Back to the Species of Spaces project, to our building in Tel-Aviv. Although less then a month have passed since we’ve left, it all seems so distant; far far away, in a faraway sunny city on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, there was a building. In that building lived many people. Many of the apartments had the sign Om pasted on their front door, which comes to show you they were all peace loving people who wanted to stand apart from the war nearby. Most of them were creative people, and good energies were in abundance. The building very much represents the neighborhood, where coffee shops and restaurants are filled throughout the day, their customers being intellectuals, writers, artists, bums and free thinkers of all sorts, and its boulevards crowded with young families meeting and chatting amiably.
A month ago I took this photo of Ran, who lives on the ground floor of the building in a flat that used to be our photography studio, and beforehand belonged to an old mad man, Mr. Maibach. Mr. Maibach was a holocaust survivor, a well known figure in the neighborhood, who used to collect garbage in the streets of Tel Aviv (his favorite being plastic bags, razor blades and medicine bottles), and store it in his living space, where he sat with an open door and filled the building’s ground floor with a unique kind of stench, known to the building’s residents as the Maibach stench. Another favorite pastime of his, in his younger and more energetic days, was to shout in the street underneath the building: “Shreir gonev” ("Shreir is a thief") to his landlords, Uri’s grandparents
After his death we’ve hired an architect and turned the once horrific little dark hole into a beautiful studio. Our inspiration was a Greek home. The architect designed a built-in guest area, a round wall and green doors. After we’ve decided to close our studio the darkroom was turned into a bathroom, and the space was rented as a flat. Ran has recently moved in and he just loves the place, his eyes lighten when he talks about it; he looked all over the city and almost gave up until he found this place which is just perfect for him. He covered the round wall with painted wallpaper with a pattern of a funny man playing basketball, revived the built-in plant, brought beautiful furniture from the flea market and made the space look extremely stylish. When I’ve asked him if he was responsible for the design he answered shyly: “no, I’m not a Metro sexual”. It turns out that his friend, who designs film and theatre sets, helped him with the design. Ran works as a shift manager in a restaurant and writes in his spare time. After seeing the books scattered all over the place, some of them among my all-time favorites (ah! The Russians, we sighed in agreement) we’ve started chatting about literature and found out we shared a very similar taste. Following his recommendation, I bought this book, which I’m reading now.
Comments