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For sale: Two unused Indy show cars and 1,100 Jersey barriers, also never used
By adamg on Tue, 09/06/2016 - 9:07pm
For the right price, this could be yours.
Here's your chance to play Grand Prix: A federal bankruptcy trustee is auctioning off the remains of the South Boston grand prix that never was. Up for bid: Two "Dallara Indy Car Show Cars," the trailers to haul them in and 1,100 Jersey barriers, each with 16 bolts on top to mount, and, bonus, three circular steel cables on each side.
NOTE: Before bidding on the barriers, make sure you can prove to Massport, on whose land the things now sit, that you have the wherewithal to remove them - including insurance. Also, if you want to buy the whole set, you'll obviously need some land on which to create a race tracks, presumably far, far away from Fort Point.
The auction is tomorrow at noon in Holbrook, so time's running out.
H/t Titanium Cranium.
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Comments
Vroomarium?
A closed system of cars constructed out of barriers. Set up the cars with driverless tech and let them drive around in the Vroomarium.
Herb Chambers a likely bidder on the cars
Dealership showpiece as a business expense.
If you wanted actually drive these cars, note they don't come with an engine or transmission, and those ain't cheap. These are "rollers".
A budding Hemingway
I see what you did there.
Cod and cows
How about one of those paint the whatever charity things. Buy up the barriers, have artists paint them and then people can bid on them. Imagine having your own custom jersey barrier in your driveway with a Boston skyline, swan boats or whatevah painted on it. My problem is I'd need a driveway!
The Berlin Wall got painted extensively
Has anyone let Mexico or Israel know of the auction so they can use the slabs to build walls?
Perfect idea
Let's build the wall, but only 2' high. It's symbolic anyways, right?
"Jersey" barriers
Back when the T was digging up Harvard Square to extend the Red Lint to Alewife (circa 1979-1984), they had local artists paint cows on the concrete barriers, in honor of the Jersey breed of milk cow. (The barriers themselves are named after the state of New Jersey, which was first to use them in the U.S.) If I recall, there were two cows on each side of each barrier, all in different colors, all facing the same direction. But they weren't used as a fundraising opportunity, like the sculptures that have become the rage since then.
For a few years after that, you might see barriers with fading cows on them pop up at construction sites around the area, as the barriers got reused.
Memories of those cow barriers make me reminisce for the good old days in Harvard Square when we only had to watch out for construction, not for the awful news that UHub's been reporting out of the square in the past week.
I'm not sure if the Indycar barriers are true "Jersey barriers" since supposedly they're bigger and specially designed for races, not for normal roads or construction areas. Maybe we'll have to come up with another breed of cow for them.
Please remember
-Marty and BGP began selling tickets for Indycar, knowing that they didn't have all of the necessary permits to pull off the race.
-Marty's campaign advisor, Chris Keohan, ran Boston Grand Prix and had a stake in Indycar.
As much as the Herald is loathed, Joe Battenfeld has done good, honest reporting on Indy and BGP
Tax dollars wasted
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/joe_battenfeld/2016/09/batte...
also don't forget to mention
also don't forget to mention that childhood cancer rates skyrocket within 100 miles of a visible indycar, and that the engine noise causes trees to die and milk to spoil in you refrigerators. Let us never forget even for a moment the local and regional nightmare we narrowly avoided, and at every mention of the words "Boston", "grand" and "prix", remind ourselves of the calamity that nearly befell us we're it not for the civic minded lawyers and newspaper columnists operating solely out of their selfless desire to serve the people and certainly not for any individual benefit whatsoever (unlike our greedy politicians, eh?)
Please clarify
If this is such a no brainer of a good idea, why did the whole thing fall apart when the city decided not to give them a blank check to backstop any cost issues?
Red Bull Flugtag seemed to have gone off ok in spite of the usual security theater nonsense. The Head of the Charles and Boston marathon are fine - let's not pretend that we have to green light any impactful proposal that comes into town.
Time management issues
Hey A Bone to Pick - Aren't you suppose to be working on Marty's next "time." Get back to work and stop carrying his water on the Universal Hub.
Grand Prix of Boston... what
Grand Prix of Boston... what a joke. Hope people who bought tickets get their money back. After the Boston Olympics 2020 debacle you would have thought that elected officials and the suburbanites who write propraganda for the Globe would have learned. Boston is a small city that was built a long time ago and we're not set up for such events. Beach volleyball on the historic Boston Common? Cars racing at absurdly high speeds on narrow residential streets? Not such bright ideas.