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Where the Rubber Hits the Road

This line intrigued me from Greg Grandin’s superb Fordlandia, about Henry Ford’s quest — almost Herzogian — to build a clean-living, soy-eating company town in the Amazon, a sort of subtropical Pullman:

“Manaus is famous for its hulking Amazonas Theater, an opera house built of Italian marble and surrounded by roads made of rubber so the carriage clatter of late arrivals wouldn’t interrupt the voices of Europe’s best tenors and sopranos.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Etc., Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Where the Rubber Hits the Road”

  1. Pete Says:
    January 8th, 2010 at 7:27 pm

    In Leeds, UK, just outside the railway station, there is a section of hotel juts out over the exit road from the bus/car pick up point. it’s tiled with rubber for the same reason, to reduce traffic noise.

    Been like that since I was a child over 25 years ago, and is still like that today.

    Old ideas never go away I guess.

    Next time I am there I will try to get pictures.

  2. Kevin Love Says:
    January 9th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    What about altos and bases!

    It is only in Church music that we get any respect. Traditionally in Passions, Pilate is a tenor and Jesus a base.

  3. s Says:
    January 9th, 2010 at 3:52 pm

    If Jesus is the base then who’s the bass?

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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