He had seven of them: a Piaggio MP3 a three-wheeled scooter that looked like Adam West's Batcycle and a beige Toyota Sienna in which both rows of back seats had been replaced with a short stack of Oriental rugs.
Just down the road the pavements heave with vibrant city life, a Saturday market: stacks of Turkish rugs, Colombian food stalls and Afro-Caribbean hair salons crammed together.
On the ninth floor, roughly between the bedroom sets and the stacks of Persian rugs, wends a boulevard of Christmas bric-a-brac called Holiday Lane.
WE were biking through the Jaffa flea market in southern Tel Aviv when we found ourselves in a narrow alley, threading our way past vintage clothing, stacks of Oriental rugs and a life-size neon likeness of Marilyn Monroe.
The show begins not with a set-your-teeth-on-edge overture, followed by strained, synthetic belting, but with Riabko seated upstage left, a guitar slung across his chest; he is in what looks like a funky recording studio with stacks of pillows, rugs, and fabrics draped over sofas — a cozy environment designed by Christine Jones and Brett Banakis.
The show begins not with a set-your-teeth-on-edge overture, followed by strained, synthetic belting, but with Riabko seated upstage left, a guitar slung across his chest; he is in what looks like a funky recording studio with stacks of pillows, rugs, and fabrics draped over sofas a cozy environment designed by Christine Jones and Brett Banakis.
It's easy to be taken on a magic carpet ride when you're buying rugs -- hawkers will wave you into their stalls, ply you with mint tea and take you through stacks of fake antique rugs.
On a recent day, DeLyser spread out a foot-thick stack of files on an antique rug in the rambling Lincoln Heights Victorian she shares with Greenstein.
Getting changed in the cramped dressing stall can be a challenge, as you're squeezed in between the wooden footstools and the rolled-up rugs and the stack of cardboard boxes, though the "Chet Baker in Milan" poster on the wall soothes.
"You feel happy in your native place," Mr. Rashid said, while two of his healthy-looking cattle grazed near a stack of charred beams and a clothesline holding rugs and blankets burned from the latest shelling.
