Home is a place that makes you feel safe to be who you are and do what you love. Every house has rules, and the rules of the block, the ones that made me feel safe, were dictated in a speech at the entrance – the one that says, among other things, that there is something to do if someone invades your personal space. I’m old enough to remember the times before the entrance guidelines too, but this monologue, repeated a thousand times a night for more than a thousand nights, made the men of the “invading personal space” genre more aware and paying attention.
>> Everyone in Tel Aviv needs a place to have a second home, because we have already given up on the first one
>> You will say, “Wow, it’s like in Chelsea”. I say, no, it’s the craft
>> my house is where hip hop is. Usually it’s in Tel Aviv
If you’ve been partying in this city, it’s already changed the way you walk in – head held high, shoulders straight, you’ve allowed yourself to take all the space you need to dance. Because you are welcome, because it was important for you to be pleasant and good, more important than that it is pleasant for those who like to dance close to you. In recent years, there were also toilets that were assigned to women only and became a designated space, at the entrance of which a guard sat all night making sure that no man entered. These were actions that signaled to me as a woman that I was respected, that my presence was important. It gave confidence to come, and to come alone if I felt like it. This place gave me confidence that I took to other places in the city and in the world, which actually made me feel that a party is a jungle where the rules of “no rules” apply because it’s a “liberated” situation or some kind of shame.
The rules were also that respect the vibe. This means not taking out phones, not taking pictures and not texting, not exporting the experience in real time. The rules of the house protected the dancers and allowed them to be happy like four-year-old children, protected, without anyone judging the stupid smile that does not leave their faces and the naughty words that come out of their mouths. It was a time to do only what was good for you, as long as it didn’t hurt others. ““Only what’s good for you” was sometimes to dress the most casually and sometimes to the height of glitter, and sometimes to come to dance until the morning and sometimes to come to dance only in the morning and sometimes only for a few hours and cut, and to feel most comfortable in a square full of people because it doesn’t matter. Everyone came to do good for themselves. If it was a crap week you would wait for the weekend to make up for yourself and if it was an amazing week then you went there to celebrate.
>> I’m not Tuna and neither is Ehud Banai. But in Barbie I can for a moment believe that it is
>> I am a Tel Avivian like a Tiv Taam branch. I am Russian like a Tiv Taam branch
>> For all parts of the “My Second Home” project
Home is where you smile. The Block (Photo: TheBlockTLV)
Like at home, the walls of the block are marked with memories of many people. The time you threw up behind the speaker and the time you gave a compliment and the time you stuck gum to the wall (sorry) and picked it up again only to find out it was someone else’s gum (what comes comes comes) and the time you danced with a stranger and shared something beyond words and the time you had a conversation you won’t get out of your head and the time you hugged someone for the first time And you already knew you were in love.
As in every house in Tel Aviv, the people from the block became your partners. These are people you sometimes met there, people who shared with you the love and the space and the experience and the moment. These are the people with whom you were happy together in the thing you love together, who shared the most beautiful nights with you and became part of your private path of happiness, and that remains long after the four (or a hundred) black walls of this house go to hell. In the end, it was my second home in the city because it’s where I smiled the most. And now I’m homeless.