Our First Ultrasound

I heard you gasp. Don't deny it. For just a second there you panicked...

UltraSound is a dance club near Haifa. We went on Friday night after being invited by Eli, the guy who held the party we went to a few weeks ago. Nope, no gross gooey substance or supermarket checkout scanner-looking thing to think about. (For the record, my entire knowledge of what the process of an ultrasound looks like is completely compiled of clips from movies. I have no first-hand knowledge whatsoever.)

It was a pretty cool place. Housed in a warehouse on a kibbutz, UltraSound sports 4 seperate dance floors and what I estimate to be around 8 to 10 bars, including a hot dog and crepe stand and a seperate food bar with flaky pastries and other yummy stuff you're craving after a few drinks. Spread out over several levels, all open-air, each serving as an observation deck for the one below, the club has a strange amusement park feel, most significantly displayed by the two slides that drunk-off-their-ass patrons can utilize to carry them from the top floor to the bottom floor. Quite clever, I know. When your club is populated by stairs as an element of design you have to devise some sort of plan to prevent the alcoholics from taking nasty spills on their way downstairs.

If the place sounds huge, that's because it is. And if you're wondering how many Israelis it takes to fill a warehouse, my estimate would be somewhere between 800 and 1,000. When we left at 2:00am the massive parking lot (think Stamford High School) was full to the brim and the street on which the club is located was lined with cars on both sides. There were even some vehicles all the way out on the main road, approximately a half mile away. And people were still arriving... You see, the club doesn't close until somewhere between 4:00 and 6;00 in the morning. We, on the the other hand, had to get up at a reasonable hour the next day. So unfortunately, we missed the live musical performance. Oh well, maybe next time...

We weren't really prepared for the experience anyway to tell you the truth. We kind of got sucker-punched into going. When Eli called to invite us, he left out some of the details. In fact, he pretty much didn't tell us anything. If I recall, he invited us to "a party... on a kibbutz". I don't know about you, but when I think about a "party on a kibbutz", I think about a small to medium sized function room, filled with youthful students (he said it was a party for the end of the semester), maybe with a DJ in the corner next to a small fridge with lousy beer. We were misled. We were hoodwinked. We were taken totally unawares. Not dressed for the occaision and forgetting my dance shoes at home, we felt slightly uncomfortable. Not to mention the fact that we hadn't brought much cash with us, leaving us unable to purchase food and drink, only admission to this circus.

Well, "why didn't you use your credit card", you must be saying right about now. I asked myself the same question, only to discover that the entire establishment, all 4 floors and 10 bars are completely CASH. Sure, it doesn't seem like such a big deal, until you remember that Israel is 4.7 sheckles to the dollar, meaning that every single one of those 1,000 people had to be carrying on them a seriously significant amount of money. The whole thing took me by surprise, from beginning to end.

I regret not having a camera with me to take some pictures, but I will have one soon as it is in the mail. I will most definitely return to UltraSound camera in hand, money in pocket, dolled-up girlfriend on arm to take full advantage and observation of what I can only call an event to behold.