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Showing posts from 2010

Storm damage

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+ This time last week a storm was raging with 100 km per hour whippings through Tel Aviv and causing havoc on rooftops (including The Rooftop which lost a few plant pots). Had I been braver I would have gone down to the seafront where the wind and high waves were ripping flagstones from the pavements. There was some serious damage at Tel Aviv port and  I was told by an eye witness that an unhinged chasakeh ( a cross between a punt and an oversized surfboard, used by lifeguards), was seen floating on Rehov Hayarkon!   A week later (yesterday) the sea was still high and the sand level seemed to have risen considerably. This photo of the Banana Beach cafe where you normally sit on the beach and not on the raised deck. The showers on the left were uprooted by the waves.  Above it all, migrating birds making their way south

Ashes

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These photos were taken in 2004 near the Carmel spa resort in the Carmel nature reserve near Haifa. I'm posting them not because they are particularly good but because they record vanished landscape. The fauna you see in these photos has been turned to ashes. For the past three days, as we watch in horror on TV,  fire-fighters from Israel and countries that have come to its aid, have been battling the massive forest fire on the Carmel, one of Israel's dwindling green lungs. Click here for some dramatic press photos. So far, the fire has claimed 41 lives and consumed 40,000 dunams of  forest. Some 17,000 people have been evacuated from their homes and have mostly been adopted by friends, family or volunteers. Meanwhile it's the third evening of the fire, it's getting dark and soon the planes dropping water on the flames, including a massive Ilyushin transport, sent from Russia, will have to stop work and the fire is still not under control. One of the reas

New York, Halloween, 2010

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 Manhattan skyline taken from the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn. Legend has it that the shoes represent the victims of crime gangs but New York seemed a peaceful enough city. People seemed to be more worried about the economic climate and (some) about the beating the Democrats took in the mid-term Congressional elections than about crime. Halloween  is a big deal in America. The locals hang skeletons, ghosts etc from their windows or scatter fake gravestones on their lawns. Fierce cut out pumkin heads are the dominant image but in a move obviously orchestrated by Pumpkin Producers of America, the vegetable also features strongly in Thanksgiving later in November. Caught these people on the steps of a handsome brownstone introducing the delights of touching a large pumpkin to a baby. This character and his friend were cruising the side streets of the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade While in the parade itself, a massive event involving thousands of marchers, all

Yom Kippur 2010

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Erev Yom Kippur, Rehov Herzl.  A family walks down the centre of the normally busy street towards the Shalom Tower safe in the knowledge that they will not be mown down by a car. Yehuda Halevi, a.k.a. 'rehov habankim' because the big three banks have their headquarters here. Bereft of human or vehicular activity - as though on the day after a mystety virus had wiped out the population - the functional office towers suddenly seem functionless and the arrows on the street are pointing to nowhere. In this tempotrary deserted world the neon lights shine for no-one. All commerce halts. Capitalism takes a day off.  Apart from the clicking of the superfluous traffic lights, silence reigns. Rehov Shabazi, Neve Tzedek. Three women, one pushing a pram, walk home from the kol nidrei service that brings in Yom Kippur. They might be a grandmother (right) grandaughter (middle) and daughter (left pushing  agrandaughter. Four generations sharing the same fast. The cafes and boutiq

Transformed

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This is a photo of nos 8 and 6  - the twin beauties on the left. It was taken in 1927. There is reportedly an earlier photo of them taken in 1924, the year they were built, that shows them standing in splendid isolation, surrounded by sand. But by the time this photo was taken, pavements had been laid on Rehov Yehuda Halevi (they seem to be in better shape than the ones we have today), and the road, through still unpaved, seems smoother than the existing version; certainly smooth enough for the horse and cart clip-clopping towards Neve Tzedek. There's a spanking new electricity pole outside the Hadassah hospital (hidden on the right behind the imposing stone wall and a general air of gentility about the quiet street with its substantial buildings designed in what was later to be called the Eclectic style :  a wonderful hodge-podge of European romanticism and eastern fantasies a la One Thousand and One Nights. The "twins" were built by immigrants from Russia who had app

Mid Life Crisis plays twice in one week

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  One of the reasons I haven't been  posting recently is the debilitating heat. This  turns the brain into mush and rules out too much physical and even mental activity during the hot'n'humid season. Still, from time to time reality forces you to escape the aircon (home, car, office) and sweat. One of the few good reasons to leave the A/C is music. And so,  a few weeks back, Mid Life Crisis, oblivious to the intolerable heatwave and flying in the face of reason, embarked on a week of intensive activity.      First came a Thursday night gig on kibbutz Maagan Michael at a 40th birthday party. The crowd was techie, and the air was ickie. As usual, we could hear ourselves at the end of the sound check but not a soon as we started playing. By the third number my T shirt was soaked. And there were about 12 numbers. The crowd was a bit flaccid and, with a few exceptions remained  seated.   On Shabbat we were performing again, this time in the beautiful back garden of a private

Smashing into windows

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Came home yesterday to hear from A that a large pigeon had smashed into the living room sliding windows with a loud crash, slid to the floor and expired. The poor thing had somehow lost its navigational skills and had not only decided to fly into the apartment under the Rooftop (instead of landing on the Rooftop itself?) but had also failed to notice that the space in front of its beak was composed of hard glass and not thin air. For some reason it struck me that this somewhat bizarre occurence could serve as metaphor for Israel: blithely following a well known course, inately confident in its own powers (whatever the rest of the world throws up in its path), squawking whenever anyone dares offer a different orientation and then clumsily crashing into a situation seemingly invisible although, with hindsight, easily identifiable. Like a solo pilot on autopilot our course is pre-charted and any further discussion therefore unnecessary. And since no-one else is interested in listenin

Life's a Beach

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This gaggle of kids organised itself into a little dance on the water's edge ‘Chom yuli –august’, the heat of July-August, is the name of a song by Shlomo Artzi and the condition in which we all live, or , in the case of Tel Aviv with the humidity level over 90% - barely survive. To enter a car left in the sun is to enter a furnace, the pavements stick to the soles of your shoes and shade and cool become luxury items. School's out, the air-conditioned kenyonim (shopping malls) are full but for those of fortunate enough to live nearby, the beach is still the place to be on a sultry evening. So I thought some beach photos would be appropriate.     In the fading light, mysterious figures appear from the sea 'Alma Beach' is situated in the hypen in Tel Aviv-Yaffo and is probably the most heterogenous beach in Tel Aviv. Along a relatively short stretch ,Neve Tzedek yuppies, Arab families from Yaffo, foreign workers from Sudan, hipsters and tourists share the same spac

Black Days White Night

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Happy chassid graffiti Florentin, White Night There's an astute line in a Hebrew song that could be translated as, "The worse our fate, the more we celebrate." Indeed  as the last vestiges of Israel's international standing crumble before our eyes, as tens of thousands march through the country in solidarity with the Shalit family, as rumours of "a war in the summer" refuse to dissipate in the increasingly humid air ... it must be time for a street party! White Night 2010, an all night arts festival ,covers the whole lit up city in hundreds of venues. We stayed reasonaly close the Rooftop starting out in the grubby streets of South Tel Aviv, south of Allenby. Here, the art exhibits had been craftily placed  in  unlikely locations leaving you with a question of whether life imitated art or.. Not part of the official programme : a singer performs in a Bucharian restaurant, Florentin Also not an official art exhibit , a greengrocers featuring Rabbi Na