Dizengoff, Friday

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All good things come to an end. Back to the grindstone tomorrow. Since I'll have less time for blogging I thought I'd post some photos taken on Friday. Starting with the rooftop itself, in its winter aspect still but with plants budding madly.

On the way, on the corner of Herzl and Lillienblum, they are restoring a late 1920s building in art-deco style. For years the details had been covered with soot and grime but are finally being revealed.





Since I was on holiday on Friday, A. and I decided to visit a gallery or two. We started with an exhibition at the Kibbutz Gallery on Dov Hoz which promised ("A search for the margins") far more than it delivered (a few fuzzy kodachromes and mangled lumps of plaster). Then we visited the Bauhaus Gallery on Dizengoff itself and saw some excellent photos of Tel Aviv by a new immigrant from Latvia (Marina someone).

The permanent exhibition there is of restored ernational Style buildings such as this one on Menachem Begin (my photo of their photo) which is one of my personal favourites.

Haven't been to Dizengoff on a Friday morning in ages. The southern end of what used to be Tel Aviv's "flagship" street is now quite badly run down in places. On a bench on the concrete square they suspended over the old 'circle' to let the traffic flow beneath, a street dweller held up a sign demanding political asylum and Ya'akov Agam's weird water and fire sculpture failed to produce water or fire.


But we did discover a lively flea market in progress . I sort of knew it was there but have actually never visited it before.



Artistically satiated but otherwise famished we ate lunch at Bar Giora on Dizengoff: young, friendly, noisy, tasty.




Then came across this convention of pampered pekinese, out "seeing and being seen", which is what Dizengoff used to be all about in its heyday.

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