Viva Tel Aviv: Part five
King Adz heads to Israel in search of an unspoiled street culture scene that has yet to break.
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I'm staving off mid-trip fatigue from being out and about every day and night with my ever-growing crew of Israeli vandals and club-killers, by chowing down on some killer Lamuchan and hot-as-fuck kebabs.
Back in England I'm always tucked up in bed with a book by 10pm (sorry to blow my image but I gotta tell it like it is) but on the road my M.O. is like something out of 24 Hour Party People
PILPELED has just done his first Time Out cover and so he's up all night waiting for the courier to deliver the first copies from the printers, and so after a rather late start, we spend the afternoon with Guy Pitchon who is an amazing skate and street photographer who has been documenting the Israeli scene for the last ten years, and I just know from his work that I need him to represent in my book.
PILPELED's serious Time Out Cover
This is where it begins to work for me — seeking out the fresh and the free, the unknown but obscenely talented. Most of whom can't really get a break as the industry is often so full of wankers who shouldn't be there, that when someone with real talent comes along they are seen as a threat. A threat who could blow the cover of the bullshitters and ass-kissers (read: the fake). This is something that I experienced back in the days when I worked as an advertising art director. Sometimes talent is not seen as something to celebrate, to promote and nurture...
TLV Skaters Air Pichon style... (Photo: Guy Pitchon)
Oh well, onwards and upwards. One really fresh, original street artist is a guy called READ, who is still studying graphics. We swing by his apartment when he's finished classes for the day and check out his work. “I'm not doing much street work these days as I have too much college work,” he tells me. This is the new breed coming up from the street. This guy was born in the 1980s and is half my age. But we still connect as our hearts are both in the street gutter, and I really like his can-do attitude. Refreshing after all the Big I-AM posturing that is de rigueur for a lot of the up-and-coming street artists in Europe. READ is no talk and all trousers...
After checking out a couple of clubs I'm in bed for 4am, with big things promised for tomorrow night — which is Walter Einstien Frog's 'Women Respond to Bass' night at a loft somewhere.
Big props to all of you who actually read this shit, bigger props to those who haven't made up their minds about a place they know little about. Don't knock it till you try it, street level style. Night night.
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 five (text) by King Adz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (2)
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this guy is hardcore religious now