Tel Aviv Graffiti 1

Official city-sponsored graffiti on a wall near the street on Frishman Beach has not just girls in bikinis but also a lifeguard paddling out on a hasake, which is a huge surfboard-like boat invented (supposedly) by Arabs here for fishing. The general rule in surf history is that no one outside Hawaii — I mean almost literally no one, no culture anywhere — invented a simple board for navigating surf on your feet. The hasake may be a minor exception. Israeli lifeguards were using them when Dorian Paskowitz brought the first surfboard to Tel Aviv in 1957.

     posted 30 January 2008 by Michael Scott Moore