Harry photographed me in front of  Delicatessen Boutique on Barzilai Street, in Tel Aviv's formerly seedy and now very trendy Gan HaHeshmal area (just a few minutes' walk from my place, which is important 'cause - you know - I need to be in the centre of the action at all times).

I was tagging along on the Youth Media tour - a press junket for American journalists who write for edgy publications like Paper and Bust. The idea was to get away from the cliched destinations like the holy sites in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem and the Knesset, and to show the Israel that very few (you can read that as close to zero) foreign correspondents bother to check out - let alone write about.

It's far away from the hothouse atmosphere of the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, where most of the correspondents hang out - when they're not attending press conferences with politicians or rushing off to find those violent stories that grab the headlines.

Allison (who blogged about the trip here and here) and Harry worked incredibly hard escorting the group around the country. Me, I just showed up a couple of times for the food and the company. Both were great.

Here's a photo of the boutique's interior:




And below is Idit Barak, the designer/owner who studied at FIT, trained with Norma Kamali -  and then decided that New York was great and all, but Tel Aviv is home.

Now she's one of the movers and shakers in the cooperative of ultra-hip boutiques, cafes and bars that have sprung up around Gan HaHeshmal over the last year or so.



Harry's photos taken during the tour are on his Flickr account. Check 'em out, he's a really good photographer.