“If shit pays a price, beggars are born without asses,” says a thin, unshaven intellectual named Godard nonchalantly. Aphorisms as always. This is my favorite movie. I have no doubt that he is right.
20 years ago, my friend scolded me for not thinking positively and beggarly, but they say that he is sure that in a few years he can become rich and move from Kapotnya to Khamovniki. 20 years have passed. He still lives in Kapotnya. The beggars will continue to live where they used to live, even if the shit is once worth it. I am looking for an apartment in Tel Aviv. The most expensive city in the world. That’s in my soul, non-positive and beggar.
The fact of finding an apartment in the world’s most expensive city doesn’t automatically make you rich. “The rich beggar eats ice cream,” my father used to say, quoting a paradoxical quote from an unknown poet.
In the center of the world’s most expensive city, a man in shorts stands on the sidewalk waving to me. Somehow he knew it was me. We corresponded with a special group about the delivery of rented and sub-leased apartments. Saber is a very different sport here. It is impossible to imagine that I left my apartment for a week’s vacation in Moscow and rented my apartment to strangers for this time, along with my underwear, socks and dishes. But everybody does it here. Take it again in a month, a week, a day. People are easier here. Easier. Here you can say hello on the street, wish you a good day, stick your tongue out, and then go all together to a new friend’s house. I’ve been living here with friends for months now, their kids always ask what kind of sister, cousin or second cousin I bring them, and they always forget that I don’t have any siblings. All people are brothers, sons.
Everyone here has some sort of student life, and if you understand that everyone you meet is your brother (ahah), you can do anything. If you don’t like the lack of distance, you’re lost.
A naked man in the center of the world’s most expensive capital, somehow recognizing me in the crowd immediately and waving politely. Shalom.
I’m a Tajik doorman here, my gimel level Hebrew doesn’t help me in any way on the streets. Like an old friend, a naked man takes me deep into the slums. These exclusive slums cost two thousand dollars for a 20-foot birdhouse. At the entrance, an uncle is sitting on the pavement smelling cocaine, this is not the first time I have seen it in the cinema and I forget why I came. Homeless, insane, alcoholics, drug addicts roam the streets, no one will clean the world’s most expensive city from them. Here they are treated with particular kindness. The tramp is spitting in my direction. And almost hit. I love Israel very much. Israel doesn’t love me. The second spit in me already for this month.
He takes me naked to the roof.
– Ein po miklahat? I’m asking. where is the shower
“Po,” the naked man waving.
Enter. It’s just a rusty toilet with peeling tiles. No sink, no shelf, no shower.
– Eifo miklahat? Looks like my Hebrew is really bad.
“Sham,” the naked man insists.
I’m checking again. And ahead. And ahead. I take turns looking at the shower and the dictionary. No, that’s true. And where is the shower room? There is only one push. From the sixth time I noticed a bidet hose on the push. This is the shower.
The cost of the apartment is $ 1,700. But the center of Tel Aviv. People pay for the street they live in.
How to look at Tel Aviv in terms of urban development? Why is this the most expensive, best, most bohemian, slum city? Here it is almost impossible to find a place without construction under the windows. All under construction. A city where people can afford cars and $2,000 flats, but no money for food.
It turned out that these are the poems of father Leonid Martynov:
Unfenced from the city
there is a gap there i see it
Rich beggar eating ice cream
For one kilogram kilogram.
About what happened – God knows. What did the USSR State Prize winner write about in 1949?
Tel Aviv was named the most expensive city to live in in 2021 and 2022, according to a study conducted by The Economist’s analytics department. Bypassing Hong Kong, Paris, Zurich, Singapore. The reasons are clear.
Competition is limited, imports are almost impossible, resources are concentrated in the hands of a few families and the size of the country contributes to this. Plus, everyone wants to live here.
The price of an apartment here starts at a million dollars. The cheapest glass of wine starts at $10.
“I didn’t expect the market to get this overheated,” says a strange man named Alex who once came from Russia. “I had to remove the rental notice because about 40 families came to me in an hour. I don’t know where to run.”
Alex is sportsman, pedant, clean, programmer and lucky, he has his own apartment in TA. Facial muscles twitch. He tells at length how not a single scratch will be made in a year in his white apartment. Come on. Let the other 40 families draw.
I could not rent an apartment in Moscow, because knowledgeable people explained that it is impossible to rent an apartment in which I left personal magnets in the refrigerator. This is three days after I licked the flat.
Tell that to Israeli real estate agents who, in an apartment advertisement, left the tumble dryer in the frame where tenants had their underwear and socks dangling. And the circles fly away.
Obvious.
The market has overheated.
They say that in order to become rich, in no case should you save. Saving is a beggar psychology. Well, my classmate, my richest friend, Sveta, confirm that. Dima, out of fear, called him an oligarch, as his house had a 25-meter swimming pool and he had never seen an oligarch in his life. Come to whom the mare, Dima. But she’s really rich. When She was at the market with him, he walked in the market like Mokiy Parmenych Knurov and it was a total affair for market traders. Everyone tried to please. Sveta knew all the prices. She couldn’t be deceived, she. She bought a piece of something very tasty for 250 rubles, always recommending me to buy it. In the evening of the same day, she reminded me not to forget to return the 250 rubles to her.
If you move from Moscow to Israel, you will automatically lose in the standard of living. Therefore, the Light does not live here. It’s expensive. “Money tends to run out,” he says, explaining why he lives in Cyprus despite his three flats in TA.
And we live here. Rich beggars. Such an oxymoron.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.