Tel Aviv - Our First Stop

NYTimes
Seizing the Day in Tel Aviv
By HENRY ALFORD
THERE’S room for everyone in Tel Aviv.
I’m riding bikes along the beach with my friend James. James is 12, and moved to Tel Aviv from New York with his Israeli mother two years ago.
“That’s the separated beach,” James tells me matter-of-factly, pointing at a group of some 30 Orthodox men on the edge of a placid, gorgeous Mediterranean not far from the Hilton. I read a sign that states: “The Separated Beach. Bathing days for women: Sun, Tues, Thurs. Bathing days for men: Mon, Wed, Fri.” Then, pointing at a different group of men just 50 yards down the sand, James adds, “And that’s the gay beach.”
A couple of hours later, eager to see what other strange bedfellows I’ll find huddled on the edges of the water, I conduct an informal census: I walk the two miles or so of beach from the Orthodox section all the way down to Jaffa, the old Arab port of Tel Aviv. Just south of the gay section I find a stretch of sand-and-sun worshipers that I instantly dub the Ambiguous Male Friendship beach; just south of that I find the I Hate What I’m Wearing beach. I walk farther, and proceed to find concentrations of, variously, surfers, young families, volleyball players, Ethiopians, hippie drummers and irritable girlfriends.
I’d earlier been told by the illustrator and author Maira Kalman, who was born in Tel Aviv and still has an apartment there, that I’d find “old men in their underpants” on the beach in front of the Dan Hotel (“Old men in their underpants: what can be wrong with that?” she’d said with some excitement). So, in front of the Dan, I search for boudoir chic; I find only one such exhibitor, but many examples of dermal creping.
Down toward the southernmost part of the beach near Jaffa, the population turns increasingly Arab, and I see more and more head wraps on the women. On the beach’s edge, I sit on a park bench and fall into conversation with a warm, bearded 54-year-old gentleman who tells me he’s an imam and a muezzin. We discuss the auspiciousness of the date — the day before, on Independence Day, Israel had celebrated its 60th anniversary with a semi-terrifying dazzle of air force maneuvers over the water — and the man tells me: “Peace is good for us all. Jews, Christians, Muslims. ...”
Just then a young beachgoer zooms by us on his Vespa, his surfboard ingeniously strapped onto the side of the motorbike, so I add, “... and surfers.”
The man exults, “Everyone!”
Tel Aviv is a home at the end of the world. Celebrating its 100th year in 2009, the capital of Mediterranean cool has been getting more and more practice at being a host over the years, and it’s starting to show.

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