Airports are good locations to observe folks being themselves.
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“In 2004, Steven Spielberg made an entire movie about the terror of getting stuck for months in an airport,” my colleague Ian Bogost wrote in a current article, “but I might be happy never to leave the new LaGuardia.”
I had the identical feeling flying out from the newly rebuilt LaGuardia Airport in New York City this previous Thanksgiving. “I could spend the day here,” I texted my household as I browsed the costly sweet choices at one store in my terminal. That’s an odd feeling to have about a spot that, as Bogost notes, has lengthy been outlined by how placeless it feels. “Like hotels, conference centers, and shopping malls, they could be distinguished precisely by their indistinctness,” he writes.
The new LaGuardia is attempting to reinvent the airport as a spot that really feels like a spot. But for now, most airports internationally will proceed to be outlined by their lack of distinctness. In half due to that truth, airports are good locations to observe people being human: worrying, speeding, dawdling, arguing, consuming. Then we get on the airplane, and we take a breath—we watch films, we dream, and we sometimes even cry.
Today’s tales discover who we’re once we journey, and what we actually need from the expertise of getting someplace.
On Flying
America Built an Actually Good Airport
LaGuardia is reborn, and it has a message for the nation.
By Ian Bogost
There are Two Types of Airport People
By Amanda Mull
Some vacationers love being late.
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The Guilt-Free Pleasure of Airplane Movies
By Lenika Cruz
Amid the countless tiny indignities of air journey, just one true retreat stays.
Still Curious?
Other Diversions
P.S.
My colleague Amanda Mull’s airport story impressed weeks of passionate debate from each early- and late-arriving vacationers again in 2019—a lot in order that we rounded up a group of reader replies.
One reader seemed like they won’t even want a rebuilt LaGuardia: “Airports are fun … Why hang around that extra hour in the hotel or at home when you can sit in an airport, nursing a beer and watching the planes go by?”
— Isabel