When it comes to a tire’s structure, they are a little like a chocolate truffle. A perfectly round swirl, with a talent for rotating. And even to this day, with all the talk about circles and pi and 3.14; I still don’t understand how to quickly calculate pi down to the nearest quadrillionth… If it is an irrational number and you cannot come up with any true whole number for the circumference, and no true whole number for the diameter in order to simply divide C / D and get pi… Well!?! If it just cannot be done that easily… I‘m not sure if I like that or not. But I like tires. Now, what is 22 divided by 7 again?
The paradoxically fascinating and ubiquitous tire. They roll along without a care in the world, spinning around looking the same at all angles. Just perfect, wouldn’t you agree? As pretty much EVERYONE knows, the Olympic symbol is made up of five interlinked tires; representing the 5 major tire companies. And I like that. I’ve never fully understood why Asian tires and European tires are divided into separate continents. Blue, yellow, black, green, and red rings. Not sure if they assigned colored tires for each region, but if folks start populating Antarctica in anticipation of Al Gores apocalyptic vision; I’d give them a 6th white-wall Goodyear tire.
Ah, good ol’ Charles Goodyear. Back in 1839, some say he accidentally spilled some melted rubber on a stove; inadvertently mixing it with sulfur and hokey smoke, he came up with a vulcanizing process in which the rubber can be molded and not melt at high temps or become brittle at low temps. The process is very similar to this day I do believe. Just like mixin’ the chocolate.
With such a variety of tires to choose from -- earthy, roasted look with hints of chocolate liquor and bonbons. It’s like choosing chocolate - looking for the complex blends in each bite; fine tires and chocolate offer not only a wonderful experience, but the opportunity to develop true connoisseurship. Some want to go with showy wrappers and rims with slim Kit Kat racing tires. Others are more pragmatic and just go for the thick Three Musketeer radial.
I’m jealous of Tires Plus guys; they know all the secrets behind the enigmatic tire. Tires Plus employees get to smell that rubber and smack it around, take it off the shelf and bounce it, rolling it down the aisle to their pals -- every day ‘til the whistle blows. Some guys have all the luck.
Choosing a tire shop is like shopping for a favorite pair of jeans.
Can you image all the different tire brands? There are Cooper Tires, Pirelli Tires, Dunlop Tires, Continental Tires, Goodyear Tires, Michelin Tires, Bridgestone and the much less ballyhooed Chinese manufactured Ling Long tire.
Oh me, oh my, all I see is The European Truffle, The Swiss Truffle, The American Truffle and The Canadian Truffle. Harvey Truffles, Chocolate balls filled with café when I eye up those tires.
I couldn’t help but stop at a Tire Shop recently in PR. It was called Popeye’s Tires. I loved the way the tires were “displayed” and I ached to invite a flock of Midwestern tire elitists to have a gander. Down here they don’t give a rat’s bottom about winter, snow and ice traction and rotating tires. How inane! All that matters is that you have a dripping wet coat of tire wax, shiny rims and 20 speakers blaring Celia Cruz salsa.
Perhaps on the U.S. East Coast or over in Wayzata, there is a Porsche club that would have a subsidiary tire branch. At this level of snootery, it is hard to differentiate where art, form and function cross over. At the Tire / Art Gallery, the snobs (of course) would be wearing the black turtle necks with checkered flag border around the collar. The wearing of the tight black turtlenecks is especially snobby - no matter what temperature it is. Then you throw in the heavy scent of musk cologne, the late 80s Don Johnson 3 day old beard, and voila… tire snob. “ I mean REALLY, I just CANNOT be seen in this pedestrian Pirelli P215/70R14! C’mon!!!”
Have you also noticed when a true historian is speaking - they speak cautiously about the Tire/Art genre while stroking their beard and swirling their scotch? The Tire/Art Snob will speak as if they’ve been ordained by some Cardinal of Le Mans in NW France. After the second glass of overpriced red wine from the nearby Tire/Art wine bar; they become an authority on red wine as well.
Without a doubt, it will be declared, by the Wayzata Snob, that they have been to the Woodbury Tire Shop and were DREADFULLY bored at such a passe lineup.
Watch out too for the glazed look (like when you tell your 16 year old that you‘re instituting a Board Game Night!). When I look at Tires in plain admiration, a Tire / Art Snob would sigh with blunted affect and grouse, “Too much tread movement -- and that exaggerated white wall was sooooo 70s -- it gave me a Nixonian shiver!”
I collect a few tires here and there. I’ve lots of dreams and plans for them. I use them as ice buckets, we have made swings, created sandboxes, made tunnels and used them as bumper braces. Albeit, you have to be careful here and not run aground into hillbilly folly; arising the ire of your neighbors. But subtlety in all things.
I’ve noticed on the play grounds, crumb rubber (also called ground rubber) is being widely used in place of wood chips (I guess that, once the temps rise to 95*, in a truly stinky way, this is sorta of a way for local county boards to feel that, “hey, weez goin‘ green” or black). I believe the rubber is chopped into small pieces and the metal is removed in some process. Or one can hope. My husband says that the military has also been using them in the hand to hand combat practice pits for years as well. He also mentions the basic training endurance drill of flipping over tractor tires across a muddy field. Ahhh, who needs an X-Box when there’s a drill sergeant around.
I’m going to throw an egg on the rubber playgrounds just to see if it provides shock absorption. I heard it costs more, but doesn’t require maintenance & upkeep. Yet, you wouldn‘t dare ask a tire / art snob such moronic tid bits of tire / pop culture. Truly, it is beneath them.
Floor mats, basketball courts, new shoe products and wheel stops are being made too from recycled tire rubber - I like the new uses and markets cropping up using scrap tires. Otherwise those tires would just be thrown in the landfills or like at the Springfield Tire Yard, where they just burn ‘em.
Now, go kick a tire. It’s a work of art.
