big out to king adz for his tel aviv musings - i used to go to israel a lot as a kid, so it’s been a big high for me to hear what a whizz city it’s become - here’s his final installment - just gotta get him to agree to a recipe series as he’s also the writer behind the urban cookbook…
Sat here writing these words back in my office/typing room in England, my time in Israel seems almost like an opium-hazed drifting dream — except for the part where I try and leave Tel Aviv and have to go through the most insane security process imaginable: Questioning followed by security screening followed by more serious questioning followed by thorough security screening. Which, I guess, is why a lot of people don’t come here.
But once you’ve dealt with the border control coming in, you will find that there are no security threats on the streets of Tel Aviv. Israeli-Arab conflict does not feature in day-to-day street life. There is just a great creative and social atmosphere – it’s a place where women can walk the streets of the city late at night without any worries. How many cities can you say that about?
On my last night in town we went to get a burger in Herzliya — kinda like the Beverly Hills of Tel Aviv. It was the area where I had been staying all week at PILPELED’s but we had never gone out there. “I never go out here,” he had told me. “It’s not my kind of place — no freaks, geeks or losers!”
Soon enough, I understood what PIPLELED meant: the place was indeed larney, full of rich youths in designer clothes, all having ‘fun’ to the techno-pop soundtrack of the place we were at (Moses Burger Bar). It was a direct contrast to all the down-and-dirty places we’d frequented in the proceeding week. Even though the place was all sparkly and happy, there was definitely something missing in the bars, clubs, and burger bars of Herzliya. It was like living in a bubble, a bit like LA, a bit like some of the suburbs of Cape Town, places where money talks and poverty walks (on by). For me it was very fitting to experience the other side of the place on my last night: the ying ot the street yang. We only went there as it was the nearest place serving hot food and I was Hank Marvin. I had spent the last day on the beach, and considering it was winter, it was a great day indeed, just what I needed after all the running around I had done.
Then we went and watched Waltz with Bashir… and it all changed again. I had been waiting for a moment like this to see the great masterpiece of Israeli cinema, and when I began recognizing places in the film it meant so much more to me. And after the film had finished, and when PIPLELED began telling me about his time in the army, I, for once, began to understand a little about the contradiction of life in Tel Aviv, and in Israel.
Most people are ready to jump to a conclusion fed to them via the media. You have to go there and make your own mind up… I recent went to an exhibition where the gallery owner guy started talking to me and I told him that the most interesting, creative place on the planet right now was Israel. He was drunk, and he was shocked at what I was telling him. He thought I was being funny. I told him I was fucking serious and thenhe muttered something about having a god-daughter in Gaza And so he might have a different opinion about what I was saying… I asked him if he had been and he said no. ‘OK, don’t knock it till you try it…’
Biggest props to PIPLELED, my brother from another mother, for helping me to see what life is really like in the Holy Land.
words by KING ADZ
images by PILPELED
http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500514306.html
http://www.pilpeled.com/
mandix
mandi’s basement
