The sports club I go to in the mornings is located on the huge grounds of a former textile factory, or something like that. There hasn’t been any manufacturing there for ages; the whole place has been converted into offices. And it turned out pretty well, precisely because they converted it instead of demolishing everything and building from scratch. Inside the large fenced-off area there are lots of low-rise buildings, with a parking lot between them. Though there still isn’t enough parking, as I already wrote. All in all, it’s all quite trendy and modern. And the companies there are trendy and modern too—Pricewaterhouse, BBDO, and even Odnoklassniki.ru (a Russian social network). So anyway, in one spot outside, next to a building wall, there used to be something like a monument or a memorial plaque. I’d always wanted to stop and read what it said. But it stood right by the exit from the grounds—you couldn’t exactly stop there, there was always someone driving through. I mean, technically I could have stopped and read it, but somehow it was never the right moment. And besides, what was the rush—"it’s not going anywhere" (a common Russian joke/quote), I’d get around to reading it. The only thing I ever managed to make out in passing was: *"....at this factory, in such-and-such a year, the Red weavers blah blah....". * And then recently I’m driving by—and the monument is gone. They tore it down and marked out a parking space in its place. Now instead of the monument there’s some Ford Focus parked there, bought on a three-year installment plan at a low interest rate. That’s that. And it’s not that I have anything against Ford Focuses or parking spaces. And it’s not that I’m some huge fan of Soviet-era monuments. Besides, it wasn’t even really a monument, just a plaque with some thingamajig attached to it. It’s not even about the fact that tearing down the plaque was almost certainly illegal. It’s just that, right before my eyes, Odnoklassniki beat the Red weavers.