Yaffo, early morning

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For my morning exercise I've been taking pre-breakfast bike rides around Yaffo armed with the morning news on the radio (the litany of horrors is the soundtrack of my life) and my camera. I caught this little old fisherman on the sea wall by Yaffo port. I just clicked away as usual but the photo somehow ended up looking like a painting.
The old port, the traditional point of entry to Palestine for centuries, is today in a pretty dialpidated state. There are plans for it to be tarted up and developed, hopefully without spoiling its charm, part of which lies in the rusty old wharehouses like the one below. There used to be a flourishing fish restaurant in this building at street level.

Deep in Yaffo I stumbled across this ungainly sculpture. I guess someone in the municipality thought the local residents would be able to identify with it. Yaffo has a high crime rates and poverty levels.


Next to the traffic island I met a kid who asked me why I was taking pictures. I told him that it was because I liked Yaffo and asked him if he liked living there. "No," he said, "there's too much balagan here."

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