This is pretty awesome

…. Tel Aviv, unlike the European cities, isn’t configured with a central city encircled by major roads, but the highway that runs through the city is heavily trafficked, as are some of its offshoots. Tel Aviv may also simply have more Waze users: its grid is much more clear in the video than the larger European cities.

24 Hours of Traffic in Tel Aviv Based on Waze Data

Created by Nik Hanselmann & the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts for Waze

Check out the full post by Fast Company

We blogged about Justin’s Hebrew tattoo, but what we failed to mention is that his dad got an identical one!

TEL AVIV – Top Israeli model Esti Ginzburg welcomes FashionTV to the 8th anniversary of Elite Models party at the Galina Club in Tel Aviv. The beautiful girls are in abundance as they sip champagne, mingle with the clubgoers and dance to DJ Tomer Maizner’s smokin’ beats. Fashion is everywhere as the models wear the latest trends–lace, color blocking, graphic prints, and chunky necklaces.

New plan calls for reproducing the original structure and adding a hotel and a luxury residential high-rise, after cinema was burned down and demolished in late 1980s.

A group of real estate developers hopes to rebuild Tel Aviv’s historic Mograbi Theater, decades after it burned down, “Haaretz” has learned. The new plan calls for reproducing the original structure and adding a hotel and a luxury residential high-rise.

The new project, designed by architect Avner Yashar, is in the preliminary stages but has already been reviewed by municipal preservation and planning officials. The plans are due to be submitted to city engineer Hezi Berkowitz soon.

Developers Eddie Arditi, Sabi Bar Noy and Ygal Mograbi, whose grandfather was one of the theater’s founders, bought the lot on the corner of Allenby, Pinsker and Ben Yehuda streets 18 months ago for NIS 80 million.

Since the cinema burned down and was demolished in the later 1980s the plot has been a privately operated parking lot. The city had rejected a number of proposals for the site submitted over the years. Planning officials wanted a new architectural landmark that would attract pedestrian traffic, as the original building did. A station for the light rail system that is still in the development stages is planned near the site.

The idea is to reproduce the original movie house, with its two large halls, designed in the late 1930s by architect Joseph Berlin. Behind it they want to build a five-story hotel with an apartment tower above it.

The owners of the Cinema City chain, brothers Moshe and Leon Edry, have already approached the developers about operating the new-old cinema.

“Restoring Mograbi will give the project an extraordinary character,” Erditi told Haaretz. “It’s important for us to build a project associated with Tel Aviv’s history.”

Tel Aviv’s master plan allows for the construction of a five-story building on the site and the reconstruction of the original facade. The developers intend to recreate the entire building, but want permission to add a tower.

Mograbi Square is one of the few sites in the city center where the municipality’s preservation plan allows for the construction of a high-rise, but it’s not clear whether permission will be granted to exceed the five-story limitation specified in the master plan for the site.

Mograbi Theatre was built by Jacob Mograbi – Ygal’s grandfather – a wealthy merchant who immigrated from Damascus and accepted an offer by Tel Aviv’s first Mayor, Meir Dizengoff, to build an opera house.

It had two large halls. On the top floor was the movie theater, with a roof that opened to the skies, to offer relief from the summer heat in pre-air-conditioning Tel Aviv. On the first floor was an auditorium that served Israel’s first theater companies: Hamatateh, Haohel, Habima and Cameri.

In the early 1970s the stage auditorium was converted into a movie theater. On June 17, 1986 a fire caused irrevocable damage to the building, which was demolished in 1989.

Source: Haaretz.com

After losing two infants due to complications with their immune systems, a Palestinan woman works works with Israeli doctors and a Gaza reporter to try and save the life of her recently-born child who is suffering similar problems. Over the course of 18 months, the reporter documents the surreal and unbelievable events that transpired and that give hope for the fate of the region in this extraordinary true story.

VOTE HERE

Israeli musician Yehonatan Berick will be performing at Chamberfest next Wednesday at NOON

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