Up at 7AM and on the plane by 11 israel time. nyc at 4pm US time. on the china town bus at 8 and home in brookline at 1230. 24 hours travel time. \

IM HOME! CHECK OUT THE POST AND THEN GIVE ME A CALL!
Josh.

wow. ok, so, anat got back. the next day we walked around town for a bit and then went with some of her friends to a rooftop party with a dj and a band. the next day we were off to the desert, to a place near Arad she knows from her days producing parties, this is also how she knows so many bar owners, more on that in a bit....


the desert was awesome. we stayed at a Bedouin style place, just a semi permanent tent with three canvas walls and mats covering the dirt floor.



the tent was on a hill that overlooked the dead sea and beyond that jordan. we were close to where the dead sea scrolls were found and Masada.



we found out soon after we arrived there would be a meteor shower that night (??!!) there is no better place to watch the stars than the desert. now i have seen shooting stars before, a cool little white streak that disappears as soon as you look. these were very different. the meteors left big streaks of color across the sky, ive never seen anything like it. the first we saw were red, the next greenish and then yellow all with long tails. we stayed out till the sun rose over Jordon.



i woke up the next morning to a few Bedouin ladies walking their camels outside.


we returned to tel aviv the next day (israel is very small). after getting some drinks with boaz at the Betty Ford we went to the Minerva, Anat's favorite local lesbian hang out (good friends with the bartenders and DJ) then to The Mental (good friends with owner), then to Lima Lima (again owner), then to Abraxas a real popular place that plays my kind of music which in anat's mind is black music. we finished with late night eats at Dixie. sorry, no pictures that night.

Tuesday my mom came down from kiriat yam to see me on my last day. we walked all around the city and then ate at Itzik Hagadol (Itzik the great). delicious food, kababs and wine. i can not go into details on the food as there were 30 plates on our table. i was very satisfied.



after dinner my mom headed back north, and it was time to go out again....
first we went to the clara (or was it the claw?) a massive outdoor bar on the beach. there were at least a few hundred people there, I remind you this was a tuesday night. then we went to see anats best friend, shout out to DJ Tammi B, at a new bar also by the beach.

while we were there another one of her good friends (she has many) came and said we had to come next door to another bar to see a very good friend (who owned the bar). we go next door and theres a large crowd out front fighting to get in this place. we met the owner at a back door and were escorted in through the mens bathroom. the place was packed.

again, this was Tuesday night. Tel Avivians know how to party! i really enjoyed this place as it was one of the few I went to that was playing all Israeli music, mostly old disco sounding songs. Everybody in the entire bar including the bartenders was dancing along and screaming all the lyrics. unique. we finished that night with a bowl of the second best hummus in town...

I had an amazing shabbat dinner last night at Boaz's house. there were over 20 people there. After dinner, we played a little poker and I got to reduce my losses from the previous night. Then Anat, my other friend from Upeace arrived after taking the senic route home from costa rica through San Francisco and New York. She has promised to show me "her" tel aviv this weekend....

Went to the Tel Aviv Museum today. My favorite was sort of a auto biographical photo exhibit tracing the family of the photographers mother and two sisters. The first picture is of these three women in line showing their tattooed arms: A 7760, A 7761, A 7762. Three Holocaust survivors (there are still a quarter million of them alive in Israel). The family is now spread all over the physical, economic, and ideological landscape of Israel (and a few are also in Denmark and The Netherlands).

This was some weird poster I liked.


Yall bes to enjoy deez here fotos!... i walked a couple kilometers in the heat to get them.





Tel Aviv from Jaffa.

Tel Aviv.
I've been pounding the pavement hard the last few days. My hosts have been very impressed. The city is one hundred years old, only half of which has been spent with israel being a country.

this is across from Levontin 7 where i saw the music the other night...


This pixilated bird kept following me.













views of the old and new development like this are all over the place. the old building in the middle is the model residential complex that you see thrown up all over the country. they are now in the process of replacing them.

A tree lined Rothschild Boulevard.

She made a very delicious juice mix of beet, ginger, carrot, and orange. these little juice shops are everywhere. she was playing marvin gaye.

this was on bograshov which is kind of like newberry st. in boston, lots of little shops and cool places to eat.

Here i am in Jaffa's market.

found an interesting article that touches on some of the discussions ive been having here: LINK

also, last night i saw some good live music. i was most interested in the opening act which was made up of two DJs, a bass player, a drummer, and a percussionist. My kind of rhythm-heavy ensemble. Then they added two horns and the shit got funky, in the best way possible. the place was really smokey (can you remember that east coasters?)

Tel Aviv has been great.
I'm staying with two friends i met in costa rica at UPeace. They have a nice spot just outside of the city. Thursday night (the weekend here is friday and saturday, meaning, yes, they go to work on sunday) they took me to the boardwalk along the beach to some nice outdoor bars. I was a little slow to recognize people were just being nice to me by speaking to each other in english. On Saturday after a delicious brunch at a really good local spot, we spent the day at boaz' beautiful family home mostly in the pool and playing ping pong. In the evening after dominoes pizza (?) we made a bonfire and a sweat lodge with a bunch of his friends... Today we went out to eat in Jaffo, the older, historically Arabic town neighboring Tel Aviv, at an eclectic little spot that could have easily been in brooklyn. Here's ligad, noam, boaz, michal and me. schnitzel is good.



Everyone goes the beach on saturday. People were densely packed for miles to the north. there were also many people surfing today. behind me was a big outdoor party with a dj and all.


interesting also was along the way to the beach my hosts, in passing, pointed out numerous sites where suicide bombings had taken place (LINK). While the memory of these events from just a few years ago have not deterred people from returning to this area, Israelis are not desensitized. For example, one of the people I was with wondered, while the rest of us were swimming, what we would say at her memorial if she were to be killed on shore. I have also heard stories of shock and intense fear or pain from events that have occur ed regularly in this country since its inception. I don't know if I was expecting a war hardened populace, but it is interesting (and amazing) how they process and experience life here.