Who likes to play The "_____ is my least favorite place in New York," Game? Ooh! I do! Who answered “Times Square?”
Ordinarily, you’d be right. But this week, I’m anointing a new winner. Someplace far worse than Times Square before the curtains go up on Broadway. Worse than Herald Square, you know, ever. Worse than Union Square on a Saturday night when they’re giving away free Palestine.
My friends, the American Airlines Terminal at JFK is a far greater blight on these five boroughs than any of the aforementioned squares could ever be. It has all the elements of a least-favorite place: filth, crowds of slow-moving people and construction that is never complete. But it also has frequent unintelligible announcements on a PA system, tiny baggage claim areas (to which the baggage is delivered from the plane bucket-brigade-style, it would seem), check-in lines that can stretch out of the door, customs lines choked with luggage carts and families rummaging for passports, and people who have just spent extended time in a confined space dining on Snack Packs and subjected to SEVERAL HOURS of “Everybody Loves Raymond” (related: how American’s many passengers have not committed ritual suicide at 30,000 feet due to said “food” and “entertainment” is a miracle).
So, congratulations American Airlines Terminal at JFK. Because of you, I walked serenely through Herald Square’s rush-hour scrum. I could probably survive Times Square without entertaining homicidal thoughts. I might even accept a leaflet in Union Square.
If the lackadaisical manner with which the airline itself under-achieves in delivering actual service for way too much money is any indication, you are looking a long tenure as the place in this city that inspires in me an acute visceral dread. Bravo.
image from vittiphoto.com
4 comments:
i mean, i believe you. but i don't know if that makes it ok to stroll through harold square without a care in the world. which is what you did on tuesday. i guess everything is relative.
Wait, are you hating on Everyone Loves Raymond ??!!
I'm afraid so, Cupcake. That show, especially when you can't escape at 30k feet, is a torture the likes of which were last found in Dante's Inferno.
How they managed to find so many actors with incredibly grating voices to do the same sitcom is almost impressive.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, I can't say I find it side-splittingly funny. I know I'm pretty much in the minority with my hating, but there it is.
That show blows. It's so "red state." Like Fox News and hating women.
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