The author of this book is perhaps the most ironic columnist in St. Petersburg, a columnist for the magazine “City 812”, twice winner of the Golden Pen award, a journalist “whom editors always ask to write about something.” And he writes about politics , education, sports, housing and communal services, ballet and Russian rudeness, which, according to the author, is national pride along with ballet. The publishers of this book also asked to write “about something” - and the result was “Notes of the Kupchinsky Gopnik.” “Of all the sleeping Kupchino districts are the most sleepy. Of all the high-rise buildings, ours are the most similar. And only our secondary schools are not the most average, but the worst. Our pipes most often burst and the asphalt cracks. The bosses come to us less often and guest workers most often. It’s faster for us to get to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum than to the Hermitage. But we don’t go to the lyceum. The same as in the Hermitage. In fact, the mathematician Perelman lives with us. But no one has ever seen him anyway.”