A few hours after deplaning in Tel Aviv, we found ourselves in northwestern Israel in a small town called Haifa. We grabbed some falafel for lunch, socialized with the community cats, caffeinated at a nearby cafe, and then we were treated to a walking tour of street art by a artist named Hadar.
We started off with a red and green mural by a group of artists known as Broken Fingaz Crew (or BFC for short). There was a lot of meaning behind it but I can’t remember for the life of me what it meant. It looked really fucking cool though.
We walked by the home of an artist named Tony Ashkar and one of his pieces, an upside down table and Turkish coffee setting. Pretty interesting idea for a piece of art.
Around the corner was a piece of art that you probably would’ve just walked by had Hadar not been with us – an open safety pin whose opening created the Mediterranean Sea.
Around the corner stood a rundown old building whose windows had been boarded up and painted with tears and directly across the way from that building was a less rundown building with a female super hero painted on the side.
The most colorful and detailed piece of street art was on the side of a building that houses a company called Infralab, which their website says is the world’s largest electricity infrastructure company. It’s the handy work of the Broken Fingaz Crew as well. How cool is this?!
An homage to a sleeping beauty by an artist named Klone Yourself awaited us around the corner. Klone says it’s representative of Haifa which is still a sleepy little town in many ways. I especially love the cat accompanying her.
Hadar showed us one of her tags and told us where we could find it if we were in Tel Aviv. It’s meant to show the new nuclear family, I believe.
The last mural was another one from BFC. This one was a collaboration with an Arab calligrapher. It’s supposed to be an imaginary railway connecting the Middle East.
It was a really lovely way to see the streets around Haifa and learn about the culture in this sleepy little city in Israel. It was the perfect way to begin our 8 day adventure together.
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