Life Cycle of a Shuk

In truth, I wasn't there so early in the morning but my friend Dennis was, and he's a fairly reliable source. He goes running every morning and mentioned to me that he was at Mahane Yehuda (in Jerusalem) while all the booths were being set up, vegetables were delivered, and rugelach were baked.

Mid-day, I spent a few hours in downtown Tel Aviv and walked through Shuk Ha-Carmel. It's a little crazier than Mahane Yehuda, I think. For one, I think there are more cats. And they sell a wider variety of goods, and it's much bigger. There are a lot of tourists in both, but in Tel Aviv, there are also many more foriegn workers who are there. So the shuk also caters to a wider variety of clientele. One big difference - you can't buy pork products at the shuk in Jerusalem.

About 7:30pm, I was walking back through Shuk Ha-Carmel. At this point, the shop owners were literally dumping whatever was left on their tables, straight to the middle of the road. It was like a food fight gone terribly wrong. Tomatoes, lettuce, and melons, were probably the most common, but there were also tons of cardboard boxes, apples, and plums. To make matters only a bit more complicated - there was water running down the middle. My guess is that someone was starting to wash down the street - but it only served to make things really slippery. And, some of the store owners continued to toss fruit (and boxes) into the middle of the street without noticing that there were people walking through....