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At the Elvis Diner, fans still get all shook up 30 years after the death of The King

Posted on August 31, 2007 • By Gil Zohar
Category: Art and Culture, Featured Leave a Comment

While Elvis Presley checked out of this world’s Heartbreak Hotel 30 years ago on August 16, 1977, Israel’s diehard Elvis fans are still all shook up about The King. On that date here in Israel, nine Elvis impersonators including two women assembled at the Pundak Elvis (Elvis Diner) here, a truck stop and shrine just off the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem expressway 10 km west of the capital, for a day-long celebration of the life of a man they revere as a proud blue suede Jew.

Among them is Herzl Shimoni, decked out in his finest Duck’s Ass haircut and tight bell-bottoms. “When Elvis died, I mourned for the whole month. I didn’t want to lose him … I decided then that I would start to perform his songs,” says Shimoni, one of the country’s best-known Elvis impersonators who performs three or four times a week at Tel Aviv bar mitzvahs and nightclubs.

Shimoni and his fellow fans croon Elvis classics like “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling In Love” over the karaoke – with the English lyrics transliterated into Hebrew. The day-long homage, as close as Israel comes to Graceland, celebrates the life of a pop music icon whose hips and music shook the world.

In a decades-old ritual, Shimoni and fellow fans gather at the Pundak Elvis hallowed ground every August 16, as well as on January 8, the birthday of The King in 1935 in Memphis, Tennessee. Tiki Rokah, 57, from Netanya, recalls the beginning of her decades-old affection for Elvis. “It all started for me when I was 13. I used to steal my brother’s Elvis records and he used to hit me for doing it, but I didn’t care,” she says wistfully. “I fell in love with Elvis back then because of his voice, charisma and look. And I stayed a devotee because he was also a good, generous and modest man who helped people and didn’t let the glamorous life change him.”

Elvis’ popularity in Israel isn’t limited to look-alikes and devotees. He has a broad following here thanks largely to the efforts of Uri Yoeli, a 61-year-old Jerusalem businessman who opened the Elvis Diner in 1974 and now runs it along with his brother Amnon and four children. “I got into Elvis when I was 14,” the seventh generation Jerusalemite recalls. “I quickly became the head of the fan club in the city.”

That role required the teenaged Yoeli to dress up as the King. He turned his collar up, slicked his hair back, and imitated Elvis’s trademark smile. “I had all his [33 1/3 LP] records, which had to be ordered from Tel Aviv, because Jerusalem stores didn’t carry them. We used to have dance parties, where all we would play were Elvis slows,” he adds with a nostalgic sigh. “Those were the days.”

In the early 1970s, Yoeli criss-crossed the U.S. in order to get near his idol. He flew from New York to Salt Lake City for a day to see the King in concert. And he stalked Presley’s home for hours to get a glimpse of the legend. When he finally caught up with him at a hamburger joint, the security guards prevented him from shaking hands with Elvis. In 1972 Yoeli married a woman who didn’t share his passion, so the posters and magazine clippings went into storage.

He didn’t foresee his eatery becoming Israel’s unofficial Elvis Heaven. When he opened the Mountain Inn in 1974, he hung two of his favourite pictures of the King on the walls. He didn’t even realize that anyone had noticed the photos until two truck drivers came in and asked to use the telephone. “They said to their friend, ‘Meet us at the place with the pictures of Elvis’,” Yoeli remembers, and he knew then he had something special.

Today, the proprietor dresses in conservative button-down shirts and vests, and wears his thinning hair too short to be slicked back. But the walls are covered with more than 1,100 pictures, shelves of memorabilia and souvenirs, including Elvis coffee mugs, postcards and wine that the Yoelis bottled especially for the 30th anniversary of Elvis’ death.

Even the ceilings are covered with row upon row of framed pictures. Situated between the silver and teal booths are three life-sized statues – and in the parking lot are two more that tower larger than life, including a 16-foot-tall, $50,000 bronze statue purported to be one of the world’s largest of Elvis. “People come here from all over Israel, and all over the world,” Yoeli notes with pride.

If you’re lonesome tonight, he counsels stopping by. The Pundak Elvis will get you all shook up.

Pundak Elvis is located at Neve Ilan Gas Station, Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem Road. Tel: 02 – 534-1275. Open from 8 am to 8 pm, except on Fridays when it is open until Shabbat. Kosher.