You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Fort Lauderdale Airport.
The only good thing I saw in this plane palace was a Guy Harvey painting hanging on the wall.
In Guy Harvey style, the gigantic mural showcases fishing boats and marlins and aqua blue water sports.
The art hangs on a wall at the cross roads of airport confusion.
Escalators criss cross the gigantic mural like angry sabers rattling, screaming “Anarchy!”
From a hostile and tense security area, one escalator goes up.
From a buzzing and frenzied airline check in area, another escalator goes down.
It’s like lowering dry ice into scalding hot water. Passengers going up, passengers going down, create a turbulent mix.
In the middle of it all, like this mix needs more mixing, is rental car pick up.
All three points cross in front of security. People rushing to get a plane, people getting a TSA prostate exam, people trying to rent a car, all converge at one chaotic point.
The architect of this edifice must have studied at the Bravehart school of battle warfare. Remember that scene where the Irish charge from one hill, faces painted angry blue. The English charge from the other hill, their demeanor regimented and hard.
In the middle, they clash like a centrifuge of bloody violence.
That is the airport at Fort Lauderdale, possibly the first thing visitors to this sun bathed city will experience.
Now don’t get me wrong, Fort Lauderdale is a sunshine smiley face, decorated with waving palm trees, and lapping waves. It’s a bastion for weary winter denizens who need an infusion of sol.
While the city is tropical, it is also, well rough around the edges. This sparkling beach city is decorated like a New York gold chain on a Brooklyn Boy’s neck. The city is a paradise trimmed in aqua blue colors and weight lifter -wife beater decor.
The beach front is one part ocean crashing and 2 parts honking horns and accelerating 8 valve super charged machines.
North Ft Lauderdale Beach Blvd is loud like the House Wives of Jersey Shore with more attitude.
I think the city’s motto: If you don’t drive a Porsche, you suck!
Ft. Lauderdale was pleasant in an North East Kind of way.
Imagine NYC, the Jersey Shore and South Philly all vacationing at once. Now throw in a bunch of gay dudes, some dirty homeless beach bastards and a bunch of tourists from Kansas looking to ride a skim board, and you are almost there.
Ft Lauderdale seems to be a powder keg of anything and everything.
How east coast is this southern Florida city? I went to a Peruvian Restaurant and a Rocky film broken out. Right in the middle of a wonderful appetizer, the owner arrives. He is tall dark and Peruvian. He is a GQ model minus the G and the Q. I expect his accent to be a tropical flavor of South America, filled with ruins and history. Instead, it’s straight from the Rocky Balboa school of culinary arts.
“How you enjoying you’ze meal?,” he says.
But all I can hear is “Yo Mick. Cut me! Cut me, Mick.”
I didn’t know whether he was asking me how my steak was or whether I wanted to go 3 rounds.
As it turns out, my mouth does go three rounds with the flank steak, kinda tough.
The East Coast flavor is so thick, it’s on the street signs.
Speed Limit 25 – Now shut the F up.
No merging – Unless you wanna get yo ass kicked.
I swear I saw a sign that said: Quit wasting our time. Shut up or go home.
I saw tattoos that had tattoos. The waitress serving me beers, told me I was a douche.
So I’m returning my rent a car in this sun bathed shakedown, and true to Ft. Lauderdale form, I get more “tude”.
Some skinny white guy, a cross between Justin Bieber and a human slim jim is checking us in.
He’s wearing gold chains and an open chested zip-up unitard.
All I know is he is unhappy and full of attitude.
I wonder if he is pissed because it’s going to be 78 and sunny today, but for him it’s concrete and car exhaust.
I can see sunshine peeking in from somewhere far away, but in here, where he works, it’s wall to wall drab, slab and chronic darkness.
He comes to work and it’s dark. He goes home and it’s dark. In between it’s car tires squealing on parking ramp driveways.
I get it dude, your job sucks, but really, so much attitude? I mean quit. Just take your own job and shove it!
Talking to this guy is like talking to a labor law violation. I mean there are worse jobs, Grave Digger, Roseanne Bar leg waxer, but not many.
So we check our rental car with him and he’s like, “what? You want I should help youze?”
We walk through a corridor that doubles as a crack alley and we enter the airport.
The first taste of the airport?
A Guy Harvey? A sculpture from a famous Ft. Lauderdale artist? Nope. The TSA.
“Empty you lotion bottles,” I hear in a thick New York accent.
I try and enter the security line, but a small Asian woman puts out her tiny arm.
“No. You go over there,” she says.
I stare at her wondering if she just got of a slow boat from China or mutilated a chicken.
I look over there.
It’s another series of winding TSA lines.
WTF?
Like the sheep I am. I go stand in a small line.
It turns out this is a pre-TSA-security line. Kind of like a baby pool to get you acclimated to the big boy pool.
Suddenly I am yearning to be strip searched with the other regular flyers.
After 20 minutes we make it to the metal detector.
A happy Lesbian woman is angry. “I need the scanner. I got a fake knee. I’m gonna set that thing off. Nobody listens.” Her angst permeates the line like we all have fake body parts.
I am unclear what all this angst is about. But she is definitely East Coast and lesbian and full of anything but sunshine.
Now this is the Ft. Lauderdale chamber of commerce moment, I think to myself.
So in keeping with the day’s theme; stupid and time-consuming, we send our beach bag through the scanner.
It’s a terrorist hand book of death. Sun tan lotion. A brush. an open bag of pretzels.
I wait on the other side while the TSA man says.
“Is this yours?”
I look at him like, “Yeah. What’s it too you?”
“I gotta run it back through again.”
I nod like I have a choice. I am nervous. I was planning to gouge out the pilots eyes with half eaten pretzels. Maybe they know my secret plan.
The bag makes it through.
Whew.
I hear the Lesbian lady with the fake knee exclaim. “They didn’t even catch it. A metal knee? They don’t find it. I’m concerned about this security.”
I look at her and laugh. She is all angst, all attitude. Even when they don’t hassel her? She wants to be hasseled.
And then the craziest moment of them all.
The Departure boards. Unlike any I have ever seen.
Though the words are English, they might as well be spelled using the Russian alphabet.
I stop and look for my flight going to Nashville.
It shouldn’t be that hard. Find the departure board. Look for the cities that start with N. Find Nashville. Look to the right and match up my flight number and my gate. It’s a 10 second moment at any other airport.
Here in the land of sunshine and chest hair, it’s an ordeal.
I feel like I am Russell Crowe in a beautiful mind trying to assimilate all the obscure information.
This is no lie. The board is flashing cities and gate assignments randomly. Albuquerque, Boston, Los Angeles. All next to each other. The board is arranged by airlines and not cities. Just when your brain tries to absorb this oddity, the board changes and it’s a new configuration of departure code. It’s like taking the SAT while holding a carry on bag.
I look at other people looking at this glowing board of algebraic stupidness.
Their heads are cocked like Cocker Spaniels following a Milk Bone.
I am secretly glad I don’t have seizure disorder.
I think I see the word Nashville pop up on the screen. As I try to follow the information to the right, the board flickers and sudddenly it is a flight to Pittsburgh.
Well thank God it’s on time.
If I wasn’t so frustrated I would laugh.
I am suddenly playing the hit 198o’s game show: Press Your Luck.
That’s the game where a board of video images flashed and the contestant smashed a big stop button. If the whammy devil man was the icon you stop on then you lose.
Well that’s what the Ft. Lauderdale airport is right now. An icon of Wammy.
I sit in boarding area 9.
“You going to Nashville?” a sweet voice asks.
My Ft. Lauderdale brain wants to say. “No I’m sitting in the Nashville boarding area so I can get to Brooklyn, you mope.”
Instead my normal brain says.
“Yes. Sure hope the sunshine is as beautiful as it was here.”
And from the boarding area, through the big windows, the sun is rising in the sky and the baggage handlers all dressed in shorts and it looks like another chamber of commerce day.
Ft. Lauderdale. One part sunshine, one part my Cousin Vinny.
Life’s Crazy™