“Kamchatka” of Tsoi in St. Petersburg, located at 15 Blokhina Street, is a place that still annually welcomes thousands of pilgrims from all over the world. It is a cult spot for fans of Leningrad rock ’n’ roll. It was within these walls that many songs by the bands “Kino,” “Aquarium,” and “Alisa” were born. Now, a club-museum dedicated to Viktor Tsoi operates here.

The great rock performer worked here as a stoker and wrote song lyrics. That is why the Tsoi museum in St. Petersburg was established here, collecting personal belongings, drawings, filmography, and all the records with albums he worked so hard on.

Of course, the necessity to take a job as a stoker was inspired solely by the law against parasitism, the hardships of which were experienced by all rock musicians of that time. Today, the Viktor Tsoi club-museum operates at “Kamchatka,” where on weekends you can hear music from young rock bands dreaming of fame.

Viktor Tsoi worked as a stoker from 1986 to 1988. The boiler room heated a single building — a women’s dormitory of the 1st Repair and Construction Trust of Leningrad. This was the second boiler room in Tsoi’s work history. Viktor liked working here not because he couldn’t do anything else, but because no one could accuse him of being a parasite. Under such circumstances, the musician was not threatened with criminal charges, and this kind of work freed up a lot of time for performances at unofficial concerts. In 1987, the documentary film “Rock,” in which Tsoi participated, was shot here. It’s hard to imagine how, in his free time from concerts, the artist skillfully wielded a shovel, throwing coal into the furnace, but that’s how it was, because in the USSR rock musicians were not much favored and their creative activity was not considered full-fledged work. Also, here musicians would gather with guitars and tea, perform new songs for each other, and discuss their daily work life.

“Once a man ran into his boiler room and started yelling: why is the heating so bad? Viktor turned to face him, and the man suddenly stopped yelling and asked: ‘Are you Viktor Tsoi? What are you doing here?’ — ‘This is my job,’ Tsoi replied. And the man left, muttering: ‘Unbelievable!’...” — recalled Joanna Stingray. And Tsoi himself, answering a question from one of the listeners, “Do you consider yourself a star?” calmly remarked: “It’s hard to consider yourself a star when you work in a boiler room.”

Viktor Tsoi had already written the song “Kamchatka” and the album “Chief of Kamchatka,” so the boiler room got the nickname “Kamchatka,” and the foreman Anatoly Sokolkov was called the “chief of Kamchatka.” Although the song “Kamchatka,” which became the boiler room’s anthem, was written long before he started working as a stoker. In an interview with the samizdat magazine “Roxy,” he said he had never been to the peninsula of the same name, and the piece was just phonetics. Viktor Tsoi expressed his desire to work in a boiler room in another song, which is called “I Want to Be a Stoker.” As they say, dreams come true.

Sources:

https://spbcult.ru/articles/istoriya-peterburga/progulka-po-adresam-viktora-coya-v-peterburge/

https://rogaine-spb.ru/gde-nahoditsya/piter-viktora-tsoya-marshrut-po-znachimym-mestam.html

https://inc-news.ru/cultures/2:75788

https://reproduktor.net/kino/kamchatka/

https://www.spb.kp.ru/daily/26568.5/3584112/