From the fifties, all public housing apartment buildings staircases and lobbies were decorated with a beige low quality sedimentary stone, infested with petrified marine snails and shells. As Israeli building quality is improving and the country is becoming wealthier, this characterless soft stone has been replaced by Jerusalem and Hebron chalk stone, glaringly white and esthetically satisfying. Richer office buildings are using real Italian colored marble.
Now Wisconsin University is going to use our humble stone (pic) renamed Ramon Golden Stone for its lobby. The initial order is for eight containers. A very smart marketer - has packaged this common stone and exported it to America for exhorbitant prices to "create a friendly environment in the University's lobby". You can sell anything to architects and interior decorators.
7 comments:
It is like lobster in South Africa.
It used to be the food of poor people
and cost almost nothing.
Then it was repackaged as a luxury item and now it is very expensive.
What could be next in this trend?
Anon.
Fiji Bottled Water is selling at 9 dollars in New York. I could send tanker of Certified Israeli Tapwater, sell it for much less and yet turn a profit.
Koko say, "Let's do it tomorrow!"
Anon.
I don't know where you get your figures from. If you come to New York I will gladly sell you a bottle of Fiji water for only $8 - OK $7 because you are a special friend. The retail price for a case is actually about $1 per 500 ml bottle. Of course there are restaurants in NY where everything is highly overpriced, including Fiji water.
Of course the whole bottled water thing is ridiculous, especially bottled water shipped 1/2 way 'round the world. The US may be running out of other things but we have abundant water. Unimaginably abundant by Israeli standards. Lake Kineret - 160 km2. Lake Superior 82,000 km2 . It's true that US tap water sometimes smells like chlorine, but I have a simple carbon filter that takes care of that and what emerges from the filter is indistinguishable from most bottled water and 99% cheaper.
K
K
I presume the USA is also incredibly rich in stone. Yet...
Stone is a little different because each stone has its own aesthetic quality (and there's no accounting for taste). Even in Roman times the Romans brought different colored marble from all around the known world to Rome. Stone is also a processed product and other countries may have comparative advantage in processing the stone into workable forms (polished tiles). Overall the US doesn't use that much stone at all - our customary building material is wood and many houses and even commercial buildings have no stone at all, just some ceramic tile in the bathroom.
K
You see K, I was sitting on this stone and didnt realize it was made of "gold".
As said in the Bible: the land of milk and honey, its mountains are from iron, copper and gold.
The tiles made of this stone are interesting because they are full or marine animal fossils. At first I was fascinated by it, then forgot about it. Fortunately other people sees business opportunities where I see low quality marble substitute.
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