Matt Harding in Tel Aviv
What better proof that the world we live in is getting smaller and smaller than this: the world’s most watched video. Fifteen million views in just two weeks.
Note, the fountain in Dizengoff towards the end.
Vacation begins with UFO sighting over Tel Aviv
Okay, it’s official. The silly season has begun. I somehow thought Israel would be spared all those silly stories that emerge in the press when the vacations are on – what with all the news going on and all – but no.
Yesterday residents across central Israel were calling police switchboards in droves to report a UFO sighting over Tel Aviv. The object was spotted around 8pm flying at speed across the city, leaving a bright shiny trail.
The police crosschecked with the Israel Defense Forces and various ground units, and couldn’t come up with an explanation.
It turns out it was a meteor that astronomers had somehow failed to predict.
Shame I missed it.
Isn’t it about time for a crop circle story?
Weird Wednesday: An Idiot’s Guide to the Tel Aviv Beach
Shalom from Tel Aviv, people-are you enjoying the gorgeous weather? I sure am. With my job kicking my tuchus, I’ve adapted a new strategy for the weekends. I like to call it “sit on the beach and do nothing.” I highly recommend it. And apparently many have taken this recommendation to heart as evidenced by the large number of locals and tourists flocking to Chof (Beach) Bograshov on Fridays and Saturdays. And why not? If you hadn’t heard, Tel Aviv is approximately halfway between Jerusalem and the sun. With temperatures hot and getting hotter, what better place to spend your time than the beach?
Unless you want your appearance to scream “TOURIST!!!”, you’ll want to take the appropriate measures to fit in. Without further ado, here’s a quick idiot’s guide to what you need to know about the Tel Aviv beach. (By the end of this post, you might appreciate why the Tel Aviv beach might fall under the category of “Weird Wednesday.” If not, it’s time for a quick visit.)
Nostalgia Sunday
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Profiles
My mother’s uncle, Zvi Zinkin, was a painter. Not a famous one, except in our family lore. Dod Zvi and Doda Batya, as we knew them, were among the many eccentrics that called Tel Aviv home and made it a city like no other. They were elderly, agoraphobic, hard-of-hearing vegetarians when we met them in the 1970s, making their own watery beet juice and salt-free noodles (this was before veggie food was popular or palatable), composing poetry and melodies for Batya to dance, Isadora Duncan-style, around a living room embellished with wall murals of Zvi shaking hands with Moses, Herzl and Jabotinsky in the heavenly Jerusalem. Zvi’s true loves – Batya and the Land of Israel – were expressed through his paintings, some of which were handed down to my sisters and me.
One of Zvi’s recurring themes was the Yarkon River, usually depicting himself and Batya in a rowboat, or sometimes with just a solitary rower. He was also fascinated by the Reading Power Station. In these paintings, Reading’s distinguishing characteristic, the smokestack, has apparently not yet been erected.
Both Batya and my mother died aroud the same time, in 1975, and Zvi passed away a few years later. (I imagine the apartment went to people who scraped and plastered over the wall murals – I’ve never had the guts to go and check). My father, sisters and I managed to visit him only once, in 1976 – and it wasn’t easy to arrange. Zvi didn’t have a phone or couldn’t hear the phone – I was never clear on the details – so you had to send a postcard telling him about your plans to visit. Also, our relatives warned us that he’d become even more peculiar since Batya’s death. “He made a life-sized statue out of her old clothes and paper mache, and he talks to it,” they told my dad chillingly. “The girls will be frightened.” Actually, it was both Batya and Theodore Herzl, sitting opposite one another at the folding table, with a tape recorder of Batya playing the piano and singing. Somehow, though, it wasn’t really scary. It just was what it was: art and life, one and the same.
Hoki pokey
Perched on the couch in her eclectic Neve Zedek apartment in Tel Aviv, designer Shlomit Slavin is a whirlwind of energy as she describes her transition from advertising executive to rubber sandal designer. Partnered and mother of two, Slavin was on one of her regular bike rides around the Big Orange when she spotted a pair of old-fashioned, navy blue rubber slides in a dusty Tel Aviv store.
Struck by the simplicity and comfort of the crisscross design, she tracked down the original manufacturers who were happy to hand over the molds to Slavin, who began reproducing them in bold hues of red, white, yellow, purple and silver. Several months later, she was showing them at European and American shoe shows, and had orders from stores in France, Japan, Canada and across the U.S.
“These were sandals that were worn by old people, housekeepers, and religious women when they went to the mikvah (ritual bath),” says Slavin, a self-described lover and setter of style. “I had an older lady from Petach Tikva call me to complain that she’s been buying these for 40 years and now the price has gone up. So now I give a 50% discount to people who’ve been wearing them for years.”
Called the Hoki, which means street broom in Japanese — a nod to this simple slipper’s modest origins — Slavin is now transitioning to Hoki-like gladiator sandals and a selection of boots for the winter. But don’t compare them to Crocs; these flip-flops are comfortable, but hip. And Israeli-created and produced.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- News
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Science
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts