the.com/gondola
a 500-year-old water Cadillac, hand-built asymmetrically so one guy rowing won't spin in circles.
means A long, narrow, flat-bottomed boat with high pointed ends, propelled by a single standing oarsman, traditionally used on the canals of Venice — and by extension the hanging cabin slung beneath a cable car or balloon.
from From Venetian Italian gondola, attested since the medieval period, of uncertain deeper origin — one guess traces it to Greek kondy (a drinking vessel) or to a Latin diminutive, but honestly nobody is sure. The word stayed local to Venice for centuries before sailing out into other languages; English borrowed it in the late 1500s. The cable-car and balloon senses came much later, by obvious likeness: a sleek slung container carrying passengers along a fixed line.
- crooked by design
- Left side curves wider to offset the single oarsman
- all black
- A 1562 law banned flashy colors to curb showoffs
- 282 parts
- Each is built from eight different woods
- rare craft
- Only a handful of squeri still make them
- steep tariff
- A real one costs around 30,000 euros
grand canal venice — iconic flat-bottomed boat used for transportation on venice's main waterway since the 12th century
peak 2 peak whistler — aerial tramway connecting whistler and blackcomb mountains in british columbia, opened 2008
roosevelt island tramway — cable car gondola spanning the east river between manhattan and roosevelt island since 1976