7 pm, Sunday night
Missed the last quarter of the much-hyped Patriots/Colts game to haul my ass down to O’hare and check in for my flight to Sao Paulo. Given my Muslim name, perpetually disheveled appearance, and the curious collection of stamps in my passport, I’ve discovered in recent years that I’m on some kind of national security watch list. It hasn’t yet caused me any problems, beyond the folks at every airline check-in desk cross-referencing my records each time I fly, and asking me a few pointed questions about my destination & reason for traveling. They also refuse to let me check in without seeing an airline representative. I’m OK with all that, at least I’m not on the “No-Fly-List”, the only trouble it causes me is I have to plan an extra hour into my travel time just in case, and occasionally I’ll miss the ending of a fabulous football game, like tonight. Sigh.
Anyhow. While passing through security, it occurred to me that the O’hare experience is the great equalizer for anyone traveling through the USA, it’s a shitty limbo that offers travelers of all stripes a burocratic nightmare to navigate as they try to get where they’re going. It’s always clogged full of disgruntled passengers en route elsewhere, the layout is neither intuitive nor particularly efficient, and it exudes a certain world-weariness that never fails to leave me feeling drained. There are airports in the world that are actually pleasant to visit, that you get excited about passing through, like Singapore’s Changi Airport, a place that actually people visit in their spare time for kicks. That’s an example of an ergonomic space that feels like a triumph of design and grace, that it makes every other airport I’ve been through feel cluttered, congested, and somewhat hostile. O’hare’s a behemoth like no other, though, a sprawling nightmare that poorly reflects on the city of Chicago, and manages to be an affront to its neighbors because of its perpetually threatened expansion, that would destroy people’s homes and replace them with runways. It manages to give everyone who passes through it a surreal kafka-esque experience, that resembles being trapped in some kind of strange, weirdly-lit purgatory while awaiting deliverance. But at least it works, I can’t complain too much. Zia International in Dhaka and the airports in Calcutta and Karachi, at least through the early 90’s, were at entirely other levels of dysfunction, but they’re in a different class because they’re in developing countries. Lagos in Nigeria is supposed to be the worst in the world… I sound like quite the airport snob, but hell, I’m stuck in airport limbo for 20 hours till I get to my destination, and have nothing else to write about at the moment…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
hmmm. on my way to oberlin for the first time, swiss-brazilian eighteen year old from caracas on his way to harkness neverland, a major storm grounded me in o'hare. i had to spend the night. i was excited as hell to get to my destination, but exhausted from endless farewell rituals. thinking i could pass the night away with some more rituals, i got a coke from a vending machine and walked over to one of the many airport building entrances. a few feet away from it, by the pavement where travellers, workers, authorities, taxsi and busses, in busier times of the day, sketch a tireless beehive, i sat. i poured out some coke and, in its place, poured in some rum from one of the three bottles i brought from caracas. busted out the drum and started playing, softly at first, but vigorously as the intoxication settled. there was nobody around but the occasional security car that crawled by, suspiciously. none ever stopped to check me out more closely. after the third drive by, i decided the fourth was it, so i ditched the rum and coke and took off, hid in a bathroom stall for a half hour feeling persecuted, then finally fell asleep on some random floor corner of the airport. I got to oberlin hung-over the next day. and that's my o'hare story.
Post a Comment