YouTube creates another Israeli star

April 2, 2009 - 8:43 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Music, Pop Culture 

Oren Lavie

Oren Lavie

Sometimes, all it takes for an Israeli to become successful is… to leave Israel. Not that we’re recommending it, God forbid, but it seems to have worked for Oren Lavie.

The playwright turned singer/songwriter from Tel Aviv is enjoying a new-found noteriety in the US and around the world, appearing on The Jimmy Kimmel show, signing licensing deals with Chevrolet for his song to appear in an ad for the Chevy Malibu, and with the producers of the film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

And you may just be one of the four and a half million YouTube viewers who watched the video to his song “Her Morning Elegance” from his debut album The Opposite Side of the Sea.
The inventive stop motion-style video has become somewhat of a sensation, and propelled Lavie from anonymity into a kind of cyber celebrity anonymity.

A strong booster in influential indie-based Los Angeles radio station KCRW helped Lavie’s music get heard by the suits, resulting in the licensing deals which enabled him to launch his own label to release the album and produce the video.

The video – produced with Tel Aviv-based husband-and-wife team of Yuval and Merav Nathan – animates the fantastic dream of a sleeping woman without ever leaving her bedroom, using her mattress as the canvas of the dream and her bed frame as the dolly of her journey.

Last month, Lavie performed “Her Morning Elegance” on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, accompanied by a life-size, Muppet-like puppet nuzzling him throughout the song, a move that Lavie described as an attempt to break out of any pre-conceived mold that listeners might have that he was just another humorless singer-songwriter.

Despite living now in LA and not having had an address in Israel for a number of years, Lavie still considers Tel Aviv his home, returning regularly to visit family and friends. And here, he’s also still anonymous, able to walk down the streets without being recognized. But that might be for long.

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Zipping around temporarily

October 2, 2008 - 11:19 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Environment, General, Travel 

Zipcar number one!In 17 of North America’s largest cities, over 200,000 people nicknamed “Zippies” have begun using a service called Zipcar. The company allows members to reserve cars to drive, which they pick up using special credit card-like devices at specified locations. A cross between a communist (yet still for-profit) rent-a-car and public transportation, Zipcar allows people who don’t need cars every day (and whose lifestyles make parking, maintenance and other car ownership parameters impractical) to easily use cars on an hourly or daily basis, and people love it (pictured).

For frequent Zippies, there are even “Extra Value” membership options to match car use needs, and many European cities offer similar programs.

Now Haaretz reports that a similar initiative called CarShare, courtesy of a company called Car2Go, will soon launch in Tel Aviv, where there’s a major need….

The calculation is simple: The average car in Israel is driven 17,000 kilometers annually (the average in Tel Aviv is less), and the average speed is 35 km/hr. So the average car drives 378 hours a year, or one hour and three minutes a day. The rest of the time they just sit there, taking up space.

The obvious solution is to get rid of private cars. That isn’t a terribly popular idea. What’s the solution if you need to get to dinner at grandma’s in Pardes Hannah, or buy a new closet at Ikea?

How will it all work?

The idea is to start with 10 cars owned by [rent-a-car company] Sun Car – a Chevrolet, a Hyundai Getz and other models. The cars will be offered for rent in several ways; for example, the City option, costing NIS 19 per hour plus NIS 1.90 per kilometer, and the Freedom option, costing NIS 39 per hour plus NIS 1.90 per kilometer after the first 100 kilometers. Or the customer may choose to rent a car for the whole day for NIS 139 plus NIS 1.9 per kilometer, or rent a car for the day for NIS 269 including the first 100 kilometers.

The plans are not just cool – they’re remarkably ambitious:

So far the Car2Go entrepreneurs have invested $150,000 of their own money in the project, they say. “Our goal is to reach a fleet of 60 cars and 1,000 active users by the end of 2008,” says [CEO Yonatan] Gadish.

“Within five years we want to reach 1,000 cars and 27,000 users. In the longer run we want to reach other cities in Israel, such as Haifa and Jerusalem, and later to expand abroad – to Greece, Turkey and Eastern Europe too, where the model doesn’t exist.”

Hopefully the business model, a proven one abroad, will translate well to a city with major decongestion needs – even if it’s not a town known for good-natured sharing.

Image courtesy moon_child from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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