An Israeli escalator transports citizens to a galaxy far, far away – and also upstairs.
Between theatrical releases, VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, comic books, novelizations, and very spirited retellings from people who have never seen it, the Star Wars trilogy has been released in more formats than you can shake a gimer stick at. However, until recently, the lucrative pedestrian conveyor market remained untapped. Fans will be pleased to know that the Tel Aviv City Hall has brought balance to the Force, and implemented the first-ever Star Wars text crawl on one of its escalators.
The reasons behind this new form of interstellar travel are not clear. Presumably, city officials wanted to spice up their escalators to generate some goodwill and amusement, since going to an average city hall can be a boring or intimidating experience. While the down escalator displays a general space theme with planets and stars, the text from the beginning of Star Wars (A New Hope, for anyone who saw the movie after 1981) adorns the opposite escalator, traveling appropriately upwards. Aside from displaying the iconic text in its unaltered form, there is also no clear reason why the crawl appears in English instead of Hebrew.
A simple homage to one of the most beloved sci-fi movies of all time probably won’t make picking up permits or filing complaints with the city any more fun, but it may make the citizens of Tel Aviv feel that the Force is with them. When dealing with long lines, red tape, and bureaucrats, sometimes, that’s all that stands between a Jedi Knight and the temptation of the Dark Side.
Source: The Daily What
