The Current Proprietors

Aleksey Calvin: Translator, Scholar, Poet, Singer

Also known as Aleksey K. Tsukanov and Aleksay

After being born, like Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, on a marbled shore of the Neva River in the heart of old Saint Petersburg, Aleksey spent his childhood devouring libraries, ghost-hunting around pre-Revolutionary ruins, getting lost in the woods, and skipping school.

After moving to the USA at the hardened age of twelve in order to flee the tumult of Russia's gangster culture and investigate rumors of Rock & Roll lifestyles, Aleksey has steadily accumulated thousands of pages of original poetic work on subjects such as Adonis, Andrey Bely, Apocalypse, birds, boars, border roses, castles, celestial visitors, drive-through's, Discordianism, elegance, fasting, Gaia Sinclair, Ginsberg Debord, holy grails, Independence Daze, krakens, libertine elderhood, mirror moons, occult romancing in other forms, polarities and pandemoniums, psychegeography, questing for oceanic eyes, Rimbaud's secret return from Africa, sungazing, streetsigns of childhood haunts, televised dreams, ultra-sublime violets, Vassilisa the Beautiful, VU (the), Woland, wax museums, Xiu Xui shooing, yesterday's fears, Zorro's memoirs, and much much else...

After discovering in himself a unique propensity for literary translation and becoming ignited with a passion to dig up the ghosts of Russia's Silver Age and to present them to his contemporaries, Aleksey abandoned his previous career as a Los Angeles-based hairdresser and turned to full-time translation, writing, and scholarly work. He has since returned to the warm and welcoming folds of the organized academia, under which he is now planning new masterworks and other surprises. 

Besides poetry, music criticism, essays, and occasional tragi-comic Jungian dream-plays, he also writes, records, and performs highly lyrical songs influenced by late Syd Barrett and David Bowie. His perennial obsessions include Russian Silver Age, Modernism in general, The Beach Boys, surrealist mysticism, mythology, post-punk, folk music, ancient monuments, ties and vests, coffee, spontaneous romance, derives, guitars, utopias, and cell phones.  He currently lives in the East Bay, but tries to keep his eyes wide to the whole world. You can sometimes find him wandering like a troubadour with a guitar in hand around the concrete pastures of the San Francisco State University or UC Berkeley.

DASHA BULATOVA

A Bay area-based Russian-American translator, poet, musician, occasional contributor.