Living in Florentin by Gafi Amir July 1994 The Florentin Quarter on the Tel Aviv Jaffa border is named after David Florentin, the Zionist functionary from Salonika who purchased its land from the Arabs in the twenties. In the morning it acts as a busy commercial centre, exuberant and devoid of parking space, filled with upholsterers, carpentry shops, stores for cleaning materials and shwarma stalls. Herzl is the street for living room suites, Wolfson the district of chandeliers, Matalon is a world of household appliances, Levinski the street of spices, and Kfar Giladi, the street of earrings and shekel-a-kilo jewellery. At sunset, however, as though at the wave of a magic wand, the tired street puts on a new face and turns into an amusement dreamland. The "freaks" who have settled here over the past year or two and the "northerners" who take care to keep in touch with the latest "Soho", man the local pubs sited between one hairdresser and another in droves, sipping Italian coffee and looking out over a spectacular landscape of garbage containers. People who understand pasta, who know what is right and what is not, what is "in" and what is "out", who have counted and catalogued every grain of sesame on a Cafe Tamar bagel, have decided Florentin is the "dernier cri" and come to the quarter to build and to be built there.