Break Dancing in Moscow

So it is a couple of years after the fall of the Soviet Union and you are 24 and foolhardy and want some adventure and are looking for something to do with an English BA other than slave for Scholastic testing 5th grade science experiments, so naturally you buy a one way ticket on Aeroflot to Moscow. You speak no Russian, but you have some contacts, some Americans doing something or other and you figure you'll write some articles about them. Turns out the Americans are full of shit, but you find these guys in a dance club. They are break dancing like crazy in the corner while the rest of the Russian youth jitter around to God-awful Euro-techno. You, clearly, are a big shot American reporter, with your big-lensed Nikon, so they invite you to a "battle" the next day. You are expecting a couple of scruffy kids in a back alley, but instead the breakdance battle is on stage, between Russian rappers and Russian goths and Russian heavy metal bands, in front of thousands of kids. These Russians B-Boys are part of a tiny but ardent subculture, kids from Moscow and Siberia and Kazahkstan who got hold of tenth-generation boot-leg copies of Krushgroove and Breakin'! and have master all the moves. They are convinced that breakdancing is still the big thing in America (in 1994) and you don't have the heart to disabuse them of the notion.