Tzphoney

So we live in north Tel Aviv, a hotbed of wealthy leftists. Meir Yaari Street, named for the founder of the far-left Kibbutz Artzi federation and the pro-USSR Mapam party, runs not far from our house in north Tel Aviv, flanked by luxury condos on both sides. Then there’s the mall where we do our grocery shopping:

“Coming towards us from the opposite direction was a sleek new gray Jaguar with Amman license plates. The driver was wearing a double-breasted blue blazer with an ascot tucked into the open collar of his shirt, and his female passenger had "big hair" and carefully-applied red lipstick.

I rapped Gal's helmet with my knuckles and shouted into his ear, "Did you see that?! That was a car from Jordan!"

"Oh yeah," he shouted nonchalantly, "Rich Jordanians drive over all the time. They stay at the Dan Panorama [a five-star hotel] and go shopping at the new mall in Ramat Aviv."”

Sometimes while biking through I like to imagine what Meir Yaari would say about the boulevard named in his honor. Today’s guess: “Look at these yuppies with their high-tech jobs, pure-bread puppies, and SUVs. They don’t even hire the proletarian ‘new Jew’ from the other side of the Yarqon to clean their houses or walk their parents (?!); they bring in people from Arab villages and who knows where in southeast Asia!” Except old Meir might say Indochina…

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The good news is that it’s impossible for us to be gentrifying a neighbourhood like this. In Ramat Aviv, young, creative types like us are more likely to be decreasing the neighbours’ property value. Forget being Bohemian in Florentine. We’re living the true revolutionary lifestyle—nudging the bourgeois out of Tel Aviv’s upper west side.

Or maybe we’re just full of shit?