Encountering Jerusalem’s finest
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life
Most Israelis go through life without ever seeing the inside of a police station, which is probably a good thing. It’s not a very nice place – cold, impersonal, miserable people generally milling about, and surly cops.
I know this because I did get to see the inside of a Jerusalem police station last week – not because of anything I did, but because my teenage son had bear witness in a case.
It was a combination of circumstances that led to police involvement in the case. Among them was group of macho seniors playing ‘heavy’ with my son, a junior, in order to find out who painted some derogatory graffiti about them on a school wall. Another was a zero tolerance policy toward violence implemented by the school principal.
The result was, instead of an in-house investigation and punishment, a call to the local police and the opening of a ‘tik’. That meant a call home from the shaken boy to tell his parents to come get him and bring him to the police station.
First of all, nobody tells you where to go, so after 20 minutes of trying to find the right wing of the massive structure in Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood, we finally located the ‘youth wing.’ There were no painting of butterflies on the walls, believe me – just a delipidated corridor facing a reinforced locked door.
Every once in a while, some scruffy adult individual or another would emerge – evidently a police man in plain clothes – leading an also scruffy younger person. Whenever I told one of them why we had been sent there, they just said, ‘stay here, someone will come get you.’
Within an hour, that did happen, and we were led inside the reinforced door into another neglected corridor with offices. After another long wait, we were ushered into one of them, where an officer, also in civilian dress, and with the personality of… a cop, sat us down and demanded to get a play by play of my son’s ordeal. He wanted names, places, who did what, who said what, and when my son faltered, he yelled at him that his time was being wasted.
Reminding him to differentiate between the victim and the perpetrator, I gently steered the investigation back toward civil territory, as the officer gamely typed the testimony into the computer. At the end of a the two-hour stay, he simply said, ‘you can go now.’
We weren’t even sure why we had been summoned. We hadn’t called the police in, and my son was now scared that there would be physical retribution for his testimony from the senior bullies. My wifw said later that the principal had done the right thing by bringing the police into the matter, because if she hadn’t, and it the situation had escalated into one of real violence, everyone would have said, ‘why didn’t she call the police?’
On the other hand, some parents were outraged that what they called a high school prank gone bad might now scar the records of these boys who, within a year, will be joining the IDF.
I didn’t really care either way, I was just happy to walk out of that police station, and like the vast majority of Israelis, return that aspect of our society back to the far reaches of my mind.
Graffiti overcomes Kassams in Sderot
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, coexistence, design, General, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice
Fixing a hole - one of the urban artists from Artists 4 Israel in Sderot. (Photo: Ron Friedman)
That’s why an international group of graffiti artists under the Artists 4 Israel moniker have descended upon the southern city to brighten up the surroundings and give the residents of Sderot some color back in their lives.
“Unfortunately, people here have to live with bomb shelters. We’re here doing a little something to bring some color to something that’s here for an ugly reason,” said American graffiti artist Cycle, summing up to The Jerusalem Post the aim of the group’s “Murality Project’ mission to Israel.
The 25 urban artists from the United States, Spain, Mexico and Israel, including some of the top names in New York City urban art, have been decorating the city’s bomb shelters for a couple days already beautifying the bombarded city’s public bomb shelters.
“You can still feel the tension in the air. People aren’t at ease,” Texas graffiti artist Saul Schister told The Post.
“One of the artists was working with headphones on, listening to music, and a resident came up to him and yelled at him. He told him that it was dangerous because with the headphones on, he wouldn’t be able to hear the sirens,” said Schister. “I guess that for them, these bomb shelters on every street are a constant reminder that they live in a war zone.”
An Israeli artist who goes by the name of Psycho said that the experience was even special for him – because he wasn’t used to painting public buildings with the permission of the municipality.
“I used to paint illegally, but then I was caught by the police. Since then I’ve been doing commissioned work,” he said. “I don’t really care about the politics. For me it’s more about the art. But I know that the people here have had a rough time and if my work can help, I’m happy to do it. So far people’s reactions have been really positive. Some people have even asked if we can come paint their house.”
Nostalgia Sunday – From Zeev to Zeev
Filed under: General, Holidays, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Illustrator and comics artist Zeev Engelmayer creates works that are rooted in nostalgia for an Israel gone by. In his new Passover exhibition, “Matza & Tequila” — which opened last week at Tel Aviv’s Urbanix Gallery — Engelmayer displays illustrations, collages, and original hand written texts from the “Engelmayer Haggadah”, ceramics, animations and pieces inspired by the Haggadah, which was published 10 years ago and has now been reissued by the Israel Cartoon Museum.
Engelmayer likes to mix visual references of Israeli culture with combined with cinema images from the 50′s, commercial advertisements, catalog photos and schoolbook illustrations. His text are usually a dopey play on words that nonetheless strike a deeper chord. For example, this picture whose title, loosely translated, is something like, “Behold, the Prom-assed Land.”
And this one, entitled “Hametz On the Arava Highway,” which could be a reference to the “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” genre of horror film, or could equally be a comment on the panic demonstrated by vigilant family members trying to rid their homes (or perhaps the world…) of unleavened bread before Passover.
Another exhibition that opened this past week: a retrospective of works by the late Yaakov “Zeev” Farkash, whose cartoons and caricatures were a staple feature in Ha’aretz for 40 years. I remember Zeev from the glory days of Cafe Tamar, a small, modest smiling man who, every year at Passover, created a new and different “Gone On Vacation” sign for proprietor Sarah Stern in his signature pen and ink style. The works — and Sarah– are still there today.
“Matza & Tequila” runs through April 16th at Urbanix, which specializes in urban art and vinyl toys. The Zeev retrospective will be up through June 20th at the Israel Cartoon Museum.
Spin Takes A Turn With ISRAEL21c
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Life, Pop Culture, Sports
ISRAEL21c is now a contributor to SPIN Earth, a new web video initiative from SPIN Magazine. The first video up: a profile of the Israel Parkour Team, who use the sidewalks and walls of Tel Aviv as their training ground.
Jazzy Jay and other esoteria
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Music, Pop Culture
Just because the Israeli concert-going market can’t support more than one or two performances from A-list-ers like Paul McCartney each summer, doesn’t mean that we need to deal with washed-up international talents like Deep Purple the rest of the time.
The best of the not-quite-mainstream pop talent whose art is uncompromised, esoteric and less disposable have been entertaining us here more and more often, whether it’s Devendra Bernhardt, Low, Blonde Redhead, Lee “Scratch” Perry or Morrissey. Thankfully, more and more performers along these lines have been making their way to Israeli stages in recent years.
And despite the ongoing violence in the south of the country in recent weeks, the show must go on. No notices announcing a cancellation of this Friday’s Urbanology Festival have reached this cultural correspondent’s desk so far, which means that old-school talent DJ Jazzy Jay is still expected to hit the decks this weekend at the Cult Club at Herzl St. 154, Tel Aviv (tickets available at 057-777-4422).
Jazzy Jay is one of the founding fathers of hip hop. A scratch turntablism pioneer, he spun at street parties in the Bronx in the late Seventies and in downtown Manhattan clubs in the early Eighties. Part of Afrika Bambaataa’s Universal Zulu Nation collective, Jay was also a co-founder of the influential Def Jam Recordings. His “It’s Yours” single was the label’s first-ever release, and he helped broker the partnership between notorious trailblazing rap moguls Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. His own Jazzy Jay’s Studio was an early home to luminaries like A Tribe Called Quest Brand Nubian.
Jay comes to Israel for the Cult Club’s Urbanology party, branded as a celebration of everything associated with old-school hip hop culture – rap, breakdancing, graffiti and more. Events like these have been taking place at venues across Israel for years, but none with a marquee performer of this stature. Other participants include local talents like the disco funk-fixated DJ Alarm, DJ Mesh, local old-schoolers Quami and Kottage, the Tachlis Band and alt-rappers Peled and Ortega.
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