Tel Aviv? Tell Me More
In an ancient land, Tel Aviv, with open arms, captivates and charms even the most skeptical and weary traveler.
Davidd Batalon
Known as the City with No Brakes, Tel Aviv has a reputation for attracting gay travelers. With gorgeous beaches and year-round weather to match, historical points of interest, club life that stretches into the wee hours, and the liberal leanings of its thriving population of 4 million, Tel Aviv is a sparkling crown jewel in the desert. It was reported that nearly 100,000 LGBT tourists visited Tel Aviv in 2014.
Tel Aviv has no “gay ghetto”. Instead — thanks to the LGBT community’s influence on Tel Aviv’s image as a city of tolerance and pluralism — bars, restaurants, and cafes all over the city are gay-friendly. Israelis call their gay pride The Love Parade. It takes over the city. Storefronts hang rainbow flags and the whole city seems to revel in the spirit of celebration. In fact, even bystanders become part of the parade as pride participants — families and children included — fill the streets and march their way to the beach.
For Americans, English is the third-most-spoken language behind Hebrew and Arabic, which makes for easy navigation to tourist sites. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art brings major exhibits of local artists, as well as major international art stars. Large concert venues like Park Hayarkon and Nokia Arena attract headliner acts to this city of the young, where one out of every three Tel Avivians is between the ages of 18 and 35. Rothschild Boulevard brims with restaurants and shops, and offers a beautiful pedestrian/bicycle pathway along its center meridian. It’s a delightful stroll under a lush canopy of trees. Rent an electric bike, called Tel-O-Fun, if you choose — they’re everywhere!
Just off Rothschild is a popular gay bar, Club Evita. It’s a rendezvous for locals and visitors to mingle, drink, and dance up a storm. On Allenby Street, there’s a staple old-fashioned bar, Allenby 40, decorated in minimalist style with nothing more than hanging disco balls. A newer bar is the Berlin-style Jimmy Who, where disco, new age, and techno-electro music collide. The popular Powder nightclub is located in a warehouse that originally housed an old flour factory, hence the name. The music is rowdy and so is the crowd. Expect long lines to enter. Morfium is a mammoth luxury urban space, where the DJ is dead-center for partiers to circulate around every night of the week. For more alternative tastes, there’s Dungeon, which caters to the die-hard S&M crowd, and Abraxas, which provides a stimulating atmosphere for attractive artsy folks.
I stayed steps away from the beach at the Tal Hotel in the Port of Tel Aviv, on the north edge of the city, part of the Atlas boutique chain. Tal means “dew” in Hebrew. The hotel was undergoing an upgrade at the time, but the rooms still offered fantastic views of the city and the Mediterranean. Following along the pristine beaches, one can jog or walk on the scenic, serpentine pathway that stretches from the north Port of Tel Aviv to Old Jaffa. Midway, as you wander, feast your eyes upon the hot, fit Israeli bods that congregate at the unofficial gay beach (Pride Beach) just below the Carlton Tel Aviv Hotel. Hard bodies are common when military service is mandatory — two years for men, one year for women.
There is plenty of exotic and kosher cuisine to try. On the tayelet (promenade) near the TAL is Yulia restaurant in Tel Aviv Harbor. What a treat to eat sweet potato quiche and a tasty side salad outside with the cooling sea breeze. Closer to the center of town at G Tower is The Blue Rooster restaurant, an upscale eatery with a home-like atmosphere. Enjoy a pumpkin salad with pasta in beef stock while marveling at the sublime rooftop view of the surrounding skyscrapers. My favorite Israeli dish is shakshuka, poached eggs swimming in tomato sauce served hot in a skillet. I usually cap off a meal with a hearty block of sweet Halva.
Modern architecture, massive shopping malls, manicured public grounds, and clean thoroughfares are juxtaposed against older, well-worn streets and neighborhoods with their quintessential 1930s Bauhaus/ International buildings. The city was declared a heritage site for having the largest concentration of such buildings. The result is like taking the older parts of Miami Beach and letting loose an eccentric team of experimental modernist/conservationist city planners. Tel Aviv has a push/pull vibe; a startup city on fast-forward to catch up with the worldwide tourist market that honors the treasures of its past.
For its LGBT community, Tel Aviv has accomplished in twenty years what took European countries half a century. It’s a #1 gay destination. Keep in mind this “New York in the desert” is built on top of an ancient city dating back 5000 years.
Westerners may expect 24/7 service, but on Shabbat (Friday evening through Saturday night) everything closes down, even elevators. Communication breakdowns and slow service are not uncommon. Allow for the unexpected.
Tel Aviv, along with destinations like Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Masada, and Haifa, all hold rich connections to a history that deeply resonates in Western minds. The Tel Aviv community, comprised of Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, and Christians, are like a family, albeit an often dysfunctional family. Everyone seems to know each other.
The rocket attacks that made global news last summer, still fresh in everyone’s minds, exemplify the tragic and ceaseless conflict in this tiny part of the world. Yet Tel Aviv is an eclectic and cosmopolitan city where diverse cultures manage to peacefully live their lives next to one another. The city and the country have become a Mecca for innovative thinking, yet Israel, and indeed the whole of the Middle East, remains an enigmatic and surprising land of question marks and riddles.
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