Tuesday, March 03, 2009

At Least We Were Spared the Blue Mustang


I don't know about all you gentle blog readers, but I really can't bring myself to like the new airport at FAI. I miss the funky building of questionable provenance, and the dusty plane, the scruffy taxidermy, and the colorful flags from all the Interior tribes.

Every time I disembark from an Alaska Airlines jet ('coz when I fly bush with Frontier, I still get to go out of the last vestige of the former airport), I miss the old place so much it hurts. For some oddball reason - maybe for the same reason why I still like landing on gravel strips with no outbuildings and a cluster of snow machines waiting to pick up freight and people - exiting a jet way into the drab, worn upstairs of the old terminal was just coming home. Now it could be in a terminal anywhere in the Lower 48.

There is no funk or eccentricity, it's all laminate, sparkle and faux granite. I am not sure what the orange vestibules on the outside of the building are supposed to be, but to me, they just look like an architect's rendering of the ubiquitous ATCO unit. The worst part about the new airport is that in its effort to look modern and hip and polish, it kinda flops - and it just seems even more outre than it did before.

But hey, it could be so much worse. We could exit the orange cubicles to a Blue Moose with crazy eyes.

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