Viva Tel Aviv: Part three
King Adz heads to Israel in search of an unspoiled street culture scene that has yet to break.
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As we drive north to the city of Haifa — 90kms north of Tel Aviv — I discover another side to this country: palm trees and new-build housing projects, a beautiful coast (where the rich live in big houses on the beach) and farms growing everything you can imagine.
We pass gas stations with giant dragons sat on the roof breathing fire onto the peeps filling up their cars (like South Africa, there is someone to pump the gas for you) and state-of-the-art shopping malls and entertainment complexes. There is nothing backwards about Israel, even out of the cities.
We're in Haifa to hang out with the Broken Fingaz, a mutli-faceted, multi-talented, young and restless art/music crew, who virtually run the street scene in Haifa singled-handedly. And after I marvel at their fucking cool shop in the mixed Massada area, they take me downtown to the Arab part of town for some killer houmous.
Gon rocks the houmous lunch in the Arab part of town...
Haifa is like the Brighton of Israel and has an even more laidback atmosphere than Tel Aviv. It’s on the side of mount Carmel and has the shortest metro system in the world: the Carmelit (Roy Castle where are you when we need you). The cost of living here is low. You can rent a decent three bed apartment with killer sea views for like 400 quid a month and so there is a great youthful scene here. “In the area where we live [Massada],” explains Gon of the Broken Fingaz, “Jews and Arabs don't just live side by side — we have a single community, you know. Artists of all kinds come to hang out here and there are no problems.”
The Broken Fingaz Shop in Haifa
The latest in a long line of Broken Fingaz dope-assed Tees coming out of Haifa
We hit the road and make it back to Tel Aviv in time for me to meet up with Cohen@Mushon — the most original, talented, creative hip-hop act in Israel. Their videos and personas remind me of how the Beastie Boys were in the ’80s — only way cooler. And to top it off, they are some of the most humble and likable guys I've ever met (a recurring theme over this side) and outside of the band they are famous for other talents. Walter is a promoter/dj, Cohen is a writer for publications such as Time Out and Muchon is a house-hold name actor. I get talking to him about the film I'm producing call Trip City (see La La Land: Part four) and by the end of the conversation I'm offering him one of the main roles. This is how we do it: forget six, this is the seven degrees of separation in full effect — street style...
Tune in tomorrow for the next installment.
King Adz is a writer, ex-filmmaker and street culture aficionado. He is the author of The Urban Cookbook: Creative Recipes for the Graffiti Generation
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Viva Tel Aviv: Part three (text) by King Adz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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