Its been five long years since the first JARA summer (you can read about my thoughts on JARA back in 2005 here).

A five long years of change for Amman, a city that is creeping towards the early years of adolescence, reaching that stage of messy self-discovery, of complex identity crises and moral conflicts.

Jabal Amman, with its bourgeoisie history and current bohemian middle class is sitting at the core of the city’s shift from child to teenager. Amusingly enough, it’s not Jabal Amman’s first time serving this role; it had played a similar one in the early 70s, but somehow saw some stunted growth that has tethered the area till recent years.

Yesterday was JARA’s first Friday for the summer of 2010. I parked my car outside the guys’ place up by the first circle and walked with them the length of Rainbow Street down to Fawzi Maalouf Street, the tiny cul-de-sac that has housed JARA Market for the past five years.

The walk is beautiful, aside from the crappy village style tourist attractions like Kan Zaman and Cave I-don’t-know-what Cafe. There’s Coffee and News, its casual cool clientele sipping coffee and smoking their cigarettes without Amman’s dress-to-impress mentality. Turtle Green a few meters down the road is filled with a younger audience with their laptops shining brightly across their faces. Next to the always crowded Falafel Al-Quds is Shawermize It, a newly opened shawerma restaurant with bright green typography (that I haven’t tried yet). Gerard’s, Amman’s favorite ice-cream store, has recently opened its Rainbow address, in the same vicinity as La Calle, Cups and Kilos, and R’N'B.

Batata, the little store that has been selling nothing more than french fries for the past 15 years is my earliest memory of the street, and the memory is of a dark and empty alley, with absolutely no soul. I remember being so surprised that such a delicious place existed in that part of town, which I had never been to before (I was maybe 9). Speaking of childhood memories, my heart always aches when I pass by the huge and terribly abandoned Abu AlDahab Center, but that is a different story for a different day.

Rainbow Street is alive, and with life comes people, sounds, public interactions. With life comes hijababes, teenage metal-heads in black, families of five, older Ammani women, younger Ammani men, tourists, weird characters that are totally out of place. That’s the beauty of street life. 

It is fit to point out that JARA was opened by a great and unbelievably crowded gig by what is indisputably Jordan’s best band, Rum Tareq Al-Nasser. It also took us an hour at 11:00 PM to get to Shmeisani, which is a five minute ride on a normal day. I wasn’t even parked near Rainbow, I was parked on Manilla Road.

I really hope that the municipality closes off Rainbow Street to cars on Friday nights. Let’s make it a pedestrian street.

Summer is here.

Other Rainbow Street Posts:

My Top 10 Summer Hangouts for 2010
Urban Review: Turtle Green Tea Bar
Urban Guide to Amman: Jabal Amman
All the colors of the Rainbow
Are You Rainbow Material?
The Six Crowds You Meet in Heaven
The Dull Colors of the Rainbow
The Blouzaat Store: إنتاج شركة بلوزات للجرائم الغذائية
Through valleys and mountains
The best breakfast in town…

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