Thread: Israeli Straight Razor Safari part I: Tel Aviv & Haifa

In the 4 weeks of downtime I have to spend at home before heading off to NYC for grad school, I decided to track down evidence of straight razor shaving in Israel. Or, to put it in less lofty terms, to hunt for cool blades. It's been a lot of fun so far, many interesting adventures.

Haifa
Ah, my lovely hometown! I grew up here, atop Mt. Carmel, overlooking the Mediterranean sea. After a few days getting over jet lag, I put together a list of all the antique stores in town and headed out to see what I could find. They're mostly concentrated in two areas--one in the mid-town, more furniture and upscale stuff, and another downtown which has more knick knacks and random debris.

My first trip was to the mid-town (called Hadar) area with my brother. Since the antique business is not a large one in Haifa, many stores are only open in the morning, or by appointment. We got out of the house too late to get to those. Many other stores observe the old Israeli tradition of menuchat tzaharayim, the afternoon nap between 2 and 4 pm (When I was a kid, it was considered very bad form to call people during naptime, so I had to wait til 4 to call up friends to play together). Some waiting was involved as a result. In the end, nobody had any straights, although one place had some straight razor handles for disposable blades. Not very nice ones though.

A few days later, I checked out the downtown location, known as Shouk HaRochlim, the Peddler's Market. Half of the stores there were just selling second-hand appliances and other junk, but there were a few genuine antique stores. The owner of one of these was bringing an old barber chair out to the sidewalk as I approached the street. A good omen if ever there was one. The guy had a bunch of barber related stuff, including a small paddle strop and a barber's tool kit in a leather case: scissors, brushes, some other stuff I don't remember and a very worn-out razor. Probably lost at least half its width to the honing stone--the shoulder was almost gone. Another shop had a few interesting blades, including what the guy claimed was an old Kobar. I didn't have cash on me so I told him I'd check back in with him later.

Tel Aviv
Nicknamed the White City, Tel Aviv boasts over 4,000 buildings made in the Bauhaus style, the largest concentration in the world. It's been declared a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. It's Israel's second largest city, and its commercial/fashion capital. I went down there to visit my good friends Bob and Yulia, being my former bandmate in Fishyboom and his girlfriend. Bob's super busy these days trying to make it in the local theater and TV scenes, so me and Yulia went on Safari together. This time I had called most of the places ahead of time to check on their hours of operation.

It proved a successful trip. We started out on Ben Yehuda street, where I found a very rusty blade sans handle, but with a lovely etching that promised to clean up nicely. The brand is "Bockla", Solingn made--even has Solingen's coat of arms in te engraving. Later we cut across town to another spot with a few stores, no luck there. We stopped by Yulia's hairdresser, from whom I bought another no-handle razor, this one a Russian blade. It's rather worn and I probably overpaid, but I've never heard of any razors from Russia. Eventually we ended up at Shouk HaPishpeshim--the Flea Market, a mix of clothing, antique, souvenir and appliance stores. I found a few rusty, worn-out duds and was starting to despair when we went into the coolest antique store I've encountered here, possibly anywhere. It grew out of one man's personal collection of old pre-statehood odds and ends. Now it's a nice-sized store which exhudes more character than should be legal. I later found an article online that mentions it, saying "if anyone wants to catch a glimpse of the soul of this country, one has only to stand in the doorway and hunt for it."(my translation from Hebrew).

Aside from the patriotic feel, this place just had really cool stuff. Old microscopes, British army uniforms, film projectors, pots and pans, clay jugs, musical instruments, tools and hardware, faucets and plumbing...you get the picture. It so happened that they also had some razors lying around. I ended up with a Tuckmar in its original box and a nice Harmonie...never heard of the brand, but it's from Solingen and has a lovely etching, plus both of these were in very good condition. Both had rust and pitting, but the metal was shiny and the edges were pretty sharp. I even managed to shave a few bucks off the price. All in all we came home very satisfied. Yulia was looking for a nutcracker with which to tackle the big bowl of pecans in their living room, and we found a very nice one for cheap in a gift shop.

Another treat was my first barbershop shave, which I wrote about here.

Haifa, again
Yesterday I went back to my guy at the Peddler's Market in Haifa. Turns out what he had previously shown me was in fact not a Kobar...I found some pix online and it was something else. Turns out he has a bunch of Kobar boxes, one of which did in fact have a Kobar blade in it. He also had a Russian razor, different from what I found in Tel Aviv but not interesting enough to get (although the box was sweet), plus I didn't have much money left. He went on about how it's one of the best brands in the world, the twins logo and such...I'm thinking, "excuse me buddy, I think you're getting a bit confused with Henkels here." He gave me this spiel about collectors coming here all the way from England looking for razors (does anybody else smell manure here?) who come and buy out everything he has, yadda yadda yadda. So I countered with a lot of hemming and hawing about the amount of rust and the condition of the edge (there was a lot of rust, the removal of which would mean kissing the gold wash good-bye, and the edge was decent but needed work). I managed to bargain him down from 200 shekels to 100 (about $46 and $23, respectively) in about seventy seconds. I went home with a very smug grin on my face.

I'm attaching photos of my recent acquisitions, all in the condition I found them in. I've been working on them a bit at home and they're looking much better. I couldn't find Mass or Simichrome here, but we do have Peek which works okay. My dad didn't have much in the way of fine grit sandpaper, so that will have to wait until I get back to the US and get some Micro-Mesh sheets.

Tomorrow and Saturday there are antique fairs in Tel Aviv so I'm going back there to hunt a bit more and maybe bag me a nice one. Monday it's off to visit friends in Jerusalem, and we'll go on safari there as well. Jerusalem's a city with a ton of history, so my hopes are high. Tel Aviv was basically built from scratch in 1909, and Haifa was a backwoods until the 1860s. Jerusalem's had a continuous Jewish presence for ages, and modern neighborhoods developed well before Tel Aviv. Another nice thing about J-Town is that it's inland, and hence dry. Haifa and Tel Aviv are both coastal cities and get really humid. It's getting old, believe me.

So, if anyone is visiting Israel (you should, it's a fascinating country and the hummous is fantastic) you may want to check out:

The Peddler's market in Haifa, around the junction of Kibbutz Galuyot st. and Shavei Zion st.
Palestine-Eretz Yisrael, the cool antique store in Tel Aviv, at 8 Olei Zion st. in the Flea Market.
Rafael's Barbershop, 3 HaShomer st., Tel Aviv, near the open market.

More to come as events unfold!