Good homes
Filed under: Blogging, design, General, Israeliness, News
It’s helpful to live in a city such as Jerusalem, with a large selection of historical, architecturally interesting homes, particularly when you write for the Properties section of the International Herald Tribune and the Great Homes section of the New York Times. That said, it doesn’t happen that often, since there’s only so many articles about ‘great’ Jerusalem homes that IHT and NYTimes readers want to read, but let’s just say that the supply is sufficient.
And when I have one of those pieces in the paper, as I did several weeks ago, it gets a good bit of notice, both for me and the person whose house was ‘covered.’ People want to know how you find the homes and how you gauge whether a place is right, or ripe, for coverage. In the case of this last piece, it was about a great home that belongs to a friend of mine, and which I’d wanted to write about for a while. If you read the article, you’ll see why it fits the Properties section. But the timing had to be right, both for me and for him.
Another fairly recent piece had been suggested by someone who knew the owners; turns out the place was perfect for a writeup and the owners were amenable — two details necessary to my final product. But Jerusalem being the small town that it is, there a plethora of great homes, and, I often know the owners or eventually get to know them. For this Baka home, I didn’t know the owners when I interviewed them, but then their daughter married the son of friends, bringing the story full circle.
Yet as I often say, a ‘great home’ isn’t about size, price or budget; it’s about that certain something that sets it apart from, well, most of our homes. It’s a sense of design or color (see this one about a house in Zichron Yaacov), or about living comfortably in a small space.
Certainly, this most recent piece fits all those markers. I wasn’t the only one who thought so; see what blogger Shira Abel had to say a couple of years ago.
In any case, as I always say, viewing a great looking home just inspires you to do a little something with your own place, whether that means rearranging the pictures on the wall or buying new furniture, if the budget allows. Enjoy your abodes.
Abe’s Market
Filed under: Business, Environment, Food, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Technology
If you read the New York Times business section on October 13, you may have read about Abe’s Market, an e-commerce site that sells natural, organic and eco-friendly products such as organic shampoo from more than 180 small businesses around the U.S.
What the article didn’t mention is that both Jon Polin and Richard Demb live in Israel, in Jerusalem, and are running the company from here, with more than a few trips back to the old country throughout the year. Both lived in Israel while in their 20s, and then moved back to the States for a while, where they each established themselves professionally and then moved back here. In the process, they each looked for what they were going to do next, and came up with the idea of Abe’s Market.
Named for Jon Polin’s grandfather Abe, a pharmacist who owned Polin Drugs, a Chicago drugstore, the idea of the website is much like how Abe ran his store. He knew all his customers by name, and kept the place open until midnight on many nights. Similarly, Abe’s Market is always open, thanks to the web, and is dedicated to telling the stories of its sellers who offer their wares at prices that are the same or cheaper than sold elsewhere. And they gain great exposure on Abe’s, which is the secret to the business. As Polin told the Times:
“Our manufacturers are great at manufacturing products,” Mr. Polin said. “We’re great at selling products. Let them do their thing; let us do our thing.”
Check out this online, all-natural general store, and keep your eye out for some Israeli products. They’re bound to show up sooner or later.
@Israel
Filed under: Blogging, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics, Technology
It’s Sunday, which means today is deadline-day for the American, Israeli and Palestinian officials looking to broker a possible deal regarding Jewish settlement building, en route to peace talks.
Perhaps you’ve already read that news, whether online, in the newspaper or on Twitter. If you did read it on Twitter, you may have received it from @Israel, the latest effort from Israel’s Foreign Ministry to help improve its image.
Given Twitter’s runaway success, it’s definitely not a bad idea for Israel — the country — to have its very own micro-blogging presence. What’s interesting is how Israel acquired @Israel. According to the recently reported New York Times story on the subject, it was the Spanish owner of a pornagraphic website who sold the name to the state. The Spanish gentleman, Israel Meléndez, acquired @Israel in 2007, when Twitter was still quite unknown. According to the Times,
“He struggled to use his account…because every posting prompted a flood of anti-Semitic or anti-Israel comments from Twitter users, in a case of mistaken identity.
‘My account was basically unused because I was getting dozens of replies every day from people who thought the account belonged to the state of Israel,’ Mr. Meléndez said.”
According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, wrote the Times, the ministry did purchase the name as part of its efforts to expand into social media. So you can join the PR effort if you like, either by ‘friending’ the MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) on Facebook, or on Twitter.
Coke does it
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, tv
Could the world’s soft drink giant be ripping off Israeli chocolate milk maker Yotvata?
Very possibly. It seems that Coca-Cola had a Super Bowl commercial last Sunday titled “Sleepwalker,” and it showed a guy getting up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking to a fridge with bottles of Coke in it. Let me say that the two ads are extremely similar, from the music, plot to even the placement of the moon in the background.
A Coca-Cola spokeswoman told “Advertising Age” that any similarities to the Yotvata Dairy ad were coincidental.
“Advertising Age” quotes Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan Stribling as saying, “When we created the Coca-Cola ‘Sleepwalker’ commercial, we and our agency were unaware of this other ad. Now that we’ve seen the ad, we think both commercials are equally entertaining. While the two share a few common elements, any similarities are coincidental and unintended.”
Until now, Yotvata hasn’t made any complaints about the Coke ad, and according to a Globes articles, Israeli analysts said that the “near-imitation” could be considered flattery by Israel’s marketing industry. Which, of course, is just hilarious. But not unheard of. I’ve experienced more than one instance of Israeli copycat flattery. I’ve had articles published in the New York Times that were then translated and copied, word for word, in the Israeli press. When it was about the secondary mortgage market in Israel, the article in Yediot Achronot read, “The New York Times says…” blah blah blah.
Nice workaround, no? But alas, I, the writer, never got any credit. Ditto for Yotvata.
Send the hummous to Sacremento
Filed under: Food, General, Pop Culture, Sports, Travel
Omri Casspi playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv last year. (AP)
The New York Times ran a weekend piece on Casspi as he plays in the NBA summer league and adjusts to life without a local cell phone and without the creamy hummous which Americans still don’t seem to know how to make.
He just received a $4,500 bill for about two weeks of calls, which is expensive even by N.B.A. standards. He needs new chargers for all his gadgets. But he is struggling most to find comfort food.
“Hummus,” Casspi said, with a hard h and a long u, stressing the first syllable in a way that conveyed utter seriousness. “You don’t have that here, though.”
A reporter insisted that the chickpea spread is widely available in grocery stores in the United States, but Casspi — who was drafted last month by the Sacramento Kings — smiled dismissively.
“Man, I tried it; that’s all I can say,” he said last week during a break in the Kings’ summer league schedule. “I will bring some from Israel, maybe. I’ll let you taste it and you tell me.”
No Israeli has ever played in the NBA, and until last month, none had ever been drafted in the first round. When the Kings took Casspi with the 23rd pick, he became the first Israeli to secure a guaranteed contract, which will almost assuredly make him the first to play in an NBA game.
According to the Times’ story, Casspi is ready to take on the mantel of the great Israeli hope – both for Israelis, and American Jews proud to see an Israeli in the NBA and already sporting NBA jerseys with Casspi’s name written in Hebrew.
“I think all the eyes and ears in Israel, in basketball in Israel, are focused on me now,” he said, sitting behind a desk in his hotel room in Las Vegas. “There is big expectations, and all the Jewish community in the States is really excited about it. So I think there’s a big responsibility with it.”
Once the NBA season starts, there will likely be alot of 4 am wakeup calls in Israel, in order to get up and watch the Kings games, who have quickly turned into the country’s most popular basketball team next to Maccabi Tel Aviv.
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