All these positive reviews? Huh. Well, people give Southwest's cockroach-infested planes high marks, too, so it's all a matter of taste I suppose. No, this a not a place you want to find yourself after 9pm. Nor before 9pm. I'd heard bad things from friends who fly through here frequently, but I was still disappointed.\n\nMy flight arrives at 9:15 or so, and I'm already unhappy because a poor corporate travel agent didn't tell me that \"direct\" flights are not always \"non-stop\" flights and that while I had only one plane to SFO, I had to get off it at least once during the return. So I arrive and deplane so they can move the Airbus to another gate (?), and since there's a 90 minute layover, I go in search of food and drink. \n\nFirst, I sense the skeeviness. It couldn't have smelled like stale cigarettes in the terminal (no smoking!), yet somehow I felt it did. Maybe it was the beige decor, straight out of 1974, and the dingy looking carpet. The design was like the old sections of O'Hare or Dulles--all narrow halls, low ceilings, and backlit Helvetica signage with (perhaps) dead bugs stuck between the light bulbs and the plastic lenses. I approach the first small food court, and hear the rumble of closing gates. Done for the night. \n\nAh, the hot dog place is still open! \n\n\"Hi!\" \n\"Sorry, we close at 9:30.\" \n\"It's 9:15!\" \n\"We close at 9:30.\"\n*Rumble* *Slam!*\n\nLet's try the next terminal. At the crossroads between A's and B's, I see moving walkways heading in two directions, but there's no airport map. Call home. Get advice. Check the internet. Ponder the consequences. Head toward the A's, since that's where my plane will end up in an hour. Take one walkway. Take another walkway. A new concourse appears over the horizon. \n\n*Rumble* *Rumble* *Slam!* \n\nCrap.\n\nThere's some activity at the end of the concourse, and I see some kind of Tequila-themed bar. Seating! Non-chain Mexican food! People! I walk in, sit down, pick up a menu from a pile on the bar, look around for service.\n\n*Waitress approaches*\n\n\"Hi! Can I have a...\"\n\n*Waitress pulls menu out of my hands, returns it to the pile, straightens the pile with obvious annoyance*\n\n*With back turned* \"No more food. Drinks.\" \n\nI get up and walk out, and see a crowd forming at the California Pizza Kitchen. Something! An Ethiopian family is capitalizing on the food shortage and the pizzas are flying in and out of the faux-wood oven. Short wait. I order.\n\n\"Four cheese, please. Thanks for staying open!\"\n\n\"Hey man, people keep paying, I keep making pizzas.\"\n\nI get my pizza, take it to the food court, and eat while a crew cleans up around me, eventually putting a chair up on to the other end of the table I'm eating at. Still a hour until my flight goes, and there were at least 3 or 4 flights leaving an hour or more after that. Can we relax a bit? The pizza guy keeps cranking 'em out, and the latest customers are just standing around shoveling slices directly from the box for lack of a place to sit. A soda fountain, affiliated with some other fast food joint and clearly disgusted by the scene, makes a rude noise and spontaneously expels several gallons of water onto the floor. It runs down a slight slope to soak a large section of beige carpet. I'll bet that'll smell nice tomorrow.\n\nI leave the food area and walk toward my gate, looking forward to sitting on plastic and vinyl benches for the next 55 minutes. As I walk past the Tequila place, the bartender bellows:\n\n\"OK, people! Time to head out. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here!\"\n\nReal clever. Christ, we're barracaded inside a plasterboard-and-carpet box, hundreds or thousands of miles from home, locked in by low-paid contractors with guns anxious to perform some more Security Theatre, waiting for delayed and cancelled flights. Sorry we're inconveniencing you.\n\nWell, at least I got a whole row to myself on both legs of the flight. Maybe that's a benefit of flying through a shitty airport.
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