If you’re looking for a game of darts and don’t mind throwing in a joint where a suicide bomber might be sitting at the bar, I have a recommendation. The name of the place is Café Noga. Billed as an “old country Irish pub and restaurant,” it’s located in the heart of Israel’s second most populous city of Tel Aviv.
In business for thirty years, Café Noga is the Jewish state’s oldest billiards club, not that there’s anything wrong with that. People who don’t have the skill to compete in a real sport need to have someplace to go and fart around.
The good news is that the place also has three regulation bristle dartboards, all set up perfectly in a well-cared for and well-lit area next to the bar and across the way from a green felt sea of twenty pool tables. Just to the left of the real boards is a soft-tip machine. This is also for farting around.
It was midday when I arrived in Tel Aviv. My cell phone rang…
“HEY DARTOID! Sorry for the interruption but is this the point where you typically pad your column with a few paragraphs of plagiarized Wikipedia crap about what ever city it is you’re visiting?”
“Who is this?”
“Morrie!”
“Morrie?”
“Come on man. You remember. 1975. Semester break.”
“HOLY CRAP! Morrie Markowitz! It’s been fifty years! What ever happened to those girls? You gotta new joke?”
“Damn straight. It’s Passover and a rabbi is eating his lunch on a park bench. A blind man sits down next to him, so the rabbi offers him some of his lunch – a piece of matzah.
The blind man takes it, rubs his fingers over it for a moment and says, ‘Who wrote this shit?’”
“Oy – you still suck Markowitz. Good to hear from you but, really, I’ve gotta run. I’m gettin’ ready to write some serious shit about darts here.”
So, I checked into my hotel, showered, donned my bulletproof vest, found the Noga at 4 Pinkster Street and for 25 shekels ordered a He’brew Rejewvenator.
Seriously, I was in frickin’ Israel – how could I resist a beer called Rejewvenator?
From the Field – STAND WITH ISRAEL!
Dartoid
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“Dartoid” is the pseudonym of Paul Seigel, a prominent chronicler of darts for over 35 years for the full version of this column over over 600 others head to dartoidsworld.net/
