By Joseph Skibell, The New York Times
Travel Section, One Street At A Time
New York, NY, Sunday, May 2, 2004

''Eventually we'll rename the street and get rid of the statue, I'm sure,'' Ted says.

For the time being, it stands near some government buildings, surrounded by fir trees. With his right arm raised toward what is now an archaic future, Lenin looks less like an impassioned revolutionary and more like a man chasing down a cab.

According to Ted, the Soviets built identical city squares -- the same statue, the same courthouse, the same firs in the same spatial relationships -- in all comparably sized cities across the Soviet Union. Uman, a manufacturing center in central Ukraine, about 130 miles south of Kiev, has some 95,000 people. Cities and towns of other sizes were assigned different configurations, and the only distinctive touch here, as Ted points out, is the Uman crest on one of the buildings, depicting a Cossack in full regalia.

(A short distance from Lenin Street, Pushkin Street, like a Hasidic version of Woodstock, is busy with thousands of black-suited men in black hats who, between meeting up with lost friends or buying bottled water from the locals or camping out in tents, make unceasing visits to pray at Rabbi Nachman's grave.)

Bob is searching for a couple of matryoshka doll sets for his grandchildren, and we wanted to see the town. As we head north along Lenin Street, Ted tells us about himself. A trim, bespectacled man in his early 30's, a graduate of the Uman State Agrarian Academy, he's worked illegally, washing dishes and windows, in England, Russia and the Czech Republic. Thrice deported, he's applied to emigrate now, legally, to Iceland.

There's no point in staying in Uman, Ted says. ''Because here'' -- he gestures toward Lenin Street, the central street of his hometown -- ''you need capital to become a capitalist.''

Most of the vendors work behind booths or beneath tents, selling farm produce or bottles of home-pressed sunflower oil or pastries and sizzling-hot pan-fried meats. Older women hunched over crates and TV trays dip out black sunflower seeds from old ceramic bowls, using small kitchen glasses as ladles.

At the corner of Revolutions Against the Capitalists Street, a young woman kneels over a waterless tub filled to the brim with little fish. To attract customers, she strokes her hand across her stock, making the little fish pop like a thousand baby sparrows struggling to take flight. She then scoops a wriggling quarter-pound into a blue plastic bag with her bare hand, and weighs it on a scale she's hung from a brick in the wall of the building next to her.

The windows of the kiosks, the next step up the entrepreneurial ladder, are filled to the square inch with colorful products and eye-catching tags. On a clothesline outside one is a string of faded plastic bags printed with fashionable brand names: Dior, Gucci, Golden Rose. The prices range from about 3 to 40 cents, although I can't tell whether it's the luster of the brand or the condition of the bag that determines the cost.

In contrast, the windows of a nearby grocery look like an absurd parody of Soviet-era scarcity. At the bottom of one gigantic display case are eight tiny cartons of fruit drink. In another, 16 cleaning products are lined up in an almost comically uninteresting row.

These older shops seem to be functioning in a historically retrospective economic climate. Most have no visible address and many no visible name. At No. 10, for instance, although there's a stationery store, a key shop, a shoe repair shop and, upstairs, a beauty parlor, no one has a business card and when I ask the clock repairman for his name, he tells me ''Leonid,'' refusing, like Ted, to part with a surname. ''People will find me without it,'' he shrugs in his pantry-size store.

The newer shops, offering less essential items, are identifiable by their new facades: staircases, awnings, marble walls and metal roll-down gates in various stages of construction decorate the fronts of what were clearly once ground-floor apartments.

One of these, a secondhand store called CoHa, is filled with stuffed dolls, Zippo lighters and leather jackets. Mannequins with battered hands stand in each room. Shoes -- one of a pair -- are also on display. But there are no Russian dolls, and so we walk into an art gallery up the block.

While Bob chats with the owner about how many dolls are nesting in each set she sells, I look at the paintings: pictures of Uman's famous Sofia Park, several Mona Lisas, knockoffs of Dali and Miro. I'm struck by an odd portrait of a woman with long red fingernails sitting at a cafe table, her breast discreetly revealed beneath an unbuttoned Soviet Army blouse.

''It's like we've arrived in Oz right after the importation of Technicolor,'' Bob says, surveying the street. It's true, and the transition from black and white to color has created a wonderful, diverting incongruity. In the cul-de-sac behind a spanking-new luggage shop, for instance, geese still squabble in the yards of little cottages, while up the road, in a clothing store called Klasika -- offering gold-splattered denim pantsuits and purple furs -- the security guard carries an automatic weapon and the saleswomen share espresso with their customers.

Farther north, in a computer-game room, 20 or so boys, having ditched school, sit mesmerized before their screens, while, outside, an olive-skinned kid, wanting in, tries twice to sell us a watch.

At the northern end of the street, Ted suggests a cup of coffee at the Art Cafe, which is at the southern end. We decide to ride back and, for about 85 cents each, board a little yellow-and-blue bus, a fantastical, almost cartoonlike construction that looks as if it's been soldered together with whatever was at hand. Instead of curtains, dirty dish towels hang on the windows, and the seats are covered with 16 different types of fabric, mostly blue shag.

We step over a hole in the floor and make our way to the back. The door is shut by a slow hissing pneumatic lever, and as we bounce along noisily, I notice an out-of-date calendar on the partition behind the driver featuring a large, sun-faded picture of Britney Spears. In a stars-and-stripes halter, she ducks her head coyly, revealing a hint of cleavage.

At the Art Cafe, I feel compelled to ask Ted why there is no art on the walls. (Couldn't they at least have hung the picture of that woman in the Soviet Army blouse?) ''It's just a name,'' he tells me. ''It sounds different.''

We order coffee and sit, and I remark that here, too, as in many of the shops we have visited, I'm amazed to see all the unused floor space. The tables fill only about half the cafe, and the rest of the room is empty, as if its owners haven't yet figured out the finer points of ruthless free enterprise. ''We'd never do this in the United States,'' I tell Ted.

''There, every inch of space would be used.'' ''Well,'' Ted explains patiently, ''they're waiting until people with money invest.''

''Besides,'' he adds, sipping from a chipped mug, ''the meals are expensive and the portions are bad, so they don't really need that many tables because not that many people come here.''