It's late on a Thursday evening, and Anat Nir, one of the Israeli lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community's influential female activist entrepreneurs, is sitting in a cozy little food joint off south Tel Aviv's Gan Hahashmal. She's talking with passion about her latest project – something she believes will change the way people regard the community in Israeli society. TLV Expo, a collection of booths, seminars, talkbacks, film screenings and more, on subjects ranging from family and community life to fashion and design within the LGBT community, and even a one-day Pink Economy conference, took place this week. Covering some 2,000 square meters of Dizengoff Center, the expo was just one of the numerous independently organized spinoffs coming out of the already well-known, municipality-sponsored Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade, scheduled to take place today. Nearly 45 years after the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York birthed the world's gay liberation movement, and according to Israel's branch of Amnesty International, 35 years after a collection of activists held the first official demonstration in Tel Aviv demanding gay and lesbian rights, Nir and a group of her LGBT community peers have been feverishly planning the project, backed by the sponsorship of Dizengoff Center, website Achbar Ha'ir, and a number of local and national brand names. “I thought this was the opportunity to connect the business community with the LGBT community,” Nir says. “The question raised was: Are we not a very closed society, and isn't the business segment afraid of the religious society's criticism? And my answer was: This is 2014, Assi Azar hosts Big Brother Israel – he's an openly gay man; Dana International won Eurovision; Orna Banai is in Eretz Nehederet; Ivri Lider is a judge on X-Factor Israel; there's a gay person on each reality show; Miki Buganim is doing commercials for cornflakes… ” The list of reasons that the time was right for the expo goes on. In a way, it could also be said that TLV Expo is a reflection of how the country's LGBT community has “grown up.” The kids are down for the night, so Guy Tatsa-Laur, another organizer of the event and the owner of an international surrogacy agency, has taken advantage of the lull in action to stop by a neighborhood coffee shop and talk about his part in the project. “The idea of the expo actually came up in a conversation I had with my friends. Over the past few years, we've been going to the [Pride] parade, which Tel Aviv sees as the stronghold of Gay Pride Week. But basically, with three children, you go there in the middle of June, it's hot, it's loud and after about five minutes, one, two and three children start crying, and we go home,” he laughs. The expo is, Tatsa-Laur explains, also a kind of natural reflection of the mainstreaming of the LGBT community. He tells the story of posting a message on a Facebook page several months back, suggesting two-father families meet up at a local cafe, ple. “I came to the understanding that 25 years after gay sex became legal in Israel [by a Knesset vote repealing an old British Mandate law against buggery], we as an LGBT community have come from a sort of very narrow visibility and existence, into a place where we have a lifestyle and culture, and where there is a wide diversity within the community.” But what really kickstarted growth was the global Tel Aviv Gay Vibe tourism campaign, which in 2011 led to Tel Aviv being named the world's Best Gay City by American Airlines. According to Nir, the campaign was based on market research carried out in four international locations – Germany, England, France and Holland – which, she says, led to the realization that “there were a lot of primitive thoughts about Israel and Tel Aviv – we ride camels, we have very segregated communities, there is not a big secular sector and obviously not a big LGBT sector – because the Middle East in general is considered to be not so LGBT-friendly. “Not so many know that Israel is such a LGBT oasis,” she adds. “It was two years after I started dealing with this issue that we won Best Gay City in the world,” Yaniv Weizman says. A Tel Aviv city council member from the Rov Ha'ir party and an adviser to Mayor Ron Huldai on LGBT affairs, as well as holder of the municipal Tourism portfolio, Weizman is taking a few minutes before his next Friday morning meeting to talk about his vision for the city. He says he always believed in the potential of Tel Aviv, both as a vacation destination and as a hotspot for LGBT tourism. “When I was elected, I came to the mayor and said, 'I want to hold the gay ticket and the tourism ticket,' and everybody said, 'Well, take tourism, who cares.' I knew there was a really strong connection between gay tourism and tourism, because I knew Tel Aviv was a great product for the tourist outside of Israel. I want tourists to come to Tel Aviv, to be part of the community and part of the economic revolution of the 'pink shekel.'” As Weizman puts it, “All I had to do was tell them that Tel Aviv is a great city for the gay community – come here, see the beach, see the life, see the restaurants – and they would spread the word… And it was so fast, you know, because when you have something good to sell, just tell them and they will see it.” Adi Orenstein, who has served for the past five-and-a-half years as marketing manager of Dizengoff Center, says the owner of the country's first shopping mall had long been asking her to do something in recognition of Pride week. “I always told him that I don't want to do something just to be popular, I don't want to just put out flags. I want to do something with meaning.” According to Orenstein, meaning came to fruition this year as talks centering on the expo idea grew. What initially began as a conversation between Orenstein and Nir Levlovich, the owner of a men's pop-up store which the center had hosted for a short period, grew into the current team of entrepreneurs behind the expo: Nir, Levlovich, Tatsa-Laur, Lilach Evrany and Imri Kalmann. “I do not want to offend anyone who is not part of the community,” she explains, sitting in her small office in a hidden corner of the center. “This means I do not want to do something that is too extreme, or something that can be hard for children to see, or for their parents, or whatever. I want something that is the core of the life of the people who are part of the community. “Tel Aviv was chosen to be the Best Gay City, and we see ourselves first of all as part of this city,” she adds. “We are a place that the community likes and comes to for their services and shopping. For us, it is important to give to them, and not something that is cheap.” It was the desire to make the expo a true reflection of the LGBT community that led Dizengoff Center to leave the creation and management of the event in the hands of the community's entrepreneurs. “In the end we want to be part of Tel Aviv, and to give our audience something that we hope has value for them.” One of the expo highlights was Pink Economy, a one-day conference within the multitude of events taking place at the center. Notable participants included Alon Chen, country marketing manager at Google Israel; Rami Yehudicha, founder and CEO of Lead Focused advertising; and Hila Oren, founder and CEO of Global and Tourism Administration at the Tel Aviv Municipality. Nir, who lectures on the LGBT market segment to students at Ben-Gurion University and the College of Management Academic Studies, explains the motivation behind Pink Economy: “The LGBT community is a segment that most commercial companies in Israel disregard, although Israelis are setting world trends in LGBT consumerism. “We have so many achievements and still the commercial big companies are hesitant, support the gay community.'” Marketing within the LGBT community is an issue that she says is fraught with “stereotypes,” and the only ones that are truly moving with it freely are what she refers to as “the usual suspects: alcohol brands, condoms, some flight companies.” This does not fully exploit the consumer behaviors of the LGBT community, Nir says, and Pink Economy is meant to serve as a vehicle to illustrate this. “We have a baby boom, we have families, we buy diapers and we buy products in SuperPharm, we go to the bank and make investments, we buy life insurance. Somebody should market life insurance to my family; banks or insurance companies or investment houses should start talking to households that contain same-sex couples or transgender people.” On the morning of the conference, following the opening cocktail event the previous evening attended by Huldai, members of the municipality, and a number of well-known personas and celebrities, Tatsa-Laur took a moment to comment on the first day of their enormous undertaking: “There is so much going on – I don't think there has ever been an LGBT event with so much content happening,” he said, calling it a “celebration” of the different groups within the community. Opening day probably hit several thousand visitors, including numerous tourists, he noted. In addition to the expo and Pink Economy, there are also events scheduled to take place throughout the period of Pride celebrations such as TLV Fest: Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, scheduled for June 7 to 16 at the cinematheque and the municipal gay center in Meir Park. Events to be held on the grounds include a political panel on the eve of the parade, featuring leading MKs; a theater festival put on by professional troupes, showcasing original performances; a drag show; and an art exhibition presenting the transgender experience. Additionally, a first-of-its-kind health conference sponsored by leading pharmaceutical companies including Janssen, Lilly and MSD was held last month. The conference focused on issues such as fertility, sexual performance, HIV awareness and risk factors within the gay community. “Due to the sponsorship of those companies, we're covering the costs of the conference and creating a fund that will continue to create awareness within the community,” says Yuval Egertt, manager of the Meir Park center. Of course, there are also the events of which even the more mainstream of Tel Aviv's residents are aware and attend – the pre-parade happening at Gan Meir on the morning of the Pride Parade, in which MTV, Clalit Esthetics and other businesses will take part; the parade itself; Pride week parties on Hilton Beach; and a plethora of parties at bars and clubs celebrating Pride throughout June. And again, there are the tourists. Says Egertt, “The money comes back to the city, and beyond this, I can tell you about the parade itself and how much businesses just blossom. More and more stores come to me on their own and buy Pride flags and put them on the outside of the stores during the week, and they have no connection to the community. They know that if they put out the flags, people come in and sit down. For tourists, who for example come from Germany and sit at a table and eat and drink, for them it's 100 euro, it's nothing. But then you have a number of these each day, and there are businesses in Tel Aviv that can live off of this.” According to Egertt, in 2013, the Israel Hotel Association reported that bookings were full to capacity on the weekend of the Pride Parade. This, he notes, was without taking into account “couch” tourists, people who rent weekend housing via the web, nor did it include the numerous boutique and apartment hotels with short-term rentals. “And if somebody says, 'How do we know that it's you [the LGBT community]?' Well, to us it is clear – June is a low season for tourism, the high season is July and August. Thus, we know from the hotel association that there is a significant increase [in bookings], and a lack of hotel rooms in Tel Aviv during the period of Pride.” Mira Marcus, the international press director for Tel Aviv Global & Tourism, also notes the increase. “LGBT tourism arrives in the city during this week; our assessment is that there are about 25,000 LGBT tourists during Pride week celebrations in June. But it is important to note that the gay community around the world visits Tel Aviv regularly throughout the year, not just during the festivities. Tel Aviv is a pluralistic and open city all year round, and as such is also ranked in exclusive magazines around the world as a suitable honeymoon destination for gay couples.” Marcus adds that this year the city has invested NIS 2 million in Pride festivities, including parade production and the activities centered around it. The year's budget for promotion of LGBT tourism stands at NIS 500,000. The municipality also runs the website Gay Vibe, which has been up for a year and a half, and manages different campaigns around the world, promoting Tel Aviv as a LGBT tourist destination. Campaigns are also done in cooperation with government agencies such as the Tourism Ministry, and foreign journalists are brought in to Tel Aviv to cover LGBT activities – including this year's Pride celebrations. With everything that is going on, it seems clear that some kind of change is taking place in how the LGBT community sees itself, and perhaps more significantly, in how it is viewed and demanding to be viewed by society. “The gay community is involved in a revolution for equality,” says Weizman, echoing the “glass ceiling” sentiment often heard in conversation with LGBT community leaders. “From the business aspect, we are not poor things, we are not saying, 'Equality because we deserve it.' We are here, we are strong.” He adds, “There is a difficult discussion right now about business people in the closet, about how businesses need to be more involved in the community. Sponsorship for Pride events is very hard to get, because big companies in the market still do not want to be identified – Coca-Cola and Osem still do not want to be associated with the Pride Parade, even though they have a number of managers who are part of the LGBT community. “So I say, 'Come and use your pressure to see how we can change the situation.'” The Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade, with over 100,000 expected to attend, will take place today, beginning with the happening at 10 a.m. It will depart Meir Park for the parade route after opening words from Mayor Ron Huldai at 1 p.m. For more information on Pride events at the Municipal Gay Center: www.gaycenter.org.il. For information on the parade, visit the official Facebook page: he-il.facebook.com/pridetelaviv To learn more about TLV Expo: www.expotlv.co.il. For information on TLV Fest: www.tlvfest.com/en
