Tel Aviv Rooftop

A few weeks ago, an artistic prankster made interesting use of some empty space on the massive billboard hiding the building site of the White Tower residential project on the corner of Allenby and Rothschild. The developers had printed the following sentence, ostensibly written by architect Richard Meier : "Building this White Tower over the White City is a dream come true" our prankster turned it into: "Building this White Tower over the White City and ask people for 13,000$ a square metre is a dream come true." Needless to say, the artistic addition (effective, despite the bad grammar) was speedily eradicated. There's a homeless guy who lives under the billboard now - a completely unintentional but even more effective condemnation of the system in which some pay in gold to live in luxury while others are destined for the gutter. Not that by-passers seemed to notice -neither the art work nor the homeless guy. Nevertheless, the problem of affordable housing in...

MLC in action last night. click for full screen Well we did it. Last night's performance by Mid Life Crisis at Bloom Bar was a major success and all band members are still high on our night of glory. The enthusiastic and supportive audience of about 60 (several of whom were not even family or friends of the band members) was in the 18-65 age range - definitely the market niche we're seeking. Rockin it up at the Bloom Bar. There's nothing like pretending you're 21 and getting away with it for an hour. Some of the audience was too young to recognise the cover versions we did (even covers of new songs a mere 10 years old!) but seemed to appreciate us nevertheless. We were on good form and even when we flubbed something (no more than 4-5 times throughout the 14 song set) we somehow sorted it out (herein lies the value of rehearsals) and got back on track. They could almost be doing that little dance like 'The Shadows' used to do - but they're not. Y who was ...

So much for writing more blogs on my holiday. But you know how it is; the more time you have , the less you seem to to accomplish. Not that I've been entirely supine. There have been great family visits and a lot of beachgoing and even sailing! (thanks to H and his yacht). The picture above in fact is of H's foot, casually steering our craft through the stomach-churning swell off Ashkelon marina. The photo below was taken at Alma beach, our favourite (and closest) spot along Tel Aviv's long beachfront. Here, Arab families from Yaffo share some communal space and the vocal comments of the lifeguards supervising the limited strip of sea designated for bathing (the sea is dangerous here). That's about where the co-habitation ends though. Each side sticks to itself and doesn't bother the other and everything's cool (although not warm). It's clear who looks out of place in this photo. Unbearably muggy, noisy and sticky, midsummer in the middle of Tel Aviv is to ...