Literature
I've just returned to Michigan from Bozeman, Montana, where I revisited the airport I worked at over ten years ago. So much was the same, and yet there were also innumerable differences everywhere. I was there to observe and write, and I spent several hours wandering around taking pictures, jotting down notes. I met with the Airport Director Brian Sprenger, and he talked to me about recent trends and challenges; then he gave me a tour, focusing specifically on the major expansion and redesign of a few years ago. I was particularly excited to see the new high-tech baggage makeup area behind the check-in counters, with its overhead conveyors and multiple drop-points. When I worked at the airport, moving baggage around was a pretty ad-hoc endeavor?at least compared to the new system.
What struck me almost immediately upon my arrival was the indifference of the airport. It's just an airport doing its job, moving people in and out of the state?just like it always has, cooly accepting eager fly fishermen and crisp cowboys (I'm using the masculine here on purpose), and then a few days later spiriting these same forlorn souls away in tightly packed tubes.
And yet...there are things going on here that are not only unique to Bozeman, but which are indicative of broader currents and snags in the culture of flight. I'm writing about these things as a way to conclude my book The End of Airports, which sweeps from my own ethnography of the airport in 2001-2003, to more current episodes and dilemmas that riddle air travel.
My tagline for this book is that I'm not writing an obituary for airports, but more like a mystery. What are these gray places we pass through, only always to leave behind in our minds? What makes these concentrated nodes of hubris and gaudiness at once so remarkable and so forgettable? How do we inhabit their ambiguous boundaries? Where do airports begin, and where do they end? How does air travel fit into our era of 'new media', where things move so much faster than the speed of planes?
- Obligatory Blog Update
summer home Twitter feels more and more useful as a place to write/think/connect, but I still feel the need to update this blog from time to time. So, out of a strange sense of archival obligation, here's what I've been up to lately: I'm back...
- Airport (as) Art
Airport (as) Art, Louis Armstrong International Joe Sharkey gave my book a kind mention in his column in The New York Times today, "Handy Travel Tips From Those in the Know." Joe had asked me to contribute "an actually useful air travel tip" for this...
- Pam Houston, Airplane Reader
It was in late 2003 or early 2004 when I first met Pam Houston. We were on an early morning airport run from Davis, CA to the Sacramento airport. To get from Davis to the airport, you have to hurtle across a spindly causeway that spans the swollen lowlands...
- On Airport Food
I'm quoted in an article on airport food in The New York Times this week. When Joe Sharkey originally asked me the two questions?1. Do you have a strategy for dining in airports? and 2. From your perspective how has the airport dining experience changed...
- T-rex In The Baggage Claim; Flies On Your Body
My good friend Greg Keeler just sent me some pictures that he took in the Bozeman airport, around the baggage claim. This one made me pause: What is that T-Rex doing in the baggage claim? The easy answer: Jack Horner is a local. But on another level,...
Literature
Revisiting Bozeman
I've just returned to Michigan from Bozeman, Montana, where I revisited the airport I worked at over ten years ago. So much was the same, and yet there were also innumerable differences everywhere. I was there to observe and write, and I spent several hours wandering around taking pictures, jotting down notes. I met with the Airport Director Brian Sprenger, and he talked to me about recent trends and challenges; then he gave me a tour, focusing specifically on the major expansion and redesign of a few years ago. I was particularly excited to see the new high-tech baggage makeup area behind the check-in counters, with its overhead conveyors and multiple drop-points. When I worked at the airport, moving baggage around was a pretty ad-hoc endeavor?at least compared to the new system.
It was an emotionally intense trip (for reasons that I won't get into here), and strange if also invigorating to see the airport, 'my' airport, this relatively minor travel site that has been somewhat major for me, this place I've written about and thought about so much over the past several years.
What struck me almost immediately upon my arrival was the indifference of the airport. It's just an airport doing its job, moving people in and out of the state?just like it always has, cooly accepting eager fly fishermen and crisp cowboys (I'm using the masculine here on purpose), and then a few days later spiriting these same forlorn souls away in tightly packed tubes.
And yet...there are things going on here that are not only unique to Bozeman, but which are indicative of broader currents and snags in the culture of flight. I'm writing about these things as a way to conclude my book The End of Airports, which sweeps from my own ethnography of the airport in 2001-2003, to more current episodes and dilemmas that riddle air travel.
My tagline for this book is that I'm not writing an obituary for airports, but more like a mystery. What are these gray places we pass through, only always to leave behind in our minds? What makes these concentrated nodes of hubris and gaudiness at once so remarkable and so forgettable? How do we inhabit their ambiguous boundaries? Where do airports begin, and where do they end? How does air travel fit into our era of 'new media', where things move so much faster than the speed of planes?
- Obligatory Blog Update
summer home Twitter feels more and more useful as a place to write/think/connect, but I still feel the need to update this blog from time to time. So, out of a strange sense of archival obligation, here's what I've been up to lately: I'm back...
- Airport (as) Art
Airport (as) Art, Louis Armstrong International Joe Sharkey gave my book a kind mention in his column in The New York Times today, "Handy Travel Tips From Those in the Know." Joe had asked me to contribute "an actually useful air travel tip" for this...
- Pam Houston, Airplane Reader
It was in late 2003 or early 2004 when I first met Pam Houston. We were on an early morning airport run from Davis, CA to the Sacramento airport. To get from Davis to the airport, you have to hurtle across a spindly causeway that spans the swollen lowlands...
- On Airport Food
I'm quoted in an article on airport food in The New York Times this week. When Joe Sharkey originally asked me the two questions?1. Do you have a strategy for dining in airports? and 2. From your perspective how has the airport dining experience changed...
- T-rex In The Baggage Claim; Flies On Your Body
My good friend Greg Keeler just sent me some pictures that he took in the Bozeman airport, around the baggage claim. This one made me pause: What is that T-Rex doing in the baggage claim? The easy answer: Jack Horner is a local. But on another level,...