The Naumburg Bandshell area in Central Park, New York City was covered yesterday with authentic Mediterranean sand to disguise itself to Tel Aviv beach. To complete the costume, Israeli DJ, reggae and rock bands performed and the usual attributes of a beach in Tel Aviv covered the sand including tanning beds, sunshades, games of beach volleyball (matkot) and, of course, backgammon (shesh besh). The sun, however, was absent through most of the day.

The reason for this metamorphosis was Tel Aviv 100th anniversary and the first day of the summer. The cost of the one day project was estimated as $150,000 and it was sponsored by the Foreign Ministry, the Tourism Ministry, the Tel Aviv Municipality and El Al Airlines. Tel Aviv beach will be re-replicated in Vienna on July 19 and once again from July 25th to August 2nd in Copenhagen. You don’t have to bring your own backgammon boards.

Below, pictures from a real beach in Tel Aviv, taken at the first beach backgammon championship held last summer:

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 8:54 am and is filed under Playing Backgammon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.