'Swagger' Kazakh-style

Yet another high-profile restaurant has been opened in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan. However, the restaurant is special. At least its parking is.  

Uralsk Week published photos of the parking covered with carpets followed by a description provided by user named Kenzhe, who sent the photos to the newspaper:

“A restaurant was opened in Almaty. The parking is strewn with genuine woolen carpets. Why, ain’t it fit for dope cars to await their owners on bare pavement? It looks kitsch with a dilapidated apartment building and a well-worn bus in the background))”


©Uralsk Week

The new restaurant apparently belongs to the famous Russian showman and actor Sergey Svetlakov, Express-K reports. Svetlakov gained prominence after his team won the KVN, a humor show popular across the post-Soviet countries. The idea of a carpeted parking is very much his type of a joke.

So, maybe the carpeting was not meant as a Kazakh-style 'swagger', but was just a Borat-style joke borne in the head of the famous entertainer?

Maybe so. But not all found the joke funny. Many Internet users thought it was too much and cited the discrepancy between the living standards of the general population and the restaurant’s visitors.


©Uralsk Week

Last week, the carpeted parking was even mentioned by the Akim (Mayor) of Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital. Imangaly Tasmagambetov said that it signified degradation of morality in the country.

“A controversy sparked on the Internet around the pictures of a parking of an elite restaurant strewn with expensive woolen carpets. 90 percent of the readers see it not as a marketing move of the restaurant's owners, but as a clear cut moral degradation. That is, the people pursuing commercial goals, unwittingly crossed that thin moral line," he said.

The mayor of the city added that this was a manifestation of the generally unhealthy climate, in which the children in the country had to grow up. Truly, how are they to escape being drawn to the carpeted parking in the future?

Tasmagambetov said it was necessary to include the theme of moral upbringing into the education process, through did not specify a way to do it.

But come clear enough: First, say “No” to carpeted parking!

By Dinara Urazova (Altynai Zhumzhumina contributed to the story)