Hot City Noise, Humping Moaning Neighbors, Greenest Spot on Earth???
Man imitating nature: tree cutouts on Rocach Ave outside Tel Aviv University As I listen carefully the city is noisier in summer. My windows are open and the quiet morning moments are filled with birds chirping. This sub-tropical city, half way between Europe and Africa is a resting spot for the migratory birds, the ones living here probably also migrated, but decided to stay. While Al Gore is busy preaching the song of green living, Tel Aviv has been greening the desert for 100 years. I wonder why Al Gore has not noticed while he is flying overhead how this little area from Rehovot to Lebanon "suddenly became green in the last 100 years". Oh well, the birds are still happy on the big trees outside my window. When the highway at the end of the building goes quiet the bird chirping is even stronger, this is a great place for singing. One energetic specie is heard through my microphone all the way in Palo Alto California. While on a skype call the high frequency chirps cuts through my voice or any background whoosh of the road. That's one nice thing about Tel Aviv. No big deal, just a nice thing about living in an old apartment with big trees outside.
Moped salesman upstairs humping and moaning on a summer night. Moped mobility in Tel Aviv is a valuable commodity, someone should benefit from it At night the quiet is broken with one humping young neighbor. A moped salesmen by day, Romeo by night ~ sometimes he gets a noisy girl so moans join the soft booo-booo calls of owl and fluttering bats ~ bats like the summer here, they eat the few fruits left from the palm trees. Tel Aviv likes the summer. The city should be dry on the edge of a desert. From here if you travel west there is not going to be green until you pass the Sahara. Take your pick, Cuba or Ethiopia; Sudan, Kenya or Congo will do if you are looking for green. If you travel east you will end up in Iraq and the fertile crescent, between the biblical Tigris and Euphrates rivers, that's where you get green again. No, wait, add to that Saudi Arabia and the gulf emirates. Go a few hundreds miles more, you will end up in India before finding a cultivated green spot like central Israel. I guess this can explain the happy birds, they are in a green island in a dry spot covering a good part of our earth. Green trees from all over the world, cultivated by dedicated green thumbs, mostly from the socialist experiment in the Kibbutzim (somewhere in the north), they try to fool us. All this green around us is made up, if we forget to water the beautiful behemoths they will dry up. Enough with the dry climate. The people are noisier in the summer. The shook (Ha'Carmel open air market) is so noisy, people actually talk back to the screaming vendors to shut them up. It doesn't work. Fruits and vegetables are rotting and wilting in the heat, get them moving scream "aleph aleph aleph - rak eser shekel" (A, A, A, just 10 shekels - AAA is the highest quality designation for fruits, specially fragile strawberries, nectarines and grapes). Shook regulars will tell you that shouting helps. The laud ones have special deals and are the hustlers here. They are in the business of moving product. The term "stutzi" (a Hebrew variation of "stocking" ~ I am guessing here) comes to mind. Stock them and sell them. Nothing stays as it is in the summer, and changing from one state to another comes with the added benefit of noise.
next: more noise and smells in the city
AmiV @ TLV - summer noise in the white city
Comments