Dancing

The city center’s dancing scene has been whittled down to only two clubs. The Underground, 8 Yoel Salomon St. (tel. 25 19 18), is the more popular, featuring a bar and a Batcave-like disco area downstairs. The disco is musty with funky fluorescent graffiti on the walls, but you won’t notice because of the wall-to-wall sweaty, semi-trashed dancers crammed in. The Arizona, 37 Jaffa Rd., is a drop smaller but features a cute Western-theme bar, with a buy-one-get-one-free happy hour (7:30-9pm). The Arizona’s disco is a twin of the Underground’s; in fact, they are only separated by one (all too thin) wall. Neither club has a cover charge, but both require purchase of one drink to get into the disco area. Both open 7:30pm4am (depending on crowds).

The largest dance clubs are still in Jerusalem’s southern industrial neighborhood, Talpiot, down Hebron Rd. There you’ll find Pythagoras, Depardieu, and some other establishments. Cover charges range from NIS15-25 for Friday and Saturday nights; open from about 9pm-5am. Taxi fare from the center should be about NISI 5. A hot spot in the summer of 1993 was Incognito, one building up the street from the Jerusalem Cinematheque.

Baraton, a club at the top of Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus campus, has folk dancing on most Saturday and Wednesday nights at 7:30pm (tel. 88 26 70; bus #9 or 28). The International Cultural Center for Youth (ICCY), 12a Etnek Refa’im St. (tel. 66 41 44), offers folk dancing Sundays and Mondays at 7:30pm (NIS8; bus #4, 14 or 18). The House for Hebrew Youth (Beit haNo’ar), 105 HaRav Herzog St. (tel. 78 86 42), conducts classes on Thursdays at 8pm (bus #19); outdoor dancing takes place in the Liberty Bell Gardens a bit after Sbabbat ends. Each week instructors teach new dances-from traditional folk to modem jazz-to Astaires of all ages.