Conclusion

Open and covered, bazaar-style markets have become central to market culture, and in some ways provide a cultural counterweight to the influx of mass market chain brands in Moscow. While most markets have a variety of shopping options, markets also tend to have a specialty like organic foods, hand-crafted products, fashion, electronics or antiques. Like those in most major cities, some of the larger markets are geared toward tourism, while smaller, more boutique markets and sporadic pop-up fairs are geared toward native Muscovites, often featuring a more actively curated selection of booths.

Through my research, I noticed a significant online tourist blogging culture associated with the open and covered markets of Moscow. Most of these blogs include virtual tours using photographs, videos, and verbal description of the markets in order to curate a specific virtual tour and vision of one or multiple markets. These are, perhaps, each an individual example of the Post-modern SimCity - representations, simulacra of the world they wish to provide via Internet blog. Further, the collection of them that is so at-the-ready on the Internet provides a meta-tour with blogs for vendors and hyperlinks for city roads; "reality" brought to you by a means of an obviously fictitious medium that is nonetheless so ubiquitous and abundantly familiar as to more deeply entwine fact and fiction than ever before.