Southern Tel Aviv

I have plenty of free time for the coming 5 weeks until school starts, so I have started to explore my city a bit. Today I went to the southern part of Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv, like Manhattan, has a disticnt North vs. South mentality. Like people who live about 14th street vs. people who live below 14th street (or in SF like those who live north of Cal vs. south of Cal). My neighborhood is in the north part, which is considered more Yuppie and stuck up. The most stuck up area, equivalent to the Upper East Side of Tel Aviv is the most northern tip of the actual city, the area just north of the Uni, called Ramat Aviv Gimel. They even made a soap opera with that name a few years back. I went to the area called Florentine, which can be most closely equated to the East Village of New York. It is filled with young people, small coffee shops, bars, boutiques, and is going through a massive restoration project right now. You can see from the photo that the buildings are smaller, more dense, the streets are narrower, etc. It's actually a really cool area, the photo doesn't do justice to the general vibe of the area. And much like East Villagers in New York, they will argue to the teeth that their neighborhood is the best in the city. I actually like my neighborhood quite a bit, which reminds me a lot of the vibe of Polk Gulch area in SF. Just yuppie enough, but not sickeningly snobby like the Marina or Murray Hill.
On the walk down to this neighborhood I passed by the major shopping strip of the city, called Shenkein street. The street itself has tons of boutiques, high end ones at that. The neighboring streets around it have tons of shops as well selling everything you can imagine, mostly knock-offs. You can see from the photo above that the shop I passed on the walk was selling Abercrombie shirts.... hmm....

I continued walking to the Shouk in Yafo as well in a search to find a cheep bookshelf, but I will tell you all about that tomorrow.