True Love Of A Proud Liberal

In Tel Aviv, gay pride pays off

This joyous festival was orchestrated by a surprisingly small number of people, who are celebrating not only the great pride event, but also the tourists and money flowing into the city's treasury, and their success in spreading the word that Tel Aviv is a liberal city.

 

Mideast's gay capital, as marketed in Europe (Photo: Eitan Tal)

 

A group of eight Israelis, more or less, managed to fly in 5,000 to 6,000 tourists on the week of the Pride Parade – a 25% increase compared to the previous year. Tourists who turned the white city's streets colorful.

 

These people and their many assistants are the ones who ensure that gay tourists visit Tel Aviv on other days of the year as well. From year to year, the pink economy leaves a more impressive mark on the city's treasury, and the gay tourists put up a good competition against the French. And all this with a minimal advertising and marketing budget.

 

According to the Tel Aviv Municipality, the budget for the parade and accompanying events totaled NIS 450,000 (about $132,000) this year – including advertising, amplifiers, policing and cleaning services.

 

The local campaign for the parade, "It's worthwhile being proud," which was promoted by local community celebrities, was voluntary and did not cost a penny.

 

The parade, the happening which preceded it and the beach party held at the end (including a host from Berlin and dozens of drag artists and DJs) were produced by the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality's Culture and Arts Department.

 

The cultural events week held before the parade was produced by the Municipal Center for the Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Bisexual Community in collaboration with the Culture and Sports Ministry.

 

$50 million expected in income

What are the proceeds from GLBT tourism? The Tel Aviv Municipality says it doesn't have exact sums right now, but only estimates reported by the Visit TLV association. "Over the past weekends, the room occupancy in the city totaled 75%," the municipality reported.

 

"According to rough estimates, a tourist spends about $200 a day across the city – 40% of the sum on a hotel and 60% on stores, restaurants, clubs, transportation, etc.

 

"We believe that tourists arriving for the pride events may even spend more than $200 a day.

Ozzie Saffa: One Liberal's Conversion Story

My husband and I are former lunatic liberals. We promoted multiculturalism, the arts and diversity, and we have been involved in our neighborhood association, “urban renewal,” and the urban homesteading movement in our city. We always thought our interracial relationship was progressive. After marriage we associated with a local group of liberals who dug up their yards to plant food, composted, built rain barrels, breastfed their babies, practiced attachment parenting, planned community gardens, used clotheslines, etc. We did these things too, and in our liberalism, we felt very progressive. We were very popular with our white liberal friends because we were the token interracial couple. Living in a mostly black neighborhood has cast a very harsh light on black culture for me. All of my liberal illusions have been shattered. I have realized how much hatred and anger blacks have for white people. I have lost so much hope and innocence just by living here for nine years. I often feel that I have been beaten over the head with a big stick. I have read so much about HBD (Human Biodiversity), race, black culture, white culture, white nationalism, and other topics that I had never even known about. I have struggled to have a voice, and to use it without choking up. We have never experienced white racism as a couple, only intolerance from blacks. All of our friends comment about how annoying it is that we still like each other so much, and that our children are so well adjusted and sociable. We still have date night on Tuesdays and leave the kids on our anniversary to travel to a far off place. My mother-in-law teases that we are always talking about each other fondly and she makes fun of us. But she still denounces our marriage. I don’t blame her. She wants her grandchildren to look like her. I have realized that that is normal for everyone. I once received a call from an older black woman who had at some point been an associate of my husband’s in the arts. They were working on an artist grant program together. She was trying to locate my husband so that she could return a portfolio of his work that she had borrowed a few years back. I told her that she could dispose of the items, that he did not need them. She became offended by this, and mentioned that she could tell that I was white by my “accent,” and that she did not trust me to make that decision FOR my husband (I often work as his office assistant in the sale of his paintings).

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