The iPhone finally makes it to Israel
At long last, the wait is over. People all over Israel will be delighted to hear that Apple is finally bringing the iPhone to Israel.
After an extended wait, the iPhone finally arrives.
Not that you’d know the iPhone isn’t here all ready. Thousands of Israelis already have the phone – bought from abroad, and hacked into here – it’s the phone to have right now. All the more fashionable for being unavailable. We also have our own unofficial Apple store selling all the gadgets that go with it.
Even five-year-old Israelis know what the iPhone is, as I discovered when I made a call at the swimming pool the other day.
“Cool,” he said. This either says a lot about the iPhone, or about five-year-old Israelis.
The Apple iPhone will be imported into Israel by Pelephone and Partner Communications. Both companies are keeping mum about launch, prices and marketing, though when Pelephone announced that it plans to market the iPhone 3G S (launched last week), Partner quickly said that it too will sell the device.
Cellcom is staying out of the iPhone melee, preferring to sit on the sidelines and see what the level of demand is. The company’s reasoning is pretty sound – there are already thousands of devices in the country.
While a launch date hasn’t been set, the iPhone should go on sale in Israel sometime in the next few months, and certainly by the end of the year.
All very well and good, but now I’ll have to look for a new gadget to impress the kids at the pool.
Adam Adama
I’ve always admired the street exhibits that seem to proliferate in Tel Aviv, with sculptures and prints placed along the tree-lined boulevards of Rothschild and Chen.
Now we can boast something similar in Jerusalem, with the Adam Adama exhibit of photographs by students from various Jerusalem schools, both Jewish and Arab, portraying their vision of Jerusalem.
Sponsored by Hadassah College, the municipality and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, the photographs are hanging along the pedestrian walkways of Schatz and Bezalel (named for the school, which is returning downtown from Mount Scopus) Streets in downtown Jerusalem. These car-less streets have been recently refurbished with cobblestone pavements and benches for easy sitting and viewing, and both Schatz and Bezalal boast two good cafes, Noni and Cafe Bezalel, so you can sip a hafuch, and enjoy some art in the shade.
Nostalgia Sunday – Egged Bus
Filed under: design, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
My car broke down irretrievably last year and, as a result, I have been taking the bus quite a bit. In-between cursing public transportation, cultivating nascent misanthropic tendencies, and swearing that next week I am absolutely buying a car — bank balance be damned — I also find time for nostalgic reverie. Or is that better termed a bad flashback? Let’s face it, today’s buses are far, far better than the non-air conditioned, bouncing, bulky tin boxes on wheels of yesteryear. My coccyx bone aches just thinking about it. Ouch.
Transportation cooperative Egged also remembers those days, (with more fondness than do I), and maintains a museum in Holon, the niche museum capital of Israel. The display is also online with a gallery of photos, posters, video clips (like this one of the first Egged tour of Sinai) and articles about Egged’s history. For example, this photo of a few of the drivers who joined the Egged cooperative in 1933.
And here’s the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv! No, not that one. This was located at 1 Rothschild Boulevard.
And then there was Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus design bus station that was Egged’s main base until the new bus station opened in 1993.
The classic 1970s Egged bus designed by British Leyland:
Here’s the 1980s upgrade, designed by Mercedes — introducing air-conditioning!
Egged’s bus for the new millennium. In a classic “greenwashing” move, Egged made a very big deal about how this model was environmentally friendly. Why? Because of the green paint? Oh well, at least they’re roomy and the air-conditioning works well.
.
And now, introducing the new bus for 2009, the Saar-31. I bet the air conditioning is super-sonic. Ahhh…
As with all Egged buses, the Saar 31 is manufactured and assembled locally by the Haargaz company. The design of this bus, says Haargaz, is the most advanced of its kind. But what I like is their video clip about the history of Haargaz-constructed buses in Israel – to the tune of Born to Be Wild. So rock on… and leave the driving to us!
Pride and parking in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion
In Tel Aviv, there were parades and celebrations. In Jerusalem, there was a protest demonstration. Just another typical weekend in Israel.
Meretz MK Nitsan Horowitz must have been the busiest guy in the country, as he managed to participate in both events – the annual Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv on Friday, which this year, included the ‘weddings’ of five gay couples – and a Saturday protest in the capital by secular activists angered that the opening of a parking lot on Shabbat for Old City visitors was suspended due to riots the week before by haredi protestors.
Got that straight… um, clear?
According to supporters between 20,000 and 30,000 participants took place in the Tel Aviv Gay Pride parade, culminating in the joint wedding ceremony on the beach (which can be viewed on the accompanying video).
Ha’aretz wrote:
The ceremony, held at sundown after a boisterous disco on the sand, began with a serenade by gay pop star Ivri Lider as the three female and two male same-sex couples walked up to the Chuppah, the Jewish wedding altar.
The ceremony was performed according to Jewish marriage rites, with each couple exchanging rings and Hebrew vows before breaking the traditional glass as the crowd erupted in applause.
Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz, the Knesset’s first openly gay parliamentarian, attended the wedding, along with Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai.
“I hope that from this day weddings like this can happen in every place in Israel and not just in Tel Aviv,” Horowitz told Haaretz. “Weddings for everyone – man and woman, man and man, and woman and woman, and this will be the end of the monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox over our lives in Israel.”
The parade was sponsored by Tel Aviv municipality as part of the city’s centennial celebrations. It was a far cry from the scene the next day in Jerusalem when several hundred people gathered in the Kikar Safra to protest what they called Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s “capitulation” to the city’s haredi community over the Shabbat operation of a municipal parking lot.
The mayor had opened the garage last weekend, with the approval of his haredi coalition partners. But the move prompted a riot by thousands of haredim, and more rioting had been threatened for Saturday if the lot were opened again.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Barkat, on Friday, acceded to a request from the city’s police chief to close the municipal garage for two successive Saturdays. The plan is to find an alternative site to during that time to accommodate parking for visitors to the nearby Old City.
“This is just a warm-up demonstration,” Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Pepe Allalo of Meretz told the crowd, estimated by the organizers at 800, who sang and chatted in the afternoon sunshine. “But if [Barkat] doesn’t reopen the garage in two weeks, we’ll fill the whole square.”
Some haredim, said Allalo, “want to turn Jerusalem into another Bnei Brak… We won’t let that happen.”
Barkat’s spokesman Evyatar Elad said that the parking lot would be reopened in two weeks if no solution to the lack of weekend parking near the Old City could be found by then.
MK Horowitz, fresh from the Tel Aviv celebration the day before, told the crowd that the dispute over the garage was “part of the wider struggle over the very nature of the State of Israel.
“If there is no freedom for secular Jerusalemites, in time there will no freedom for the secular residents of Tel Aviv or anywhere else,” he declared.
Later this month, all of the issues will gloriously converge like a master plan from above. Jerusalem is holding its own annual gay pride parade on June 25th. In the past, despite a much lower profile than Tel Aviv’s parade, there have several confrontations with haredim in Jerusalem, including violence and injuries resulting.
Which demonstration will the haredim choose to attend? The ‘close the parking lot’ or the ‘stop the gay pride parade’ protests? And just where will all the gay pride parade attendees park?
Stay tuned…
She’s leaving home – for Ramat Gan
Air-conditioned Ramat Gan
My wife has second cousins living in the Tel Aviv suburb of Givatayim who have visited us in Jerusalem about three times in 24 years. It’s not because they don’t like us, I don’t think, but because to them, driving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (about 40 miles?) is akin to driving from New York City to Syracuse – it’s something you just don’t do, unless there’s a bar mitzvah or a funeral.
“Jerusalem? I hate going there. It’s so crowded, there’s no place to park, it’s so religious.” Those are some of their excuses. But take aways the religious aspect, those same complaints could be said of Tel Aviv.
I, on the other hand, love any excuse I can get to make the quick jaunt to Tel Aviv. It’s a refreshing change, both visually and in pace of life, from the rather small town Jerusalem mentality.
And apparently, I’m going to have lots more opportunity to explore Tel Aviv and its environs. My oldest daughter is flying the coop and setting up residence in her own apartment in Ramat Gan this summer.
While I have mixed feelings about a child of mine moving away (The Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” keeps bubbling up in my mind), it will be kind of fun to have a crash pad in Tel Aviv. I just hope that my daughter doesn’t start thinking about Jerusalem in the same way that her Givatayim cousins do.
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