Checking out the night life

Unfortunately this internet cafe computer doesn't have a USB port so I can't upload some wonderful images I've captured. Fingers crossed I'll be able to upload them in Jerusalem, which I'm heading to on Sunday.

Being the avowed Trance/rave music nut that I am, and given young Israelis' interest in this type of music I felt obliged to check out the local scene. This despite travelling some 30kms by foot in the hot sun around Tel Aviv. So I rocked up to this club called 'Fetish', which is somewhat of an ironic title for this club as you'll soon read. Outside the joint the two things going for it was the decent-sized line, and the cute door bitch (DB). Almost as soon as I line up I get stares. Stares from the two big Russian bouncers who look like they've taken one too many hits to the face, stares from DB, and stares from the people in the queue. One of them even asked me if I was a terrorist! It's a strange feeling to describe, the feeling you get when someone looks at you and seriously considers the possibility that you might be trying to blow them up. I don't consider myself particularly self-conscious, but I must admit that, at least for that short moment, I felt like perhaps there was something wrong with me (as opposed to my appearance). I bet this is something a lot of Aboriginal kids who line up at queues outside Australian night clubs have a lot of experience in.

At this point I started feeling really nervous. "Don't look like a terrorist, don't act like a terrorist, relax, don't look like you think you look like a terrorist" was rushing through my head. In all of this, someone asked for my name, and the best I could come up with was 'Sid' (which, incidentally, was a bit of a play on Edward Said, but I doubt they would've guessed).

The DB kept on palming me off, letting several others through before me. Even people who had, quite clearly, arrived well after me. Normally I would've just walked off, but this particular place was right next to my hotel and had a big 'trance' poster stuck up above the club entrance. Eventually, read around 12:30am, I lost patience and basically shouted at her in English, asking her what exactly a person had to do to get into the joint!

And with that, I was allowed in. Inside the place was pretty dead and, even more depressingly, has a female to male ratio of sausage factory proportions. It was obvious to me that people were staring at me. Whereas during the day my confident strolling through Tel Aviv made me blend in quite nicely (I was asked directions in Hebrew on several occasions), in Fetish it was somewhat less easy to do so.

Whilst waiting to get a drink at the bar, I engaged in small talk with this dude called 'Ach'. Ach was a communications major who was dating a Czech girl who was currently in Prague. Suffice it to say he was in Fetish all alone. Holding a beer in his hand, the first out of place element in this club,* he explained that he was a regular to the joint and that it would soon pick up steam.

Two hours and three vodka-cokes later (they hadn't heard of bourbon!) and the place was well and truly under way, although the music was best described as progressive, not trance. Ach suggested I mention to girls that I am from Australia and I soon did. Before too long I was dancing with this very cute little Russian girl, though after around thirty minutes she abruptly left. It was around this time a very Arab-looking gentleman, no doubt a Sephardic Jew, introduced me to Puff the Magic Dragon, quite literally out of nowhere. Everything seemed to segue into everything else far too easily. The overly friendly Ach who I met almost as soon as I entered the place, the lone hot girl who danced with me in a club full of males, and the friendly Sophardic Jew who offered me some chew. What really got me a bit concerned was what appeared to be stares between Mr Sephardic and two other men in other parts of the club. I couldn't help thinking that I was being set up for deportation. Marajuana is still illegal in Israel (ecstacy has been dicriminalised), and the Immigration folk used up 7 long, draining hours looking for excuses to deport me too. After all that, I decided to roam the club a lot and left around an hour later. Anyway, I had to catch a bus to the Dead Sea at 7am that morning!

Of course, all of this is likely paranoia on my part. But Tel Aviv is a paranoid place when you look like Iqbal Khaldun.

* Raves usually drink water and avoid alcohol.