but was seriously carried away by music only from that moment. He began to compose and record the first songs. Creative impulses and “drove” the musician into the basement.

- I sang and played. And the acquaintance, in whom I lived at that time, mocked me. And I so wanted to get out anywhere and do what I want so that no one would hear me!

I also, when I was in the “zone” (I already knew about this basement), I thought that I would take here to the extreme and I would do what I was doing. And this will ride in any way, because it will be for the good of people.

Temple of Songs

Iskandaryan moved to the basement of house number 8 on Polozova Street in 2011.

“Any junk was stored here: plastic pipes, a wardrobe from the garbage dump and a lot more,” the owner of the closet lists. - Everything is in the mud and dust. In two days I threw everything and started repairs. At this house, the roof was then repaired. The building materials, the boards were lying to a fig, the repairmen shared with me.

I painted the walls at night. I painted it. When three weeks later, the housing entered the basement, they did not understand where they were going?

From improvised materials, Nelson made shelves, tables, bed. I collected all the interior items (from the alarm clock to the refrigerator) as I have to, I got a lot in restoration workshops. But most of the things were given to him by Petersburgers.

- They still drag me a lot. Sometimes they bring such valuable things!

Nelson turned the basement not into a place of residence, but immediately into a local attraction. He called him "The temple of the song." Here, on a homemade sofa, on the first sheets of paper, the musician wrote poetry (the manuscripts carefully stores the manuscripts) and selected notes to them.

- My songs flew off simply, just have time to write down. Then I had no where and on what to print. Later, they gave me all this technique ( computer and printer. - N.P. ).

The absence of the printer played a role in the fate of the musician. Eight years ago, he found a printing house on Petrogradka, where it was possible to print texts for free.

“I always said to everyone: I need a woman no higher than one and a half meters,” telling this story, a person with a height of 176 cm shows a squat, vaulted ceiling, because of which he is forced to constantly bend when walking. -And in that printing house a Liliput woman worked on Lakhtinskaya Street, she was about 40 years old, but she looked! - Nelson squeezes his fist and raises his thumb up. - 1 meter 42 cm tall and so pretty! The name was Masha. I fell in love with her, I fell in love! I could not throw it out of my head. And once he decided. I say: “Masha, I will meet you today after work. I spend. You don't mind? " And she liked it. She saw that I was in love, lost my head. I met her-and with her came from "Petrograd" to "Chkalovskaya", and it was something!

I changed the gait 150 times. I did not know how to go with her! I was afraid to break. He thought to himself: fool, what am I doing?! I did not know how to express feelings, and rolled a song. Not about Masha, about flowers. I gave her flowers. This was my first recognition of love in life ...

"I am nobody, I live in the basement"

Iskandaryan tried to secure the right to the basement. Back in 2011, he asked the deputy Vyacheslav Makarov for help. He instructed his subordinates to deal with the issue.

-They called me somewhere, they talked about this basement so that they would not be pulled. In short, they stood up for me. They didn’t touch me for many years, ”Nelson sums up.

And he himself, having completed the improvement of the closet, went beyond its borders - into the courtyard, which received the name from him - “imaginarium”. In this courtyard, an artist woke up in Petrogradka in a musician. The walls of the house on Polozova Street, 8, and several more adjacent to it were soon decorated with bright graffiti. Then the master built a children's playground and installations from old cars, bicycles, discarded things (mirror, table, disk telephone) and soft toys on a patch between the houses. Not only mothers with children, living nearby, but also people from all over St. Petersburg, were drawn to the courtyard-to get acquainted with the author of the street art.

Today, Nelson’s court is in the international tourist base. Guests from London and Berlin came here. The plots of NTV, RTR and the first canal were filmed about him.

Hundreds of links to information about this place fall on the Internet request, it became a landmark in the city. Iskandaryan, whom the Petersburgers nicknamed the “soul of the courtyard”, of course, cunning when he says:

“I did not make any efforts to make the courtyard Nelson.” Who am I? I am nobody, I live in the basement. It’s just wherever I find myself, I always decorated everything around me. I like it so much. But someone-no. Let the universe figure it out ...

Ours more

The first anonymous complaints about the Bard and the street artist, who received in 2017 to the portal of our Petersburg, were too earthly. But then the cellar tenant was not touched. The following evil letters flew to the district administration in November 2019.

The Iskandaryan himself is sure: the nurses are scribbled by the neighbors from the nearest houses who are dissatisfied with the frequent and loud children's laughter in the yard, the visits of citizens and tourists, and simply with their dull boring life.

- The same write the same. Those who want me to stay here do not write anything, unfortunately. If they wrote, they would be a hundred times more. But they do not do this.

In 2019, district officials responded to denunciations and rushed into the courtyard.

“Then the head of the Petrograd district, Ivan Gromov, came here for the first time with his retinue - 15 people,” says Nelson. - They walked around the entire perimeter, looked, came up to me, I stood with a brush. Gromov says: “There are four of them, complainants, and more of us. Forward!" I replied: "Hockey"! And a year and a half I have not heard anything against my affairs ...

Coordinated by the pogrom

But it was a lull. Unkind neighbors, according to Nelson, threatened him to turn to all instances - up to the presidential administration. What threats they embodied is unknown, but in the summer of 2020 the courtyard on Polozov Street was almost destroyed.

First, cars were taken away from here, destroying part of the famous art object. Then the numerous graffiti began to paint over. The media inquiries about what is happening in the district administration then answered: “Graffiti at the specified address are painted on the basis of the order of GZHI ( state housing inspectorate. - N. p .) And citizens' appeals. Graffiti was not agreed with KGA ( Committee on Urban Planning and Architecture. - N.P. ) and the owners of the apartment building. ”

- And it rushed! They painted over there, painted here, - Nelson's voice trembles, he cannot restrain himself now. - In fact, I arranged such a garden here, and they ( complainants. - N.P. ) began to enrage.

Envy. Envy is the main thing that was gloomy. How so: a homeless person, climbed into the basement, lives on a freebie?!

Iskandaryan really does not receive receipts: they cannot be - the room is non -resident. Electricity was carried out from some common shield. Where the cold water comes from, the housing themselves cannot understand.

For a long time, fans of his work did not allow the artist to grieve for the loss of street “relics”.

“After the cars were removed and graffiti painted up, a businessman came to me on Renge Rover and brought six buckets of paint, tinted,” Nelson smiles again. - He said: "If necessary, turn around." I wanted to sponsor me. I replied: thanks for the paint, but I have everything.

Gradually, the master restored some wall drawings. But today there are very few graffiti in the courtyard, only in a few houses. The rest now live only in photographs.

Whose basement?

Back in 2019, district officials figured out how to fix the right of Iskandaryan on paper to live in the basement.

“They held a general meeting of the inhabitants of the house that are owners, and this property (basement) also belongs to them, and the owners voted that they did not mind living here,” Bard explains. - And at the end of last year, either the revision, or the commission was on all the basements, and it turned out that this room belongs not to the residents, but to the city. He was transferred to the Petersburg Committee on Property Control (KKI).

In February, Nelson flew a notification of the "illegal unauthorized lesson of the object of non -residential fund owned by the city."

The authorities demanded to free the square until May 15. They warned that if the self -reader does not evict himself, then the room would be released forcibly.

Iskandaryan turned to the head of the district for help, but he only spread his hands and sent him to KKI. There, a walker painted disappointing prospects.

The “new” in the city property control committee reported that officials have species for the basement in the prestigious area: “In the near future, this premises are planned to be involved in commercial circulation.” There it was also possible to find out that the cadastral value of the closet with an area of ​​16 square meters - 646 thousand rubles. But in the St. Petersburg Fund of Property, prices for such premises start from 1.9 million rubles. According to experts, if such a gateway is leased, then the monthly fee will be 30 thousand rubles at least.

- Money? Sometimes I have them, - Nelson grins. - People go, put on the table. It is written on the wall: "There is no money." But they already put it. 1000, 500 rubles, someone-100 ... I say: take it, do not. And they: "This is not for you, it is a dog, it is a Vorone, a cat." Okay, well, God with him ...

I have not been friends with money for a long time and I do not want to be friends with them. Good people bring everything to me: things, and eat - and I, and the top, and Milke, and Vasilisa.

Delians sometimes come to agree to take excursions here for money. I refuse: just come, show. I will have a mood, I will go out, I will play the guitar. All. Nothing else.

"We are looking for a way out"

By mid -May, Iskandaryan realized that he had exhausted all the options to stay in the basement and in St. Petersburg and decided to leave the city. I was going to Crimea. Already agreed with the family who agreed to accept the guest with all his menagerie.

- I was really going to blame. Friends carry a humanitarian from St. Petersburg to the Crimea, all sorts of cargo. I wanted to go with them. I would only take a crow, cat, dog, computer and guitar.

Нельсон признается, что поначалу, думая об отъезде, потерял сон, болело сердце. Тяжело было расставаться.

— А потом, — рассказывает он, — я отдал рыбок ( у художника был аквариум. — Н. П. ), вентилятор, электрическую мясорубку (мне подарила творческая группа из Петергофа, я котлеты себе жарил). Уже отдавал холодильник и принтер. Много чего пораздавал, и прямо боль от меня отлетала. Когда отдаешь, от чего-то освобождаешься. И я понял: надо от всего избавляться. У меня даже настроение поднялось… И вдруг — ба-бах! За пару дней до отъезда приходит моя знакомая и говорит, что обратилась к вице-губернатору Петербурга Борису Пиотровскому, и он подключился к решению моего вопроса. Городские начальники взяли паузу, чтобы я оформлял подвал.

Нельсон в тот же вечер нашел страницу чиновника в соцсети «ВКонтакте» и в личном сообщении поблагодарил за поддержку. «Уверен, что всё, созданное во благо, приносит свои позитивные плоды, и народная молва тому подтверждение», — написал Искандарян. Через четыре минуты Пиотровский ему ответил: «Очень жду, когда проблемы решатся. Спасибо за ваше терпение».

«Новая» обратилась к Борису Пиотровскому с вопросами: как продвигается оформление подвала на улице Полозова, 8, чем Смольный готов помочь Искандаряну? Вице-губернатор ответил коротко:

«Сейчас правительство города совместно с уличным художником работает по решению сложившейся ситуации. Мы ищем выход. Пока рано делать какие-либо заявления».

Шампанское настроение

Едва весть об отъезде Нельсона облетела город, петербуржцы бросились помогать ему с переездом. Чтобы собрать деньги на дорогу и проживание на Тавриде барда и его зверей, в мае устроили музыкальный фестиваль с говорящим названием — «На дне», где выступил Искандарян. Да и просто скидывались понемногу, чтобы поддержать.

— Когда меня отсюда выселять собирались, мне накидали средств выше крыши, — Нельсон поднимает руку над головой. — Кто-то «пятерку» дал, кто-то тысячу, кто-то 20 баксов. Еще и за концерт прилетело 6 тысяч рублей. Короче, всего набралось 17 тысяч! У меня сейчас их нет. Я, когда понял, что остаюсь, то всё раздал, с огромным удовольствием! — Вздыхает облегченно. — Дианка, соседка, девочку родила, я ей пять тысяч подарил, в конверте «для молодых мам». Еще пятерку одной многодетной семье отдал. Девчонка в Брест уезжала. Пришла ко мне в гости. Я говорю: у тебя деньги есть? Она: «у меня есть билет». And the money? Я ей три тысячи последние всучил. Осталось у меня 600 рублей. Я купил бутылку шампанского за 300 рублей и упаковку конфет за триста. Я вообще стараюсь не пить, у меня уже возраст — 63 года. Но в тот невероятный день шампанское настроение было! Пока я шел до себя с бутылкой этой, детишкам по дороге конфеты раздавал и чувствовал себя самым счастливым человеком.

Saint Petersburg