Went out in Tel Aviv last weekend just for the night. Stayed up 'til dawn walking the streets, stopping for the occasional beer. Tel Aviv is a very walkable place — there's a long street called Rothschild that has a double-lane bike highway running through the middle, flanked by grass and benches. There are open air kiosk-style restaurants every couple of blocks or so, and people stay out all night. Tel Aviv is a good place to shoot photos — chock full of weird lights, weird buildings, and weird people. It's a good place to be a weirdo.
Tel Aviv is known as a "bubble city." It's a place you can go to escape the tension of Jerusalem. Which is to say, it's a place you can go to escape Israel. Or to escape Palestine, in my case. Tel Aviv's residents give the air of blissful detachment from the hostile, hateful politics and cutthroat geopolitics that make their lives (and my escapist weekends) liveable and colorful. I can't blame them — they're in too deep. Why not enjoy the sea, pretend to anarchist sympathies, crank up to punk rock, and go out for sushi?
Down the street from Tel Aviv is the old Palestinian city of Jaffa, or Yafo in Hebrew. I regret that I wasn't able to photograph Jaffa on this trip. The old citadel juts out into the sea, gleaming under yellow lights in the distance. The storefronts in downtown Jaffa are vaulted arches affixed with cast-iron-latticed windows. It's beautiful, and tragic. Jaffa is still a predominately Arab city, but Jewish Israelis are busy buying up the choicest properties, just like everywhere else.
Tel Aviv was a boondocks when Jaffa was in its prime. Tel Aviv was a Jewish settler outpost when Jaffa was the pearl of the British Empire's holdings in Palestine. Now Tel Aviv is spiked with sky scrapers, filled with bars, bikinis and modern art. There are also drugs, prostitutes, Russian mafiosos. You have to take the good with the bad ...
Jaffa is still sleepy by comparison. It's maintained its tranquil seaside aura amidst all the turbulence and disappointment of the last six decades. Its walls and arches will outlast decades to come, that much is certain.
Tel Aviv is known as a "bubble city." It's a place you can go to escape the tension of Jerusalem. Which is to say, it's a place you can go to escape Israel. Or to escape Palestine, in my case. Tel Aviv's residents give the air of blissful detachment from the hostile, hateful politics and cutthroat geopolitics that make their lives (and my escapist weekends) liveable and colorful. I can't blame them — they're in too deep. Why not enjoy the sea, pretend to anarchist sympathies, crank up to punk rock, and go out for sushi?
Down the street from Tel Aviv is the old Palestinian city of Jaffa, or Yafo in Hebrew. I regret that I wasn't able to photograph Jaffa on this trip. The old citadel juts out into the sea, gleaming under yellow lights in the distance. The storefronts in downtown Jaffa are vaulted arches affixed with cast-iron-latticed windows. It's beautiful, and tragic. Jaffa is still a predominately Arab city, but Jewish Israelis are busy buying up the choicest properties, just like everywhere else.
Tel Aviv was a boondocks when Jaffa was in its prime. Tel Aviv was a Jewish settler outpost when Jaffa was the pearl of the British Empire's holdings in Palestine. Now Tel Aviv is spiked with sky scrapers, filled with bars, bikinis and modern art. There are also drugs, prostitutes, Russian mafiosos. You have to take the good with the bad ...
Jaffa is still sleepy by comparison. It's maintained its tranquil seaside aura amidst all the turbulence and disappointment of the last six decades. Its walls and arches will outlast decades to come, that much is certain.
Japanika: a booming kiosk shushi restaurant on Rothschild St., Tel Aviv
Cool lights on the sidewalk on Rothschild St.
One of Tel Aviv's crumbling anachronisms
Rothschild St.
Poster graffiti, Tel Aviv subterranean
Stencil graffiti in a bar explains the Tel Aviv bubble
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