Rebuilding Ikea

February 15, 2011 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business, design, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

Both Rachel and David made their own comments about the Ikea fire in Netanya, but this cartoon commentary by The Wall, a self-proclaimed new media Tel Aviv advertising firm, really says it all.

First, the title: Natanya2011 How to Build Ikea Again; I’m not sure if the name Netanya was misspelled on purpose, as Israeli spelling in English — given that it’s not their first language — tends toward incorrections.


As for the rest of the piece: We have the obvious and necessary method of poking fun at Ikea instructions, as well as the obvious and necessary ways of poking fun at Israeli society. There are the four million wooden pegs, more than 2 million screws and just one Ikea Allen wrench. There are the 15 Solel Boneh trucks — Solel Boneh being one of the largest construction companies in Israel — the 40 Manofei Avi cranes, just your random crane company, the 1500 fire extinguishers, natch, and recognizable by the Arabic writing on their shirts and kaffiyehs on their heads, the 100 Arab construction workers necessary to rebuild the place, a comment on who does the building and construction in these parts.

By the way, it seems the fire was caused by a short circuit in the store’s electrical system. Plans are to rebuild within the year.

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Bagging a return

February 10, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

The Shoofra store bag, not my former bag


One of the things I did yesterday was take a bus downtown, in order to go to Shoofra, a shoe store, to pick up a check for the Rupa handbag that I had returned under Israel’s new return policy.

It already seemed ridiculous that I had to physically walk into the store to get the check, but they told me they weren’t allowed to put it in the mail. Okay. So I get there, have to sign a release form that says I received the check, opened the envelope and there are two checks, one written for January, one for February. Why? Because I had paid — in good Israeli form — in two payments for the bag, and they were returning the money in two payments, but minus a 10% handling fee.

Which meant that once I walked out of there, I couldn’t just cross the street and deposit the checks in my bank because one is dated for February 24, and I’ll pay a fee to the bank for depositing it too early. And it didn’t really make sense to head to the bank for one measly check that can wait until two weeks from now.

The bag in question (the framed one)

Now Brian already wrote about this policy, and I just reread his posting to see if it matched what I experienced. Not completely. For starters, I had paid with a credit card, but could only get the money back in check form. I also had only two days to return said item in order to get my money back, not two weeks, which probably would have been enough to discourage me, but I kind of wanted to see this policy in action. And besides, I’d decided that the color of the bag was too light and would have gotten grimy very quickly. In any case, the store clerk had to get permission from the headquarters for the return, and she had to call me to let me know that it had been approved. And again to let me know that the check had arrived.

All in all, about six interactions regarding one return. Not anything like the U.S. return policy, where you get your money back on the spot, barely any questions asked.

The moral of the story? It’s probably not worth going to the trouble to make a return, but I’d be curious to see what other stores do in a similar situation. As for the bag, I liked it, but it’d have been a lot less trouble if I’d just kept it.

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Jerusalem train vs. Jerusalem car = tie

February 9, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Technology, Travel 

As we emerged from the tunnel taking us to Jerusalem from Ma’aleh Adumim and eased toward the French Hill/Road No. 1 intersection that leads to downtown Jerusalem, something appeared amiss.

For months now, the sleek Citypass trains have been running on the main thoroughfare in test situations ahead of its planned spring launch. So it wasn’t a surprise to see three-connected trains at the intersection. However, a car next to it situated at an odd angle, along with a group of people standing outside indicated that something was going on.

We made our turn though toward downtown and quickly forgot about the scene, until picking up the newspaper the next morning. Turns out that even before it’s fully in service, there’s been a train-automobile accident. A car ran a red light at the intersection and struck the train as it was crossing, causing light damage to both vehicles but no injuries.

“We can’t do anything about drivers who go through red lights,” said Jerusalem District Police spokesman Shmuel Ben- Ruby, according to The Jerusalem Post.

A spokesman for CityPass, which will be operating the light rail, agreed saying that drivers around the world have learned to coexist with such a system and predicting that it wouldn’t be the last fender bender the city will see as it groans toward the 21st century of transportation.

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Nostalgia Sunday – And then there was IKEA…

February 6, 2011 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business, design, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture 

The tragedy of yesterday’s IKEA fire is compounded by the fact that it leaves us, the Israeli furniture-buying public, exposed to the elements of bad taste that previously dominated the local furniture scene. And when I say bad taste, I am being kind. I should really say “horribly bad taste”.

Who among us, on their first visit to Israel in the 60s and 70s — and even well into the 80s — was not impressed by the Scandinavian-style furniture that decorated many a living room? Except, it turns out that Danish modern wasn’t the people’s actual choice. It was the style foisted upon them by Socialism, in all its practicality.

Because most of the new country’s residents came to it with the shirt on their backs — quite literally in many cases — there was a need for functional and affordable furniture. This was manufactured by kibbutz industries like Shomrat HaZorea which was once the watchword in teak dining room / living room sets. In the late 80s, such items were dumped on the street to be collected by the local alte zachen rag n’ bone men. (You can now find those same pieces in high-end Tel Aviv boutiques selling refurbished mid-century modern).

In their stead: the black, red and chrome “Hi-Tec” look for the hipsters, along with futons for the crunchy granola set. (I had both).

Meanwhile the older generation finally fulfilled their desires for real antiques by purchasing fake ones. Really bad fake ones, the most obnoxious one being the “vitrina”, a glass-fronted cabinet for storing knick-knacks, bric-a-brac and other tschockes collected on the trips abroad that Israel’s middle class was finally able to afford.

It was a classic case, to paraphrase Tom Wolfe’s From Our House To Bauhaus, of the intelligentsia designing simple, clean-lined and functional workers residences only to discover that the actual inhabitants would immediately cover the walls with flocked velvet wallpaper, hang gold framed pictures of teary-eyed children, put plastic roses in pink glass vases on top of lace doilies and in general decorate with other commonly accepted signifiers of wealth.

But never, I must point out, at the expense of comfort! Some years ago, when I was on a journalists’ junket to the Natuzzi furniture factory in Italy (call it my Italian couch trip) one of the executives asked our group why it was that they always received orders from their Israeli distributor for a certain kind of chair; it wasn’t popular in any other country.

“What kind of chair is it?” I asked, already knowing the answer. He showed us a picture of a television recliner.

That’s right. Israelis love their La-Z-Boys, American Comforts and any other chair that lets you lay back, put your feet up after a long day and watch TV en famille. In fact, it’s better if you have two. Israelis also see nothing wrong with white plastic stackable Keter chairs in the dining room or the office (a good idea that somehow went wrong in the aesthetics department). Your ultimate kiddie bed? The “sapat noar” or youth sofa: bed by night, couch by day (if you can convince your kids to ever straighten up their beds). The ultimate adult bed? A double bed split in two, each with its own adjustable mattress and separate controllers — all the better to watch TV with.

In the 90s, knock-down DIY was already infiltrating Israel but you couldn’t get your hands on it. (My friend Debbie actually took the IKEA catalogue to a carpenter and had him build a bookshelf according to the picture on the cover). More outrageous was going shopping in areas known to have low-priced furniture like Tel Aviv’s Herzl Street, picking out something that had clearly come from a flat-pak and having to pay top dollar — or shekel — all the while having one’s ire placated with “Giveret, zeh firma”, which means something like “Lady, this comes from a very fine quality manufacturer”. If I could have afforded fine quality, would I be shopping on Herzl Street?

No, I would have been at Tollman’s, I-D Design, Castiel or the local outlet of Habitat. Because fine furniture was also coming in, sold to the petit bourgeoisie by other members of the petit bourgeoisie. It was pricey and their importers wanted to keep it that way. Which is why they tried sway public opinion away from IKEA by giving interviews praising themselves and denigrating quality of the Swedish company’s wares.

And weren’t they surprised when IKEA finally opened its doors and didn’t fail. Israelis became adept at wielding the Allen wrench, assembling Billys, Rakkes and Malms, redoing their rooms and refinishing their kitchens. Because IKEA is the Bauhaus ideal incarnate: reasonably priced, nice-looking, well-designed, functional goods for the working middle-class that can be used and then, when the time comes, easily dispensed with and replaced by new ones.

Thank the good heavens that the smear campaign launched against IKEA by the Israel Furniture Industries Association also didn’t succeed. A second IKEA branch opened last year in Rishon Lezion (and you can’t convince me there isn’t a connection between the repeated attempts to block Rishon’s municipality from zoning the store and the location of the Israel Furniture Center, the IFIA’s ill-appointed so-called showcase in the Rishon Lezion western industrial zone).

So we’ll be Rishon-bound for the next six months to a year, which is how long it will take ’til the Netanya store reopens and all will be right in the world.

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New kosher wine, clothing and YouTube too

February 1, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Technology 

It’s been busy week for the kosher market. Ynet reported on three new certifiably kosher products, including one online.

Tulip Winery goes kosher

The first is the most mundane. Tulip, a well-regarded boutique winery, will be kosher by the fall. The reason, says the winery’s CEO Roee Yitzhaki, is purely financial. “We did the math and realized that we lose 8,000 holiday gift baskets each year because our wine is not kosher,” Yitzhaki told Ynet.

The transition hasn’t been cheap ($421,000 has been invested so far) or quick (it’s taken four years).

YouTube gone kosher

Less time in development is the new Glatube, an all-kosher alternative to YouTube. Indeed, “it’s exactly like YouTube, with one exception: No promiscuity,” says Sharon Bokobza, the site’s creator and a student at an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva belong to the Breslov Hassidic movement.

Glatube (which is a play on the words “glatt kosher”) already has 1,000 clips uploaded, most of them religious music and classes by heavily bearded rabbis. Bokobza promises there will be no images women and absolutely no women singing (he’s employed a team of kashrut “supervisors” who vet each video). There is apparently a clip of a cat playing the piano. A klezmer tune I assume?

Make sure to get kosher clothes too

The final entry in our purity parade is another form of kosher supervision, this one for clothing stores in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim and Geula neighborhoods.

“The Committee for the Sanctity of the Camp” sends haredi women across town to inspect clothes and then gives those stores that are sufficiently modest their official certificate of approval.

How do all these fit together? Well, I’m planning on spending a nice evening watching Glatube, sipping a glass of kosher Tulip wine, while my wife is adorned in officially sanctioned modest clothing. Care to join me?

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