Summer 1999 – the first Forts

Dmitry Ashman:
«The first parties at the Forts started back in the late 90s, and the whole thing took place out at Fort Alexander. Originally it was run by the Petersburg crowd — Misha Barkhin and the «Rechniki» collective. Back then these were closed, invite-only events with a light underground flavour. «Rechniki» put on their own performances there, invited local Petersburg DJs, their friends and acquaintances. In the end it turned into this internal Petersburg affair, with its own atmosphere — sometimes quite a successful one. But there was no real scale to it then; the Forts drew three or four hundred people at most.
In the summer of 1999 «Zeppelin» got involved for the first time. Our friend, the owner of «Zeppelin» Viktor Taknov, was very close with «Rechniki» at the time and decided to help them out with the finances. In truth, «Zeppelin» had almost nothing to do with the organisation itself back then. We came to the first Fort as observers, brought in to keep an eye on how the money was being spent. Our observations showed that simply handing over money «for the Forts» made no sense, and that we had to take the organisation into our own hands».
Zhora Petrushin:
«What the Petersburg guys ended up with was some kind of clique affair, a badly thrown-together picnic. The money was given with the expectation of a return, but they paid back some laughable sum. We assumed the money had leaked off somewhere on the side, and from then on we did the Forts ourselves».