All air travel is the drizzling shits no matter the locale, but America has seemingly taken it upon itself to turn travelling via plane into an unholy endurance sport thanks to the crapulent wonders that are US airports.
[jwplayer ZiRcgTaN]
Perhaps it’s due to lingering Catholic guilt, or perhaps all civil engineers are secretly super into BDSM. Whatever the case, all US airports have been expertly designed to make people miss flights and hopelessly trap them in their labyrinthine abysses.
Having travelled mildly extensively throughout the United States, I have endured more than my fair share of piss-awful Seppo plane holes. I have been felt up and down by TSA agents. I have imposed the sheer pong of my removed keds onto hundreds of innocent nostrils. I have marvelled at the American peoples’ unbridled thirst for overhead storage space a hundred times over.
I have seen the absolute worst and the not-quite-as-worst that US airports have to offer. And in that regard allow me – a 6’4″ economy class veteran who flies into a murderous rage anytime someone so much as breathes on the recline button in the seat in front of me – to impart my very extensive Travel Man™ knowledge by ranking the US airports that I have been to based purely on how much enduring them made me want to suck the rigid dick off a beer bong full of brake fluid.
For god’s sake, please note: This isn’t a ranking of all the US airports. It’s just the ones I’ve been to. I cannot stress that enough. If it ain’t on the list, I haven’t been to it yet, baby!!
18) Hartsfield-Jackson International, Atlanta GA
Stepping through the threshold of Atlanta’s chief airport is like being hauled into the maw of Satan’s anus, balls-first. There is no facility on Earth more closely resembling the Biblical descriptions of Hell than ATL. It is a complicated, convoluted, unfathomable mess, every crevice of which stands as indisputable evidence that God exists and he fucking hates you. Transiting through it without wishing fiery death on a single other human being should be considered a religious miracle worthy of Sainthood.
17) Los Angeles International, Los Angeles CA
LAX is the gateway to America in the sense that it’s the least important part of it and should be immediately forgotten once you pass through. The most-common Port of Call for Australians travelling to the US is also one of its worst because of all the Australians in it at any one time. You simply cannot gain a true understanding of how godawful the Australian accent is until you hear two strangers, both somehow from the same street in Narre Warren, comparing Duty Free purchases while lining up for QF2 1 hour and 28 minutes before boarding starts. “Whaddidyouuuu get I got a bottlah Malahboooooooooo.” Sounds like two dogs fighting over a dying accordion. Fucken no thank you.
16) John F. Kennedy International, New York City NY
Completing the Unholy Triumvirate of shithouse US airports is New York City’s main flight hole: a bottomless filth pit located 7,000 miles away from any other place in the city whose only saving grace is the game of Russian Roulette it lets you play where you might get lucky and score a flight departing from the one terminal out of its 40,000 that has a Shake Shack. Should you lose, which you will, the food options are wound back to a choice of “farty sandwich” from a storefront modelled after a prison cafeteria, or “fried colon glue” from an in-terminal Tiki Bar that looks like a darkest-timeline Jimmy Buffet got heaps into booger sugar and murder.
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15) Orlando International, Orlando FL
A perfectly fine and functional International Airport that just so happens to suck stiff dog shit because it’s in Florida.
14) Tampa International, Tampa FL
Tampa, much like Orlando, is a deadshit nothing town inhabited by bipedal lizards with boiled brains all named Daryl and Sheila. Unlike Orlando though it is on the coast of Florida where death at the age of 35 via a hurricane storm surge bashing you off your Ted Nugent-branded ATV and into the jaws of an alligator is an available option. Which is the entire point of Florida.
13) Green Bay-Austin Straubel International, Green Bay WI
Had to pay $5 for a warm bottle of water which I promptly pissed out when the A4 sheet of paper-sized plane that flew me out of there lurched violently after takeoff like the dickhead pilot was steering with a PlayStation controller. Drive there instead.
12) San Diego International, San Diego CA
San Diego has an airport. It’s fine.
11) McCarren International, Las Vegas NV
The main Las Vegas Airport that only common plebs like you and I are able to access has slot machines in it. Actual, no fooling slot machines. Miss your flight? Piss away tomorrow’s travel budget by chucking a greenback up the fruit machine. It’s kinda like the gun section at a Wal Mart: Really funny in theory until you’re actually looking at it. Then it gets real depressing, real fast.
10) Gainesville Regional, Gainesville FL
A pleasant and charmingly tiny airport in the heart of central Florida that pays homage to the region’s punk rock roots by having a rocking chair (yes) bear the name of Less Than Jake (yes). Its only glaring fault is that it’s in Gainesville, Florida: a town which no normal human should ever have a legitimate reason to go to.
9) LaGuardia, New York City NY
LaGuardia maintains a rare combination of being the genius choice for anyone travelling to New York City who wishes to avoid the massive crowds and absurd travel distances of JFK or Newark, while also scaring the ever-loving piss out of countless nervous flyers by making approaching planes pass roughly 2mm over the top of a nearby baseball stadium.
8) O’Hare International, Chicago IL
I once got an $8 chicken salad drenched in bleu cheese dressing that only kinda tasted like rubber at 10pm in the bowels of O’Hare, and I didn’t immediately and violently shit the crotch out of my pants. There’s no way you can chalk that up as anything other than a win.
7) San Francisco International, San Francisco CA
SFO. Incredibly easy to get to. Services a much nicer city than Los Angeles (toilet town). Can still fly there direct from Australia. Also once spent a four-hour layover in the international terminal where there’s enough seating for about half a person and a Duty Free store stocked only with the combined dregs of every other Duty Free store known to man. We’re talking like… a dusty bottle of unbranded vodka that’s somehow both blue and green, and maybe an already-opened bag of Reece’s Pieces. It’s infinitely better than LAX though. So you take the good with the bad.
6) Daniel K. Inouye International, Honolulu HI
An airport on a tiny speck of land in the literal middle of the ocean where they suddenly realised mid-build that they didn’t have to impress anyone and therefore decided that windows could kiss their Hawaiian ass, leaving the whole dang thing largely open-aired. Make the tourists sweat, who gives a shit. It’s an almighty flex, and it must be respected.
5) George Bush Intercontinental, Houston TX
After 30-hours of sleepless flying prior to arriving, the only things I remember about being in Houston’s airport are staring at a bar menu listing for something called “mac and cheese wings” for 30 minutes and spending US$24 on a calendar titled “Nice Jewish Boys.” Despite this, I somehow remained awake and alert enough to make my connecting flight on time, meaning IAH is the magic place where angels live.
4) Seattle-Tacoma International, Seattle WA
Sea-Tac kicks ass. It slaps. It absolutely whips sack. The main airport of America’s Pacific North-West has everything a walking Dagwood Dog like me could possibly ever want: Craft beer bars in every terminal serving gigantic farty IPAs, hot meaty sandwiches as far as the eye can see, Seattle-area grunge memorabilia lining the walls, live people strumming gentle acoustic tunes instead of a tinny airport radio, and a plentifully stocked Sub-Pop Records retail store. Spending any longer than 5 minutes in there causes you to spontaneously sprout a lumberjack beard, a flannel shirt, and a ripping case of gout.
3) Portland International, Portland OR
As close to “actually comfortable” as any of the US airports gets with a plethora of good-ass drinking options. Because you can goddamned guarantee there are two things a city full of rich ageing hipster fucks excel at: Sitting down and getting hammered. Bitch about grey-bearded bald men on fixies clogging up traffic all you want. But you cannot deny the town knows its way around a froth and a cushion.
2) Minneapolis-Saint Paul International, Minneapolis MN
It’s heavingly enormous, it has more free WiFi than you can shake a stick at, and in the early mornings it is mythically quiet. Sure, there are far more functional US airports. Sure, there are US airports whose corridors don’t look like the default setting on an Office Building Simulator. And sure, Minneapolis is buried under 80 feet of snow at all times and is inhabited by a race of boorish Yetis, look it up (do not look it up). But riddle me this: How many other airports in America have a bizarrely pokey arcade whose name is also the business end of one of the all-time great Simpsons gags?
https://www.instagram.com/p/vL-IPfGrsh/
None. There are none other.
1) Denver International, Denver CO
Denver International Airport is, without question, the most badass and metal of all the US airports. Not only will visiting DEN get you to where you need to go, but the place is a hub for conspiracy theorists. Sound insane? Trust me, it is.
The terminal itself is home to several murals in the baggage claim area that respected scholars* swear black-and-blue are evidence of a one-world government and the New World Order. Then there’s the conspiracy that asserts the entire airport is a front for a Stonemason-lead Illuminati headquarters which is housed in a facility in the ground deep beneath the place, which services a series of underground tunnels. Then there’s the casual little fact that the airport is guarded by a demonic, large-cocked horse statue called Blucifer that stands 10-metres tall, has eyes that glow fiery orange at night, and managed to actually kill its creator.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpnXmhoDNZ0/
Denver Airport über alles.
