The Dream Salon

IT ALL STARTED OCTOBER 18TH 2017

The original plan was a one-year cultural salon pop up with jazz, Dreame art, and delicious food. Yet fate planned an extra few years.

Sheinkin Street. In some ways a timeless street. Known by the entire country. Where it meets Ahad Aham was once Cafe Tamar and today, a never-ending moment. A cultural hub in Tel Aviv, “she lives in Sheinkin, she sips her drink in Cafe Tamar”. 

I remember the first time Itay, one of my partners, took me to Cafe Tamar. The original bohemian scene of Tel Aviv. It was equally intimidating and magical. A Friday afternoon with an endless row of cups; short, long, black, mud, milky coffee. Sipped by each of the philosophers sitting there. Itay suggested I approach Sara. She was the owner. I was working on a book about street names in Tel Aviv. She was very enthusiastic about the idea and suggested I return next week to introduce me to some of the Tamar community. 

Many songs and poems were written at or about this magical cafe. I fell in love with the atmosphere. It is actually symbolic in some ways of our country. It is not so much about the exterior or the appearance and rather the humans that live here, a true sense of coziness and community in the heart of the city. The feeling of being together; one table to another or catching the eyes of a stranger and embracing this moment. Whatever it is in that moment of time. 

Seeing it empty in the summer of 2017 I turned to some friends with a dream to open a cultural salon; one that resembled the Parisian salons of the twentieth century. Jazz, Art, Food, Love, Philosophy. I never thought I would be a cafe owner, but I had a vision and a purpose to create a space that holds so much historical and cultural significance. The owners were generous reciprocators to our dream and with the support of eighty founders, we received the keys and started dusting. 

In the midst of preparing and painting, Galia Ishai walks in with her powerful and intriguing husky voice. She had years of experience in the Tel Avivian cafe scene. She urgently asks with a concerned voice… Is this going to change? What are you doing? This is Cafe Tamar. She wasn’t the first and wasn’t the last over this month of cleaning and organizing. Each person who used to sit in Cafe Tamar would ask this exact question. They were ensuring the essence wouldn’t go away. 

None of us had done something like this before. We learned from each other and grew with each other. Painting and filling up the deep holes in the floor was the highlight for us in the building stage. In the past, there had been trees of Tamar in the middle of the cafe. A neighbor claims the money was hidden below the tree trunks. We never know if anyone found the money. Maybe Sara had a secret story. Until today there is graffiti on the bathroom wall “Sara, you are missing”. A personality can truly envelop a place for 60 years. 

I had stepped into the shoes of a deep soul. There are memories of at least three generations that override the physical space. It is these moments that truly count and create this nostalgic culture that sometimes we are scared to dive into or face. When I saw all the newspapers and letters, I felt I was entering a historical book of Tel Aviv. It quickly became a home again. Whatever each of us wanted our home to be. 

Ronny Somek told me a few days before we closed the doors to Rega that the essence of a city’s DNA can be found in the cafes. Each one is unique, neighborhood orientated, and with so many layers and personalities.  

We didn’t want the continuation of Cafe Tamar to be another coffee shop. We wanted it to keep the essence of what was and have a feeling of home and the salons of the twenties. 

I remember when the new name was conceptualized. I was sitting with Reut, our first barista. I told her I want this to be a place to dream and for people to be in the moment. Very quickly she suggested “Rega”, A moment. It immediately made sense. Probably more than anything has ever made sense in my adult life. 

Where are you going? Rega. 

Come for a Rega 

I’ll wait for you for another Rega at Rega. 

So many funny sentences incorporating this word at this space. 

Rega. A place we go to for coffee, cookies, a meeting, a glass of wine. A source of inspiration. A space to stop and think. For a moment. Nothing is permanent. When we pause. Life continues. All around us. Our time to stop is necessary. For the stillness and the laughter. For the enlightenments and passion. There are so many ways to embrace a moment. Our memories, dreams, photographs, songs, feelings, people. 

The feeling of unveiling the name was as powerful. Hundreds of people gathered for our opening night. So many of them overflowing onto the actual road of Shenkin. Everyone was so excited for the reopening of a corner that had been asleep for a few years. 

Under the layers of coffee beans and sips of red wine, there are also the rituals and expected activities. Every Friday, I knew I would see David Tartakover sitting at his table, with his round and creative glasses, reading the paper or illustrating scenes and nature of Tel Aviv in one of his many books filled with artworks. Rutti Rappaport and her husband, Azarya, had sat here for years. They would come to read the papers and talk to their friends from the neighborhood. To this day she and Aliza, a respectable writer from Davar sit here every day. They join the Friday Parliament including Radio Journalist Eran Sebag, David Sorotzkin a scholar of politics and religion and many more. 

I write this piece and I look at the ceiling, remembering the day we painted it. All of our friends came to help us. If not for romantic nostalgia, what else are we holding onto? Of course our brain is puzzled in a way to plan one step ahead. Yet, this is what Rega reminds us. To embrace the moment and let go. 

Social acts are charged with the beans of coffee with so many outcomes thereafter. Ones that continue beyond the physical space. Five couples madly in love amongst the flirty candles, a baby born this month from a couple that met here, multiple businesses generated and flourishing, university essays, articles, movie scripts, countless chess games. Hours of passionate conversations. No matter how technological our worlds will become, the cafe culture will always exist. In moments of solitude we seek for these public spaces to come together. 

I will feel sadness and a lot of love when Rega closes. I will also feel satisfaction. From the moment we opened, I had somewhere deep in my subconscious dreamt of the closing event. While we felt like a crazy bohemian rock band, we knew from day one that this wasn’t forever or going to be easy. We also didn’t exactly end up as the same family that started it. Like any cliche of a band or partnership. 

Sometimes we want a ceremonious closure for something that has ended in our lives; a relationship, a business, a friendship. It makes sense. To remember. To understand. To feel. Yet, with Rega, for these eternal stories, it makes sense to not have the big closure I always envisioned. Since the spirit will never go away. Also since Rega is a time with no measurement. 

Rega feels like this never ending production, which was supposed to be one year and is completing its third. The curtains aren’t yet ready to fall and possibly never will. We have stickers that have “Rega, Toda” written on them. A friend saw one in the north of Israel and felt happy to see a message that flies across cities and oceans. While Tel Aviv is considered a bubble, we shouldn’t shy away from it sometimes and the impact this bubble creates. 

For me it was a place to fall in love twice, to welcome heartbreak twice, to say goodbye to heartache, a place with lessons, conversations, some endless, a family, a friend, a best friend, a birthday, many birthdays, a holiday, an expression, an enlightenment, a betrayal, another betrayal, a portal of justice, a wondrous journey into the unknown, theft, a few thefts, a first for debts, a look into overdrafts, an experience, a window, a door, a brain, a heart. Electricity, milk, water, vegetables, salaries. Endless excels.

Most importantly, Rega is a thank you to the stories and moments. To you dear culturalists, coffee drinkers, revolutionaries, writers, filmmakers, and storytellers. Thank you for your presence and support over the last three years. To you fellow creators and entrepreneurs of restaurants and cafes around the city. I pull off my hat to each of you. 

While it is so hard to “unplug” this place, the time has come. On this very day the doors are being locked. The gods of fate and culture have decided. It is beautifully fitting that we transition to revolutionize on the streets and squares. From politicizing over coffee to Balfour or wherever we choose. At least until there is new leadership. The moment has arrived. Hello to change. 

So wherever you are, dear readers, I felt it appropriate to send you this letter in the newspaper so many of you read in Rega. To remind us all about this very moment. A few weeks ago, on a busy Rega Friday, a man shouted to us from his car, “Lefties, go home”. I turned to my friends around me and said, “but we are home”.

Some Press

Lessons Learned

1. Be present. It is a physical business, so you need to be physically there.

2. Stick to your vision. Otherwise you will lose passion and motivation

3. Check and understand the numbers everyday. Clarify gaps

4. Create positive relationships with neighbors, suppliers and landlords

5. Your team comes first. They are family. But keep your boundaries.

6. Be confident as a leader with your personal values

7. Be authentically vulnerable in times of need and support

8. Find moments, inside and away, to be truly present, alone and disconnected

9. Navigate out of the box with emotion and creativity

10. Treat others and all with respect and empathy. Even if you don’t receive the same