Stomping Grounds: Recent Episodes
TLV1 Radio
Stomping Grounds is an audio documentary series about places in Tel Aviv, their history, and the people you’ll find there.
Florentin assails the senses. It’s all color and noise, heat and decrepitude. The south Tel Aviv neighborhood is filled with furniture and lighting stores, bars and cafes, cheap plastic toy shops, and upscale boutiques. It’s a bundle of contradictions, which makes sense: it sits between the gentrified neighborhood of Neve Tzedek and the run-down Carmel Market area; between the sea and the grimy Levinsky spice market (you can imagine how it smells in the summer).
Florentin is bursting with street art: almost every building on every narrow, bumpy road is spray-painted with eggplants by the artist EPK, bandaids by Dede, political graffiti calling for peace or veganism. If Tel Aviv leans left, Florentin does much more so; if Tel Aviv is young, Florentin’s even a bit younger; and if Tel Aviv accepts its artists, eccentrics, and the LGBT community, then Florentin is their haven. Its young, creative, often frenetic energy make it like “La Boheme” of Tel Aviv. Here are the stories of people who found their place in Florentin.
Interviews:
Guy Sharett – StreetWise Hebrew
Eli Edri – co-owner, Under 1000 Gallery
Sharon Pazner – artist
Ilan Barabi – artisan
Barak Eiluz – manager, Casbah Cafe
Sigalit Salway
Judd Yadid – writer
Music:
Ornette Coleman – Lonely Woman
Ernest Ranglin and Avila – Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro
Charles Mingus – Fables of Faubus
Donald Byrd – Blind Man, Blind Man
Miles Davis – Freddy Freeloader
Donald Byrd – Bossa
Donald Byrd – Street Lady
The Quintet – A Night in Tunisia
Bobbi Humphrey – Harlem River Drive
Charles Mingus – Goodbye Porkpie Hat
John Coltrane – While My Lady Sleeps
Produced by Shoshi Shmuluvitz
In South Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park, you’ll find a lot of the usual: a lawn and benches, a basketball court, a playground. But no one would say this is like any other park in Israel. For one thing, most of the people in the park are African asylum seekers. And many of them live here — you can tell by the mattresses and blankets that have been slung up over the benches and under the jungle gym.
The neighborhood of Neve Shaanan has always been a place for new immigrants and “transitional people” — hardly anyone stays there for long. And Levinsky Park has a rich and surprising history as the social and cultural center of the neighborhood.
The Levinsky Park Library is Neve Shaanan’s only library and and one of the few cultural institutions. It’s an NGO that relies on donations and the work of a wonderful team of volunteers. You can find out how to get involved here.
Interviews:
Eyal Feder – volunteer manager at the Levinsky Park Library
Yoav Meiri – architect of the Levinsky Park Library
Prof. Galia Sabar – head of the African Studies Department at Tel Aviv University
Hassan Abdullah Adam – asylum seeker from Darfur
Ali Juma – asylum seeker from Darfur
Music:
Mulatu Astatke – Yekermo Sew
Tony McManus – Gnosseine #1, Erik Satie
King Krule – The Noose of Jah City
Typhoon – Dreams of a Cannibal
Mulatu Astatke – Hager Fiker
The Kinks – Strangers
Rabin Square is like a blank canvas, an empty box — a void in the middle of Tel Aviv. It occupies a whole city block and its vacancy is almost entirely uninterrupted. Starkness, straight lines, symmetry: this architectural style is called brutalism.
This space is filled not with structures, but with memories — of great demonstrations organized by groups all across the political spectrum. In fact, it has been a designated civic space since before it was designed by architect Avraham Yaski in 1964, and even before the establishment of the State of Israel. But recently, says peace activist Uri Avnery, Israelis have become apathetic and increasingly reluctant to demonstrate in the enormous Square.
The harsh, empty middle of Rabin Square can be thought of as a kind of sacred space — not in a religious sense. Just in the sense that it’s reserved for extraordinary occasions when masses — sometimes hundreds of thousands of people — come together and make a statement. This space is bounded by a ‘profane’ periphery where everyday life takes place. In contrast to the center, the edges have shade, benches, and an ecological pond where people sit around and even sunbathe.
This show is split in two: part one, the sacred or ceremonial space; part two, the profane or quotidian space.
Part one, The Architecture of Memory, explores the physical form of the square and the memory of the great political demonstrations that took place there — including the 1995 peace demonstration that ended in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Interviews:
Tali Hatuka, architect
Itai Palti, architect
Uri Avnery, journalist and peace activist
Achinoam Nini (Noa), singer
Music:
Dawn of Midi – Lo
Max Richter – Cascades Nw by N
Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge – The Sure Shot (Pts. 1 & 2) [Instrumental]
The Kinks – Some Mother’s Son
Machina – Az Lama Li Politica
Max Richter – Found Song for P.
Achinoam Nini – Nagia el Hachalom
There’s a photo making the rounds on the internet. A row of schoolchildren sit cross-legged on a shady sidewalk — it looks like they’re on a field trip. And above them is a big neon sign: GoGo Girls Strip Club.
This is one of those things that could only happen on Allenby Street, where the mundane rubs up against the city’s underbelly. This, combined with the decaying beauty of the street’s eclectic style architecture, makes Allenby Street more than just gritty. It elevates it to the grotesque.
Allenby street is one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The Carmel Market, the stores full of cheap trinkets, and the cafes and bars make it one of the most touristy streets. It leads from South Tel Aviv, where Tel Aviv meets Jaffa, and runs all the way to the sea. Even as it intersects the most upscale streets, like the tree-lined Rothschild Boulevard, Allenby maintains its grungy integrity.
As Tel Aviv tour guide Shalom Kleiman says, “People are just like any other liquid: they form at the bottom of the sink” — and those are exactly the types you’ll find on Allenby Street.
Produced by Shoshi Shmuluvitz
Interviews:
Shalom Kleiman – tour guide
Ben Peter – proprietor of HaTzalmania Photohouse
Ori Shtark – Allenby 58 club owner
Liron Noy – Rock Bar owner
Yosef Halper – owner of Halper’s Books
Music:
ESG – You’re no good
Carole King – You’re so far away
HaGingiot – Allenby 79
Aviv Gedge – Allenby blues
In the background:
Takuya Kuroda – Rising Sun
Yann Tiersen - Comptine d’un Autre Été: L’Après Midi
I-Cube – Disco Cubizm (Daft Punk remix)
David Shire – Theme from ‘The Conversation’
- HaTzalmania Photohouse is working to preserve and digitize its massive archive of early Israeli photography. You can help them do that by donating here.
- Looking for colorful tours of Tel Aviv? Call Shalom Kleiman at +972-(0)54-4909191
- Halper’s Books is usually not filled with crazy people, but it is a lovely place to pass an afternoon. You’ll find it at 87 Allenby Street.
Bookstores seem like quiet, mundane places. But Yosef Halper, the owner of Halper’s Books at 87 Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, has a handful of customers who are bibliomaniacs — obsessive collectors of books who shop there almost every day. Halper tells the story of how one such customer met a violent end.
This is an excerpt from a longer documentary on Allenby Street, “Down in the Gutter of Tel Aviv.”
Producer: Shoshi Shmuluvitz
Music: David Shire, Theme from ‘The Conversation’
Photo by Erica Cherup