Honda Accord junket set for Boston, on decaying pile of garbage
Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor has a name it has truly earned. During a hundred-year-span, a list of its illustrious tenants includes a brothel, a horse rendering plant, a grease reclamation plant, and then tons and tons of Boston garbage dumped there over thirty years. The dumping ended when an entire bulldozer disappeared into the muck. When the city decided to stop dumping, the only thing that happened on the island was the seepage of "thousands of gallons of eroding material into the surrounding water..." A long way from the Tea Party, eh?
That's good enough for Honda, though. The company is hosting its 2008 Accord junket in Boston and on the island. It's a novel choice -- for the obvious reason -- but also because, as the invited NY Times writer mentions, Boston is so ... pedestrian, shall we say ... compared to the usual locales that host such events, which usually feature far more pina coladas than potholes. Good on you, Honda, and good luck to you, Mr. Dyer.
(FYI, Spectacle looks all right for what was recently a rotting heap of compost. After spending what must have been entire landmasses of money, Spectacle now houses "a 120-acre park, with a new pier, marina, a visitor center, two public beaches, and five miles of walking trails.")
[Source: New York Times]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jason 6:51PM (6/27/2007)
Way to make it sound like Honda chose a big garbage island on its own, and then basically call Honda garbage.
If you actually take time to read the article, it says that Honda requested the event be in Boston, and then the City of Boston told Honda where it could hold the event - said "garbage island."
I can't see execs at Honda saying "Oh look, a huge stinky pile of garbage - what better place to show off our new Accord than this!" I love reading "news" like this on Autoblog... way to attempt a cheap shot by distorting facts. I don't know why I even read this site anymore.
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jgp 8:11PM (6/27/2007)
New drinking game: for every comment to this article calling the Accord a "decaying pile of garbage", take a shot.
We'll all be smashed in five hours.
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Stoneman 8:37PM (6/27/2007)
ok..........I'll say it........who gives a rotting pile of garbage.
Stoneman
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RockStoneSteel 10:01PM (6/27/2007)
So selection of that island was "a novel choice ...for an obvious reason". Huh? I'm not getting the "obvious" part.
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Dustin 11:04PM (6/27/2007)
I realize it's funny to take pot-shots, but Spectacle Island is actually very beautiful. It has several miles of hiking and biking trails, a visitor center with exhibits, and a swimming beach, and is being returned to the public for recreation as a park is constructed over the landfill. They used mass amounts of clay and dirt from the Big Dig to resurface it.
Not a bad choice at the moment. Fifteen years ago, it would have been.
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thefultonhow 11:16PM (6/27/2007)
Spectacle Island was covered up by dirt from the Big Dig. All the garbage and toxic waste is hermetically sealed under an impermeable cap. The island is now actually quite nice -- no worse than most of the rest of Boston harbor, almost all of which was built on landfill at some point. http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap_1890.htm shows where landfill was added to the Boston coastline throughout its history.
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Barney 12:48AM (6/28/2007)
That's pretty interesting. " Nine train cars loads of gravel arrived every 45 minutes, day and night for nearly fifty years. "
Incredible and I can imagine the locals missed the sounds of those railcars. The Dutch may have had the better idea but not a secure from the sea.
Frogwhistle 12:38AM (6/28/2007)
So, as I understand it, we're to have hot laps in '08 press fleet/beater Accords on the five mile walking path turned in by wined n' dined automotive writers, with the possibility of someone going off-course and finding a soft spot in the ground cover that leads down to the lost bulldozer?
Spectacle Island, indeed. Any chance they're selling tickets to see this?
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Matt 1:37PM (6/28/2007)
Honda + "decaying pile of garbage" = match made in heaven.
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far jr 9:43PM (6/28/2007)
Perhaps there will be a methane powered Accord model to show that cars truely can run on garbage now days!
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Xavier 5:35PM (6/29/2007)
The driving was not on Spectacle Island. They had dinner there ONE night. I'm sure they had lunch and dinner at several other restaurants too. You've got to admit that dinner on an island is an interesting thing to do vs. taking a bus to another restaurant. The island is nice now, including an almost brand new visitor center and miles of hiking paths. It's funny that Ezra wrote this somewhat critical sounding article before he even had the opportunity to go to the event. I wonder if he chose to go afterall?
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