1993-1997 — Club 011

Vlado Ostoić:
"I came to Moscow at the turn of 1992-1993, right around the time "011" opened. Actually I needed to visit my father, who was in Russia at the time, and I originally flew in for just two weeks. But Dan and Brana, students at Moscow's VGIK, my friends and the owners of "011", persuaded me to stay.
He was just then busy opening the club and knew that in Belgrade I had tried my hand as a DJ and promoter of private parties. Back then it was more of a hobby, a kind of amusement; I never thought at the time that it could grow into a serious business. He found premises on Mayakovka and invited me to work on this project. That's how "011" came to be.
These days many people confuse two different establishments — the restaurant "011" and the club of the same name. The restaurant appeared much later and in a different place, whereas our club was precisely a club: it worked two days a week, was oriented towards dancing, and the only food we had was sandwiches.
"011" was built on principle as an intimate venue. We understood perfectly well that at the time you could hardly fill a large space with the right crowd — Moscow was simply not ready for it. We aimed at expats, at a fairly narrow circle of people who could correctly grasp the rules of the game. All the more so since in the realities of early-90s Moscow we had nowhere to go. We ran into the typical problems of a transitional period, and landed in that moment when the old structure had already collapsed and the new one had not yet been born. And what a club space is, how it's built and by what rules it lives, no one in Moscow really had any idea. In that sense "011" was a real breakthrough.
The name came about by itself — "011" is the telephone code of Belgrade. At first the main patrons were Yugoslavs, which is natural. At the time Yugoslavs had a reputation as fashionable guys, and soon the fame of "011" spread far beyond our diaspora. Americans and Englishmen started dropping in, later the Russians followed. Over time we got two real promoters, Jack and Ramon. They were quite colourful fellows, studying Russian in Moscow and looking great together — one white, one black. They were probably the first professional club promoters in Moscow, actively pulling their own crowd into the venue.
We had a face-control system, more out of necessity. The club was small, and the number of people wanting to get in grew larger every day. It happened that some 500 people would pass through "011" in a night. Friends pulled in friends, the audience kept growing, and this growth of the crowd somehow had to be controlled.
We never had any particular problems with gangsters. Of course, that crowd somehow seeped into "011", but they somehow assimilated on the dancefloor, and their behaviour didn't catch the eye. They were friends of friends, and there were always people who could rein in any skinhead.
I played as a DJ. Back then there was a serious shortage of musical material in Moscow, and to get hold of new releases I had to constantly shuttle to Yugoslavia. We played on cassettes, on MiniDiscs, later on CD and vinyl. The music was varied; at "011" European hits could follow trance and techno tracks. It was a kind of musical hodgepodge, but with drive. Yet all of it was unambiguously perceived as "011-style music", and people genuinely liked that mix. All the more so since in no other Moscow club did they play anything like it. At "Jump" and "U Lisa" the music was completely different, more commercial, whereas we championed, in a sense, an alternative.
It was a successful project. From every angle — both in business terms and in terms of the venue's overall atmosphere. I actually consider "011" the best club of my career, and repeating that success now is hardly possible. We took complete pleasure in the work and, on top of that, we saw a serious financial return.
"011" lasted four years and closed, as they say, in a single day. And the next day we were already opening Jazz Café. The reasons were banal. At that time all signed documents were a fiction, and even having a lease agreement guaranteed no peaceful operation of a venue. There were always some new authorities that tried to shut us down and, in the end, they succeeded. The club was located in the courtyard of a residential building, the residents were very unhappy with everything going on, so we had to move out. That's how an ordinary domestic squabble killed a very successful establishment."