Hello Tel Aviv
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs
First it was Hello Jerusalem, now it’s Hello Tel Aviv. The Gap is opening its flagship Tel Aviv store next Sunday, February 21, in the city’s Azrieli Center.
Now the company’s trademark navy blue shopping bags will be swinging from shoppers’ arms in Tel Aviv, after they roam the aisles of the quintessentially American chain, checking out Long & Lean and Real Straight jeans and hoodies spread out over 650 square meters of inventory.
They’re planning a major media blitz, but I’m not too worried about whether Tel Aviv shoppers will check out their very own Gap. After all, Jerusalem’s Mamilla store is considered a huge success, given that Israel is a great example of a small market in which the Gap can achieve “enormous successes,” which is what Ron Young, the Gap’s senior vice president of international strategic alliances, told TheMarker last summer.
After Tel Aviv comes a Herzliya marina store in March, and then Eilat in June. According to the company’s website, Banana Republic stores will follow next year. And prior to that, Jerusalem has the first Israeli H&M store opening on March 11, another banner day for the capital city.
Just to fill you in a bit more, the Gap franchise in Israel is held by Elbit Trade and Retail. Elbit Trade also holds the rights in Israel to the Spanish chain Mango. And who is Elbit? They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of Elbit Imaging Ltd., which was known for its medical imaging devices until 1998, when it was acquired by Europe-Israel Ltd., a company known for its real estate business. Now Elbit focuses on shopping and entertainment malls and venture capital investments, as well as its image guided treatment products.
It’s an interesting mix, but clearly they’re doing something right.
Hamshush time
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness, Movies, Music
If it’s the weekend of December 3-5, then it’s the second Hamshushalayim, which is one of those Hebrish idioms for Hamshush — that’s a combo of Hamishi, Thursday, and Shishi, Friday and Yerushalayim, Jerusalem. But what it really means in this context is three long weekends of various Jerusalem events, from plays and musical performances to bar specials and city tours.
It’s all part of Mayor Nir Barkat’s efforts to liven up the city of Jerusalem, and make it a happening place, rather than a place of ‘incidents’ and situations.
“We broke all records this past summer with festivals and events,” he says, whipping out the first statistic: the doubling of the local culture budget. “Journalists don’t always grasp that the public differentiates between a demonstration and a performance, even if they are just 300 or 500 meters apart. Beautiful things are happening in Jerusalem parallel to the demonstrations, even if they lend themselves less to media coverage,” he told Ha’aretz last weekend.
The events are definitely geared toward students, university students that is, in an effort to keep them in Jerusalem. But there’s lots of cultural stuff going on, so it’s worth checking out.
Here’s the PDF brochure in Hebrew, and a few events that I’ve selected that look worthwhile:
*The Psik Theater group will be performing for free on Alrov Mamilla Avenue at 9, 10 and 11 pm on Thursday night.
*All Cinematheque movies are just NIS 28 for all Hamshushalayim participants, throughout the weekend.
*Nighttime tours of City of David, between 9 pm and 12 am, NIS 10-NIS 20 per ticket.
*Craft fairs at the ICCY and on Bezalel Hakatan (in town), on Friday morning.
And if you can’t make it this weekend, there’s always next weekend.
Luxe Jerusalem
The Waldorf Jerusalem under construction
I’m apt to think that we should be making Jerusalem more palatable and affordable for younger folk, rather than butler-hiring, $17,000 per square meter buyers…and we should refrain from encouraging developers to create projects in politically questionable neighborhoods that end up being bought by foreigners.
In my mind, $6 million residences are fine, as long as there’s plenty of other options for the rest of us.
EVOO Israel style
Filed under: Business, Food, General, coexistence, design
It’s olive harvest time in these parts, which I was reminded of while passing [a possibly] public grove of olive trees on King David Street, in which several Arab women were picking and harvesting the crop.
Yes, charming and amusing and a reminder of the importance of olive oil, whether EVOO or other, in these parts. Now that Israel has beefed up on its boutique wineries, olive oil is the next cottage industry to hit the commercial mainstream, and enterprising olive oil producers are doing just that.
Here’s a nice little piece about four different olive farms…and if you can’t make it out to the farm — or the patch of olive trees on King David Street — just head over to liveO/Oil of Life in Mamilla or Tel Aviv, where their Negev Desert-sourced olive oil is packaged to perfection, whether as olive oil, straight; in soaps, jams (the Pear and Vanilla Jam is particularly good), or a myriad of other products.
According to the company, liveO produces five different lines of gourmet products based on their extra virgin olive oils, Picual, Souri, Barnea, Frantoio and Manzanillo. The oils are cold pressed, classified as extra virgin, and have a level of acidity not exceeding 0.5%. The gourmet line was created by Julian Attia, a French culinary advisor, inspired by the world of wines.
If you seek your own regular source of olive oil, LiveO will deliver a quantity of olive oil to your home monthly or quarterly, for a not insignificant sum. Or, you can cure olives yourself:
Olive-curing recipe:
Collect olives by hand in a clean plastic bucket to prevent bruising.
Day 1: Wash in running water. Add boiling hot water and allow to soak for 24 hours.
Day 2: Pour off cold water add more boiling water.
Day 3: Pour off cold water add more boiling water.
Day 4: Pour off cold water. Place the olives into clean jars and add a mixture of brine and white (or any other type) vinegar in the proportions of 3 to 1 by volume.Brine = 10%w/v salt in water that is 100grams/litre of final solution
Fill jars well and add a layer of olive oil.
liveO: Mamilla Avenue, Jerusalem / 21 Rothschild Blvd., Tel Aviv
Fall into the Gap
Filed under: Business, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness
The question that people were asking each other last week in Jerusalem was whether a navy blue Gap shopping bag had appeared on their front door handle. I hadn’t, but as a frequent clothing buyer, I had received a NIS 50 coupon for the Gap from Isracard, my credit card company. Which, if you ask me, is better than an empty shopping bag.
So yes, there was some keen curiousity about the opening of the Gap in Jerusalem’s Mamilla shopping mall, given that this popular clothing retailer — part of the Old Navy/Banana Republic group — was finally coming to Israel and to Jerusalem, no less. Would the clothing cost the same as it does in the States, wondered the locals. Did they open in Jerusalem because rent is cheaper than it is in Tel Aviv? Would Israelis actually buy at the Jerusalem Gap, paying the probably higher prices? Would there be the end-of-season sale racks that there are in the States, where you can snatch up pieces for $6.99?
Probably not, assumed the Anglo Saxons, who swore never to be an Israeli ‘frier’ and buy from the Jerusalem Gap.
Reports began filtering back following the August 24 opening. The store was packed, one source told me, and it was only tourists doing the buying. Someone else said that the usual $65 jeans cost some NIS 300, which comes to some $80 in shekel terms.
So I had to head there myself to check out how the Gap was faring. On a sunny Tuesday morning, just one week after the grand opening, the store was full on both the Baby Gap and Adult Gap sides. People were walking out with more than one bag, and they looked Israeli to me, which wasn’t surprising. As for prices, they were about $15 higher, on average, than what you would pay at the Gap in the U.S. Of course, some of the fall items are already on sale on-line, whereas there were no sales at the Jerusalem store. Not yet, one salesperson told me, promising that we would be seeing some of the fabulous Gap sales in the holy city.
In the meantime, it was fun to peruse the familiar-looking racks and shelves. The jeans styles are translated into Hebrew, so that you can figure out if Sexy Boot jeans are for you, or whether the Little Pocket T is your perfect tee-shirt. I restrained myself, even with my NIS 50 coupon, cuz I’d still rather rely on online shopping through one of my frequent U.S. travelers.
Now when H&M reaches Malcha, that may be a different kind of challenge.
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?
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts