Nostalgia Sunday – Kikar Atarim: What’s up with that?
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Travel
I have family visiting Israel this week and they are staying at a very nice hotel in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, like most of the nice hotels in Tel Aviv, theirs is located adjacent to a local embarrassment known as Kikar Atarim (Atarim Square, also known as Namir Square). And like most visitors, they are curious as to the origins of this concrete and stone monstrosity whose sole purpose seems to be to block the view and the route to the sea. Oh, and to serve as a giant pissoir.
Google the phrase “kikar atarim” and what you’ll get is a series of items terming it everything from “the single most disappointing and embarrassing tourist attraction in the city” and “[a] prime example[s] of what can kindly be called ‘errors in urban planning’” to “a colossal failure”, “concrete atrocity” and “something I crawled over and got away from as quickly as I could.”
In her Haaretz article, A white elephant from outer space in the heart of Tel Aviv, author Shani Shilo relates that during the first Gulf War, then-Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo (Cheech) Lahat “remarked that he hoped an Iraqi missile would land on Atarim Square and destroy the thing.” I had it on my Saddam Hussein wish list as well.
The square, built on a cliff leading down to the sea, was designed as a multifunctional structure and tourist attraction by one of Israel’s most dominant architects, Yacov Rechter, as a prime example of Brutalist architecture in Israel. When it opened in the early 1970s, it was very successful for a time: the Kolbo Shalom department store had a branch called “The Drugstore,” modeled after Le Drugstore, (a famous Parisian 60s hangout); people flocked to the Shahaf Cinema and sat in cafes under the concrete mushrooms. Here’s a lovely picture (above) of screenwriter Moshe (Pommy) Hadar and his wife Bella Levin in front of Drugstore Shalom.
In 1978, the municipality changed the name of the square to honor the late Mordechai Namir, who was mayor from 1959 to 1969. But the square had already begun a downwards spiral from which it has yet to emerge.
Tel Aviv lore has it that Kikar Atarim is a sort of No Man’s Land run by shadowy underworld types who take astronomical amounts in protection fees, thus preventing any businesses from being able to sustain, let alone flourish. And, according to Wikipedia (in Hebrew), this is probably true: “Towards the end of the Seventies, it changed entirely. Criminal elements took over the shops and a police station was established on the premises, the stores on the lower levels closed or were turned into gambling clubs. The Kolbo Shalom branch closed and the round structure stood abandoned for a number of years.”
And then, in 1982, Kikar Atarim experienced a sort of revival when the round structure was turned into a disco called the Coliseum (sic). Grace Jones, pop’s original and true diva, performed at the club opening and for years it was the place to go, see, be seen and get picked up. The surrounding area, however, continued to deteriorate to the point that Ora Namir, Ambassador, MK and widow of Mordechai Namir – and no slouch when it came to PR – requested that the municipality disassociate her late husband’s name from the place. And that, children, is how Haifa Road came to be know as Namir Road.
And then came the early Nineties and Mayor Lahat’s pronouncement, so reminiscent of the cry raised by the residents of St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe housing complex when asked what action could make their residence habitable. They chanted, “Blow it … up! Blow it … up!”. (The authorities complied).
Unfortunately, the Tel Aviv municipality in 2009 has it harder than that of St. Louis in 1971, mainly because of Kikar Atarim’s umpteen property owners and their descendants who, according to Wikipedia, “are not able to cooperate in maintaining the square. Unlike the malls, the square has no maintenance company and essentially there is no entity that manages or maintains it. The cheap construction materials from which it was built, along with its proximity to the sea, contribute to its accelerated deterioration.”
In 2006, the municipality announced that it would not knock down Kikar Atarim and would redo it instead. Apparently, the repairs were only structural so I put in a couple of nice pictures of that dream. Believe me, it’s now a few days shy of 2010, I just spent a weekend walking and running in, out and round about Kikar Atarim, and the only thing that’s changed is that a few new layers of urine have been added to the stairwells.
The good news is that the Coliseum just reopened! It can no longer lay claim to the title, “The Biggest Disco in the Middle East,” but the refurbishment is nice. Too bad about the neighborhood.
Nostalgia Sunday – On the street where you lived…
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel, design
Today I visited all the houses where I’ve ever lived in Israel. Almost — I’ll get to that in a minute. Thanks to Zoomap.co.il, which has been photographing the city streets and each and every building in Israel, you too can take a look at your old digs and check up on how badly the place has continued to deteriorate since you yourself lived under its leaky roof.
For example, the apartment building near trendy Sheinkin Streeet in Tel Aviv where I don’t live anymore. Don’t be put off by the disgusting facade. Location is everything.
And then the place in glorious north Tel Aviv, off HaYarkon Park, where I moved to escape trendiness and find parking.
And the place after that — not a great apartment — but still right on the park.
I started to get hooked on finding a picture of every place I’d ever lived here. That’s when I found out that Zoomap also has its flaws: this is a picture of the building in front of the Jerusalem building where my family lived in 1973-4. You can see our building peeking out on the left-hand side. Apparently the Zoomap folk were too tuckered out to walk up the hill to take pictures of the cul-de-sac.
But I got back on track with this picture of my grandmother’s old apartment which was Party Central for several years in the early 80s.
I could not find an address for the Hadassah Youth Center on Mt. Scopus and so could not do a search for a picture — another failing of Zoomap is that, like GPS, it doesn’t recognize institutions, only addresses — but I’m pretty sure this is the immigrant absorption center in Dimona where Young Judaea parked us for a few months om 1979. Again, the dowdy appearance is deceiving; the Black Hebrews were also living there at the time, which made it kind of cool.
And this is where I live now! Back to Jerusalem, just up the street from grandma’s old apartment. Life is funny.
Google Earth doesn’t get down to building resolution for Israel so use Zoomap to take a trip down memory lane. Or purchase some real estate. It’s part of Bezeq’s 144 directory assistance site which is now translated into English. Happy trails!
Nostalgia Sunday – Sali Ariel’s Tel Aviv Bauhaus
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel
As Tel Aviv’s centennial gets underway and the weather warms up, more and more festive events will be held to celebrate the occasion. One of these happened last night, when the Rozin Center Gallery opened the season with an exhibition of works by painter Sali Ariel.
Originally from the States, Sali was a long-time Jerusalemite who made the move to Tel Aviv over a decade ago. As she got to know her new home, she noticed it was changing before her eyes. “I started seeing the Ramat Gan business district going up and all the big tall buildings on Rothschild Boulevard and while I don’t think that’s bad, I was afraid we would forget how Tel Aviv looked. I also felt inevitably, Tel Aviv had to change but I didn’t know if it was for better or for worse. I wanted to document it for people in the future so they would know how Tel Aviv was in our time.”
Ariel feels she looked at Tel Aviv as an outsider, “because I had just moved from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv seemed to have a bright happy fun look about it. And maybe for that reason I didn’t see the trash and crumbliness, because I was comparing it to the serious and the grayness of Jerusalem, which I also love and think is beautiful, but very different.”
Ariel started out wandering Yarkon Park and trying to sketch the natural surroundings. “But whenever I started to paint trees there were buildings peeking out form behind. And when i started to paint buildings, shockingly, a lot of what i saw was green leafy stuff — they was sort of inseparable, the two.”
Ariel was not a Bauhaus aficionado when she started working on this theme. “I was just doing buildings that looked nice to me. And then i was offered an exhibit at the Bauhaus Center and have had several exhibits since then. It also turns out that many of the building that I like are Bauhaus — but not all. Some of them are the older buildings in what’s called oriental or eclectic style.”
More works can be viewed at Sali Ariel’s website and the current exhibit will be on display at the Rozin Center Gallery in Ramat Aviv until April 22.
Foto Friday – Sharon Yaari
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness
Was it real or did I dream it? Photography on one hand, can document fact. On the other hand, it creates illusions, presents images without context to leave any narrative up to the observer, or records people, places, and things that have passed. By its very nature, photographs are short-lived, comprised of fragile paper, film, or – worse yet – digital data that will disappear forever with one good wave of a magnet.
SharonYaari is an award winning photographer whose work has long dealt with the temporal. His new solo show “Jerusalem Boulevard” now at the Sommer Gallery in Tel Aviv are large-format photos of things readily identifiable as part of daily life in Israel: a checkered blanket of the kind that everyone used to have (we called them “sochnut blankets” when I made aliya, because the Jewish Agency distributed them to new immigrants); a classic semicircular Tel Aviv Bauhaus balcony; Ibex lying under a eucalyptus tree; a chair and some flowers; a woman at what is clearly (for Israelis) a memorial site.
They are at once familiar and at the same time, raise questions on a practical level: Do they make those blankets any more? Aren’t the Ibex in danger of extinction? Will the Bauhaus structures, whose architectural philosophy never intended them to stand forever, survive urban pollution? Is that woman from the Twenties? The Forties? The Eighties? Now?
They also raise questions on an existential level… does everything fade and die as undoubtedly these flowers did long ago?
“Jerusalem Boulevard” will be at the Sommer Gallery through March 21st.
Mamilla architecture
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture
The best underground parking lot in Jerusalem, possibly the entire country, is underneath the Mamilla pedestrian mall, part of the $400 million complex that was in dispute for many years, but is finally near completion. Large, spacious and with smooth cement floors that may very well be cleaner than those in my own home, I’m thinking of moving in there.
But despite the luxuriousness of the parking lot, that probably isn’t the most striking architectural feature of the complex, which features several dozen boutiques, several cafes and other businesses in the pedestrian-only shopping district along Rehov Mamilla. The stores are also fine, natch, a fairly interesting combo of local and foreign shops that offer some decent options for Malcha Mall-weary Jerusalemites.
What is worth checking out are some of the mall’s reassembled buildings from the turn of the century. The Stern House, for example, was where Theodor Herzl slept when he visited Jerusalem in 1898, and now houses the Mamilla Steimatzky bookstore and an outdoor cafe. What’s cool is that in order to move and reassemble the building, each stone of the facade was carefully numbered in order to reassemble it in its new location and with more modern construction behind the walls. Given that the original structures themselves were demolished, preservationists poo-poo the practice as ‘facadism.’
But, still, it offers the Mamilla project a more layered, architecturally interesting look to have preserved buildings on site, and if the Stern House hosted Herzl, why not Steimatzky?
Jerusalem bridge may divide Jerusalem, but it looks really cool
The new Bridge of Strings was dedicated this week in Jerusalem. Designed by famed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the construction of the bridge has not been without controversy. Outrageous traffic jams, increasing costs and even cracks (yes, cracks) in the bridge and other problems have made for a PR nightmare for the municipality. On Wednesday the bridge was officially dedicated and a ceremony was held at the outrageous cost of over 2 million shekel. 
On one hand, its incredible that Jerusalem can host such an architectural marvel which is incredibly cool looking. On the other hand the bridge cost over 240 million shekel and won’t even function as it was intended (for the light rail) for at least another two years. 240 million shekel is a hell of a lot of money to spend on something so extravagant in the poorest city in the country.
The ceremony itself was not without controversy either. A girls dance troupe were forced to cover up after their costumes were deemed immodest.
…the girls, who ranged in age from 13 to 16, were informed by production organizers several hours before the event that at the municipality’s instruction they had to don black knitted hats and wear long clothing for the performance, said Shlomi Hoffman, the director of the Jerusalem dance troupe…
…The head of the dance troupe noted that the girls – who were also informed an hour before the event that they could not perform three out of four of their planned dances – had danced in the official state Independence Day ceremony just one month ago on Mount Herzl in virtually the same attire.
“This was not a religious event or an event at the Western Wall, but an event for the public at large for the inauguration of a bridge,” Hoffman said.
Secular and National Religious remain the majority of Jerusalem’s population and the forcing of the modest dress upon the young dance troupe is being touted in the media as a move by haredi forces who do not want to see Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski as the haredi candidate in the upcoming election. No one saw it coming, but the election for Jerusalem’s next mayor apparently started Wednesday night.
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