1994 – Manhattan Express

Oleg Odzho:
«At that point I wasn't shy about playing house in all its variations. The owners of Manhattan Express liked that, and they invited me on as a resident. At the same time I held the position of art director and gradually began pulling my own people into the club. The first to come was Slava Finist. He started generating ideas for youth Mondays, and I handed that whole thing over to him, since I catastrophically couldn't keep up with even my own projects. Slava brought in Zhenya Zhmakin, and the two of them made a wonderful tandem. In 1994 the era of Manhattan Express and Happy Mondays began — very successful and buzzing parties. Gradually Fonar, Fish and Spider joined this project, and soon Happy Mondays were thundering all over the city.
Zhenya was the driving force of this series, and the whole thing rested entirely on his enthusiasm. He regularly travelled to London, bought vinyl by the crate and then sold it, or sometimes just gave it away to DJs. This was practically the only source for replenishing the vinyl collections of many Moscow DJs.
In principle, the club's budget was solid by the standards of the time. I spent four thousand dollars a month on DJs, and back then not every club could afford that. In general Manhattan Express was a very successful club. It was very ergonomically laid out. I really liked that there were no enclosed corners in it, it consisted entirely of passageways. You could stand at the bar and still be dancing. Many people who were shy about stepping onto the dancefloor did exactly that. It was total dancefloor democracy. It was the first club where they started doing full-fledged fashion shows. It came about somehow on its own — all our hostess girls were from Red Stars, a modelling club formed around the club fairly quickly, and soon such shows became a habit. The fashion shown was varied — from the quite traditional to the avant-garde performances of Andrey Bartenev and Masha Tsigal.
However, the youth life of Manhattan Express ended after the death of Zhenya Zhmakin. Afterwards no one had the strength or the desire to keep doing Happy Mondays and the parties faded away on their own».