When bad things happen to good places…

It’s always a shame when good places get ruined. It happens all over the world with underground places. they start off cutting edge, alternative and cool and all the cool kids go there, then one of several things usually happens. Either they get discovered by the masses and the vibe gets ruined, or the owners get greedy and start overcharging. Alternatively, something better comes along and the cool kids all go off somewhere else, leaving the original place to die.

Tel Aviv is a very small city, compared to the big cities (like NYC) it models itself on. In a small city, places have a shorter lifespan, because it’s harder to keep a good place a secret. The wannabes turn up quicker, people get greedy faster and gimmicky places can’t get a big enough flux of new faces to stay afloat.

Why am I writing about this? Because last weekend I had a really annoying experience at a place I used to really like and realised how easy it is for people to go totally up themselves for no good reason, just because a place they work at is now considered “cool”.
I remember now the cyclic nature of places in Tel Aviv, which means writing a definitive list of cool underground places that don’t suck is not an easy task. A place is cool today, who knows what weirdness will await you there tomorrow…