Foto Friday – Tal Menkes’ Dreadful Delights

January 13, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Blogging, design, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Profiles 

Tal Menkes is a copywriter at advertising agency Mccann Erickson, Tel-Aviv, Israel. In addition to his day job of penning award-winning ads, Menkes’ fevered brain works overtime several times a week to create Mutzar Ayom, a photoblog of seemingly useful yet cheerfully useless objects.

The name takes the hackneyed shopping channel phrase mutzar ha-yom, “product of the day”, and replaces it with the word ayom, meaning “horrible”. And indeed, many of the products are in fact, delightfully dreadful examples of visual wordplay.

Some of the ideas are universal in nature — others are unmistakably Israeli, for example, this toy soldier armed with mother’s cooking…

Water concentrate, as opposed to the ubiquitous sugary red mitz petel, so ingrained in the Israeli child’s psyche — and the Israeli child’s teeth!

A reversed three-fer electric adaptor…

A floor squeegee that actually gets into corners…

And my personal favorite, the real and original dubon coat.

Menkes also runs a Mutzar Ayom Facebook page in which followers are invited to comment on recent postings and share their own imaginary product ideas. Who knows, some might even make it into production — after all, if the Crembox can be an actual product fulfilling an actual need, then anything’s possible.

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You got chocolate in my wine! No, you got wine in my chocolate!

January 12, 2012 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Food, Israeliness 

Wine and chocolate at Tishbi

I’m a big fan of wine tastings. And an even bigger fan of chocolate. So when I had the opportunity to visit the new Tishbi tasting center, which combines both wine and gourmet imported French chocolate, my interest was piqued. Moreover, my palette was proud of yet another Israeli innovation, not so much hi-tech this time, but palpably pleasing nevertheless.

The Tishbi winery has been around since 1984 and is run by the family of the same name, which is committed to keeping it small and boutique. Winemaker Golan Tishbi was the one to come up with the idea of mixing wine and chocolate. The new tasting center, which was opened earlier this year, has been a word-of-mouth success, bringing in more than 40,000 visitors so far.

Tishbi takes its wine and chocolate seriously. Once in the tasting room, you settle into a standing station around a wooden bar. In front of you are three glasses and a rectangular box with six pieces of chocolate. Each chocolate is paired with a specific wine to bring out the flavors in both.

The glasses are of different sizes: the larger the glass, the more of the wine’s vapors enter your smell receptors, changing the overall sensory experience. I didn’t notice it so much, but I’m sure the late Israeli dean of wines Daniel Rogov would have.

For each chocolate, Tishbi instructed us to break off a piece and let it rest on our tongues. Taste it, feel it, let it melt, he beseeched us. It was hard not to bite, but then I was never very good with lollipops either. Once the tongue is thoroughly coated with chocolate, you drink in the wine. Let it float over the chocolate, Tishbi implied.

We then had a choice: let the wine carry the chocolate down, like a wet pill, or take them in one after another.

After a few moments of contemplation, it was on to the next wine and chocolate pairing. We learned the difference between “Manjari” chocolate from Madagascar and the Caribbean “Caraibe,” as well as the percent of cocoa inside (up to 85%, as decadent as they come).

At NIS 30 (less than $10) for a 45-minute gastronomic and oenological indulgence, it’s worth the gas to huff it up to Haifa (Tishbi is on the way, in the picturesque village of Binyamina). And if you need to chill out afterward and let the wine settle, Tishbi has a nice dairy restaurant right next door. But go for the apple pie – enough chocolate for one day!

There’s more about Tishbi and other delights in Israel’s Carmel region in this article I wrote for our sister publication Israel21c.

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Tel Aviv voted world’s best gay city

January 11, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

With all the recent coverage around the world of the gender segregation issues in Israel with haredim, it would be safe to assume that some people are getting the impression that our society is being overrun by Taliban-type extremist elements.

To bring things back to perspective, just go to ISRAEL21c or look at the website Gay Cities, and their ‘best of ‘11’ awards, a poll sponsored by American Airlines. Their readers named Tel Aviv as the ‘best Gay city’ in the world – and it wasn’t just by a thin margin.

Tel Aviv with its 43% of the votes bested the nearest competitor, a little-known backwater hole called New York City which garnered 14%. Other cities with smaller percentages of the votes include Toronto, Sao Paulo and Madrid.

“The gay capital of the Middle East is exotic and welcoming with a Mediterranean c’est la vie attitude,” the website wrote about our national place of pride, an opinion shared by many others.

While Tel Aviv has long been a favorite destination of gay tourists due to the above attributes, great nightclubs and beaches, and an up-all-night’ liberal attitude, the award is the result of efforts by government initiatives to specifically market Tel Aviv for gay tourism.

“The win is the highlight of six years of work and proof that the Tourism Ministry and the Municipality of Tel Aviv made the right decision to invest in gay tourism,” Shai Doitsh, brand manager of the Tel Aviv Gay Vibe tourism campaign, told Ynet.

The fact that we can be having fights about separate seating on buses and hearing women’s voices at army ceremonies on the one hand, and going wild on the beaches and in the clubs on the other hand, is part of the reason that as much as you can try to explain what Israel is, there’s just no way to do it. So you might as well just come and see it for yourself.

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Footwear PR

January 10, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, Israeliness 

I’ve written before about Kobi Levi‘s ironic, iconic and clever shoe designs, possibly about platforms, but was pleased to see him garnering some publicity for himself through more unusual efforts.

Check out his shoe calendar, via the UK Calendar Club, with a 2012 wall calendar that features 12 Kobi Levi shoe designs.

He also recently collaborated with Image Comics’ Vescell storyline, integrating his shoe designs for one of the characters, Machi, a fairy protector.

Keep on spreading the word. Or the shoes.

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Women do it for themselves in Beit Shemesh

January 9, 2012 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, News, Pop Culture, Religion, Social Justice 

YouTube Preview ImageWhen the going gets tough, the only solution is to… organize a flash mob.

Residents of Beit Shemesh, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, have been stigmatized recently by the behavior towards women of certain haredi elements within certain neighborhoods of the city.

In recent weeks, an ultra-Orthodox man spat on an 8-year-old girl for “immodest” dress, and a subsequent protest for women’s rights drew national attention, featuring speeches from national political leaders. Beit Shemesh has an unorthodox makeup (no pun intended), in that the older, main area is a largely mixed, working class community of Sephardic old timers and their offspring. However, new suburbs of the city have become magnets for a different population – one area is filled with national religious English-speaking immigrants, and another is one of the most haredi in the country, outside of Mea She’arim.

Dance organizer Miri Shalem, who works for the city’s community center, decided to organize a women’s flash mob to protest of the violent extremist actions of “the group of crazies,” and to show that there is another side to Beit Shemesh.

So, last Friday morning in the city square, more than 250 women of all sizes, ages and religious identification got down with Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” in an impressive display of organization, rhythm and fun.

“Today the women and girls demonstrated our unity in public and I hope we will continue to do this in the future in order to improve our city,” Shalem said.

Bring on more flash mobs!

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