(no subject)
So one of my co-passengers on the blimp ride was a journalist from the Washington Post. He ended up doing a piece on Akron, oddly enough... its pretty dry [he was kind of dorky to be honest] and its not that great of an article, nor does it really have a point with this story, but its interesting enough...
Bouncing Around Akron, Rubber Capital of the World
By Peter Mandel
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Steeltown, Coaltown, Motown, move over.
Rubbertown is on the rise.
Akron, Ohio, which bills itself as the "Rubber Capital of the World," is bouncing back from lean times caused by tire and other manufacturing companies leaving town. But Goodyear and Goodrich are still here, the center city is now alive at night, and Akron and neighboring Canton boast some of the best hands-on museums around: the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, even a World of Rubber.
I like displays of artifacts, not art, and I've heard that these museums are like a good mechanic: They've got dirt under their nails. I'm going to see them all.
To round out all this flatland fun, I will be staying at what may be the world's only grain-silo-turned-hotel.
Along with the all-weather radial, this tinkering and milling town exported the idea of eating oatmeal for breakfast when Quaker Oats, at one time based in Akron, started mass-marketing its flakes in 1901. Quaker's mighty grain silos here are on the National Register of Historic Places and have been chopped up into a strangely shaped Crowne Plaza hotel.
When I check in, it's hard to miss the fact that my room is round. And I am lost the second I walk out of it into the dim, mysterious hallways that have been sawed out of the silo concrete.
Outside, I find that Akron is a nest of one-way streets, many without signs. [personal note- wha?! WE HAVE TWO (2) IN THE WHOLE GREATER AREA!] Like Cleveland, less than an hour north, Akron has worked to revitalize a downtown that felt empty in the 1970s and '80s. I can find Canal Park, its Camden Yards-style Minor League Baseball stadium, since it's right on Main Street. And there is a nearby cluster of fixed-up buildings and funky restaurants and nightclubs. I can find those, too.
But beyond this, I drive around and around, and when I land by accident at the National Inventors Hall of Fame, I realize I could have walked: It is two circuitous blocks from the hotel.
I am excited to be in the museum, since I am a basement tinkerer. I've got my own invention ideas. When I ask the ticket clerk if there is anyone who might like to hear about dissolving honey capsules or glow-in-the-dark keys, she just stares. "You could look into a patent attorney," she suggests, although I can detect a smirk.
Constructed in 1995, thanks to a group of local boosters who thought it a perfect match for a city that makes things, the hall is as inside-out as Paris's Pompidou Center. All the pipes and struts are painted red and yellow instead of being hidden from view. This is a palace of technology, so even the circuitry behind the elevator button is visible. I'm expecting an electric shock when I push for the top floor.
No sparks in the elevator, but quite a few up here, where I take in intricate prototypes of inventions, such as the 1868 "Beer Cooler" (Patent No. 85,190) where, as far as I can figure out, beer is supposed to drop in temperature by getting squashed into a network of metal tubes. I'm glad I don't see patents for my honey capsules or glowing keys.
Other floors have profiles of hall inductees: Orville and Wilbur Wright (Patent No. 821,393: "Flying-Machine") and Thomas Edison, whom my great-uncle Harry once worked for, and has an autographed photo and hand-scrawled letter to prove it.
For me, the best part is the wide-open ground floor where kids can work on inventing stuff for themselves. There's a kind of salad bar with plastic rods instead of celery or carrots, and connectors instead of the usual condiments. I ask Tim Haney, who's maybe 8, what he's making.
"It's a house for myself," he says. "It's only for me."
Okay, I say. I don't have a problem with that. I'll build one for myself later on.
I check out an area called Take Apart! where children wearing smocks are expertly unscrewing computer keyboards, printers and VCRs. I ask one of the guides, Dick Kuntzman, if I can bring in my laptop for repair.
"That's fine," says Kuntzman, although he looks worried. "I warn you," he adds. "It might get smashed."
The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton is right by Interstate 77. Easy on, easy off.
A national attraction, the hall doesn't look like it houses history. It's linebacker brick-and-steel. But as soon as I get inside I find myself getting snagged by the earliest shreds of this completely American game.
Maybe you knew that the first football pro was a man named William "Pudge" Heffelfinger who played (and was paid by) an Allegheny, Pa., club in 1892.
I admit I didn't.
And maybe you could have told me why all of these ancient uniforms with lace-up jerseys and leather nose guards are displayed behind glass in Canton and not in Cleveland, let's say, or Chicago.
It's because the National Football League was born here in 1920. Place of birth: the Hupmobile automotive showroom, owned by the manager of the onetime Canton Bulldogs.
The Enshrinement Gallery showcases busts of all 221 players and coaches who have been enshrined here, and it is both moving and remarkably eerie. Thanks to the ultra-low lighting, muscular, mean-looking heads are all around you, looming out of the dark walls and glaring down. "We are the gods of perfect handoffs and touchdown runbacks," they seem to say. "Check out our stats, big guy, and despair." Hall of Famers zoom to life a few steps away at the Game Day Stadium, a cinemascope sound-pumping theater that motors your seat around while projecting a wide-angle reel of wild highlights.
"No smoking, eating, drinking or cheering allowed," orders the sign outside the theater. But the film is so loud and up-close it hits you harder than seeing a game from an actual grandstand. After a minute, we are yelling "crunch" and "ouch," and I hear someone crack open a soda.
I need a hot dog. Where's the beer guy? I'm going to search for a foot-long and a brew right after the show.
Back in downtown Akron, hot dog in hand, I go for a walk in the forest. These are rubber trees formed out of papier-mache, with the taps in their trunks and tin cups for gum. I am in the Goodyear World of Rubber, an ambitious but slightly dusty industrial display.
Anyone who wants can come here (it's at the company's head office). But these days, says the woman who sells souvenirs at the gift shop next door, there is rarely a crowd. Too bad, because although I'm disappointed it doesn't have rubber walls or floors, the displays are unusual and fun.
I pick up a security badge at the entrance to the Goodyear Building and head for Elevator 169, which stops at Rubber World -- and no other floors.
I've got the run of the place, so I can take my time poring over the giant blob of "wild rubber" from the Amazon jungle, the model of the Apollo 14 transporter (which happened to be equipped with Goodyear XLT tires) and the fuselage of a Corsair fighter, which Goodyear built in the early 1940s.
You're not supposed to climb into its cockpit, but since it's open and there's no one else around, I do. Bet I could fly one of these things, I think, taking stock of the simple dials and knobs. That is, if I could see out the front cockpit windscreen, which is badly scratched.
On my way out, I take a close look at a bronze statue of the "father of rubber," Charles Goodyear, who in 1839 invented a process to make the material stronger and weatherproof. Reading a plaque proves that not only was Goodyear tireless in his rubber-strengthening experiments (he tried toasting little chunks of it at home, like marshmallows, and steaming it over a teapot), but he was also committed (eventually he took to "wearing rubber hats and ties"). For months at a time, I read, Goodyear monopolized his wife's oven to slow-bake slabs of gum. And -- this is impressive -- he persuaded his family to eat dinners off rubber plates.
Inspired, I buy a handful of blimp erasers in the Goodyear store, which sell for 18 cents apiece. I ask if there is someone I can talk to about getting a ride on the real, helium-filled thing. No chance, replies the clerk, unless I bid on and win one at a charity auction, or am one of the company's top customers or salesmen.
I cradle the erasers I bought and bring to the cashier a string of blimp-shaped holiday lights to show how interested I am.
No chance.
Rules are rules, Goodyear decides. But if I want to I can visit the airfield. If I hurry, I should be able to catch the blimp -- called "The Spirit of Goodyear" -- up close as it lands in an open field and takes off.
The day is cold but clear, and there is a 4 p.m. flight. I drive like mad into farmland, getting lost and backing up, until I find a sign that says "Goodyear Hunting and Fishing Club" and, underneath, "Blimp Base One."
Mandel to Blimp Base: Am approaching launchpad. Hold on, hold on.
I reach the Goodyear hangar just as the blue-and-gold, shark-shape dirigible floats into view. A couple of spectators and I are right in its path, and we get blackened in the airship's predator shadow.
Unloading the gondola takes seconds. A man flaps an orange windsock that is fat with air. Then, with the hum of the pushing propeller, it takes off again.
The nose of the blimp dips down and up, and we can see its shadow aiming straight for Akron's maze of streets.
The blimp has messages for people below: "Hello," it says in lights that flicker on its giant belly. "Hello from the Goodyear Blimp and Crew."
I am made in Akron, the blimp might say.
Hello from my tough town of invention, and hard tackling, and tires.
Peter Mandel last wrote for Travel on getting a tuxedo and dress made in Bangkok.
-- Peter Mandel
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Hopefully I'll get the film developed and post some pics from the ride here soon...
Bouncing Around Akron, Rubber Capital of the World
By Peter Mandel
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Steeltown, Coaltown, Motown, move over.
Rubbertown is on the rise.
Akron, Ohio, which bills itself as the "Rubber Capital of the World," is bouncing back from lean times caused by tire and other manufacturing companies leaving town. But Goodyear and Goodrich are still here, the center city is now alive at night, and Akron and neighboring Canton boast some of the best hands-on museums around: the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, even a World of Rubber.
I like displays of artifacts, not art, and I've heard that these museums are like a good mechanic: They've got dirt under their nails. I'm going to see them all.
To round out all this flatland fun, I will be staying at what may be the world's only grain-silo-turned-hotel.
Along with the all-weather radial, this tinkering and milling town exported the idea of eating oatmeal for breakfast when Quaker Oats, at one time based in Akron, started mass-marketing its flakes in 1901. Quaker's mighty grain silos here are on the National Register of Historic Places and have been chopped up into a strangely shaped Crowne Plaza hotel.
When I check in, it's hard to miss the fact that my room is round. And I am lost the second I walk out of it into the dim, mysterious hallways that have been sawed out of the silo concrete.
Outside, I find that Akron is a nest of one-way streets, many without signs. [personal note- wha?! WE HAVE TWO (2) IN THE WHOLE GREATER AREA!] Like Cleveland, less than an hour north, Akron has worked to revitalize a downtown that felt empty in the 1970s and '80s. I can find Canal Park, its Camden Yards-style Minor League Baseball stadium, since it's right on Main Street. And there is a nearby cluster of fixed-up buildings and funky restaurants and nightclubs. I can find those, too.
But beyond this, I drive around and around, and when I land by accident at the National Inventors Hall of Fame, I realize I could have walked: It is two circuitous blocks from the hotel.
I am excited to be in the museum, since I am a basement tinkerer. I've got my own invention ideas. When I ask the ticket clerk if there is anyone who might like to hear about dissolving honey capsules or glow-in-the-dark keys, she just stares. "You could look into a patent attorney," she suggests, although I can detect a smirk.
Constructed in 1995, thanks to a group of local boosters who thought it a perfect match for a city that makes things, the hall is as inside-out as Paris's Pompidou Center. All the pipes and struts are painted red and yellow instead of being hidden from view. This is a palace of technology, so even the circuitry behind the elevator button is visible. I'm expecting an electric shock when I push for the top floor.
No sparks in the elevator, but quite a few up here, where I take in intricate prototypes of inventions, such as the 1868 "Beer Cooler" (Patent No. 85,190) where, as far as I can figure out, beer is supposed to drop in temperature by getting squashed into a network of metal tubes. I'm glad I don't see patents for my honey capsules or glowing keys.
Other floors have profiles of hall inductees: Orville and Wilbur Wright (Patent No. 821,393: "Flying-Machine") and Thomas Edison, whom my great-uncle Harry once worked for, and has an autographed photo and hand-scrawled letter to prove it.
For me, the best part is the wide-open ground floor where kids can work on inventing stuff for themselves. There's a kind of salad bar with plastic rods instead of celery or carrots, and connectors instead of the usual condiments. I ask Tim Haney, who's maybe 8, what he's making.
"It's a house for myself," he says. "It's only for me."
Okay, I say. I don't have a problem with that. I'll build one for myself later on.
I check out an area called Take Apart! where children wearing smocks are expertly unscrewing computer keyboards, printers and VCRs. I ask one of the guides, Dick Kuntzman, if I can bring in my laptop for repair.
"That's fine," says Kuntzman, although he looks worried. "I warn you," he adds. "It might get smashed."
The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton is right by Interstate 77. Easy on, easy off.
A national attraction, the hall doesn't look like it houses history. It's linebacker brick-and-steel. But as soon as I get inside I find myself getting snagged by the earliest shreds of this completely American game.
Maybe you knew that the first football pro was a man named William "Pudge" Heffelfinger who played (and was paid by) an Allegheny, Pa., club in 1892.
I admit I didn't.
And maybe you could have told me why all of these ancient uniforms with lace-up jerseys and leather nose guards are displayed behind glass in Canton and not in Cleveland, let's say, or Chicago.
It's because the National Football League was born here in 1920. Place of birth: the Hupmobile automotive showroom, owned by the manager of the onetime Canton Bulldogs.
The Enshrinement Gallery showcases busts of all 221 players and coaches who have been enshrined here, and it is both moving and remarkably eerie. Thanks to the ultra-low lighting, muscular, mean-looking heads are all around you, looming out of the dark walls and glaring down. "We are the gods of perfect handoffs and touchdown runbacks," they seem to say. "Check out our stats, big guy, and despair." Hall of Famers zoom to life a few steps away at the Game Day Stadium, a cinemascope sound-pumping theater that motors your seat around while projecting a wide-angle reel of wild highlights.
"No smoking, eating, drinking or cheering allowed," orders the sign outside the theater. But the film is so loud and up-close it hits you harder than seeing a game from an actual grandstand. After a minute, we are yelling "crunch" and "ouch," and I hear someone crack open a soda.
I need a hot dog. Where's the beer guy? I'm going to search for a foot-long and a brew right after the show.
Back in downtown Akron, hot dog in hand, I go for a walk in the forest. These are rubber trees formed out of papier-mache, with the taps in their trunks and tin cups for gum. I am in the Goodyear World of Rubber, an ambitious but slightly dusty industrial display.
Anyone who wants can come here (it's at the company's head office). But these days, says the woman who sells souvenirs at the gift shop next door, there is rarely a crowd. Too bad, because although I'm disappointed it doesn't have rubber walls or floors, the displays are unusual and fun.
I pick up a security badge at the entrance to the Goodyear Building and head for Elevator 169, which stops at Rubber World -- and no other floors.
I've got the run of the place, so I can take my time poring over the giant blob of "wild rubber" from the Amazon jungle, the model of the Apollo 14 transporter (which happened to be equipped with Goodyear XLT tires) and the fuselage of a Corsair fighter, which Goodyear built in the early 1940s.
You're not supposed to climb into its cockpit, but since it's open and there's no one else around, I do. Bet I could fly one of these things, I think, taking stock of the simple dials and knobs. That is, if I could see out the front cockpit windscreen, which is badly scratched.
On my way out, I take a close look at a bronze statue of the "father of rubber," Charles Goodyear, who in 1839 invented a process to make the material stronger and weatherproof. Reading a plaque proves that not only was Goodyear tireless in his rubber-strengthening experiments (he tried toasting little chunks of it at home, like marshmallows, and steaming it over a teapot), but he was also committed (eventually he took to "wearing rubber hats and ties"). For months at a time, I read, Goodyear monopolized his wife's oven to slow-bake slabs of gum. And -- this is impressive -- he persuaded his family to eat dinners off rubber plates.
Inspired, I buy a handful of blimp erasers in the Goodyear store, which sell for 18 cents apiece. I ask if there is someone I can talk to about getting a ride on the real, helium-filled thing. No chance, replies the clerk, unless I bid on and win one at a charity auction, or am one of the company's top customers or salesmen.
I cradle the erasers I bought and bring to the cashier a string of blimp-shaped holiday lights to show how interested I am.
No chance.
Rules are rules, Goodyear decides. But if I want to I can visit the airfield. If I hurry, I should be able to catch the blimp -- called "The Spirit of Goodyear" -- up close as it lands in an open field and takes off.
The day is cold but clear, and there is a 4 p.m. flight. I drive like mad into farmland, getting lost and backing up, until I find a sign that says "Goodyear Hunting and Fishing Club" and, underneath, "Blimp Base One."
Mandel to Blimp Base: Am approaching launchpad. Hold on, hold on.
I reach the Goodyear hangar just as the blue-and-gold, shark-shape dirigible floats into view. A couple of spectators and I are right in its path, and we get blackened in the airship's predator shadow.
Unloading the gondola takes seconds. A man flaps an orange windsock that is fat with air. Then, with the hum of the pushing propeller, it takes off again.
The nose of the blimp dips down and up, and we can see its shadow aiming straight for Akron's maze of streets.
The blimp has messages for people below: "Hello," it says in lights that flicker on its giant belly. "Hello from the Goodyear Blimp and Crew."
I am made in Akron, the blimp might say.
Hello from my tough town of invention, and hard tackling, and tires.
Peter Mandel last wrote for Travel on getting a tuxedo and dress made in Bangkok.
-- Peter Mandel
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Hopefully I'll get the film developed and post some pics from the ride here soon...