O’Hare Airport, United Terminal
The moving walkway
July 23, 2011 • 3:29 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
O’Hare Airport, United Terminal
OMG! You took a photograph in an airport?! And you’re not in prison? How did that happen?
[Only being slightly sarcastic here…]
True story: on our recent trip to the UK, my wife attempted to photograph the sign in front of a restaurant on the Heathrow concourse (IIRC, we were amused by an English-pub-decor eatery, advertising “English lunch”, which was *tacos*). She was approached by an individual in uniform who informed her to desist, on pain of having her cell phone confiscated.
Of course, the ubiquity of cell phone cameras makes photography bans impossible to completely enforce. If you don’t care about accurate framing, all you have to do is hold the phone to your ear and talk, while actually having it in camera mode, and pressing the shutter button with your thumb.
Maybe it is Ok as the photons emitted from the artistic lighting are not classified?
Now, if Jerry was in the sealed section of the airport… 😉
Have a happy trip, Jerry. Knock ‘em dead (in a metaphorical sense) in your talk, and I hope you enjoy the city.
Just be careful when asked by the hotel receptionist asks if you want something for your room. A friend of mine was on holiday in St Petersberg, and was asked if he needed “something” (in Russian) and he assumed it was extra blankets, so he held up is fingers indicating “two”, as in two blankets. My friend was rather bemused five minutes later as there was a knock at the door and when he answered it, there were two women at the door. He said that they appeared to be dressed in a manner that was not consistent with coping with cold weather. 8)
Damnit, that last emote was supposed to be 😯 but without preview, I have no idea if this will work.
Indeed, lack of preview is a terrible misfeature in any blog.
😯 I like the boggle fly eyes! 8) and the shades!
Been there…done that…too mny times to count…are they still playing the “music” that goes along with the lighting?
I also thought about the music – picture needs an audio 🙂 Will be walking this walk tomorrow…..
Nice pic!
Did they check your lifeclock?
(There’s something Logan’s Run-ish about that tunnel. Apart from the Gershwin soundtrack.)
O’Hare reminds me of Epcot.
Also Sprach Zarathustra is the music that should accompany this photo.
Before you get to “Russia” and mysteriously find yourself alone in a room eating dinner, and then later evolving into a giant space fetus, you may want to call Matthew Cobb and tell him to handle the WEIT blog for a while.
Actually, it’s Rhapsody in Blue (the walkway goes to the United Airlines terminal, and Rhapsody in Blue is sort of their theme song). The effect is very surreal, and sort of a pleasant relief when one has just experienced an exhausting flight. R.E.M’s song Airportman also references this walkway.
Hm. Well, maybe not exactly Rhapsody in Blue. It’s been a while since I’ve been through there, and the last time the music was (hopefully temporarily) off. But it has some sections that reference Rhapsody in Blue, I’m pretty sure. You can sort of hear it in the background of this video:
Jerry has indeed asked Greg Mayer and myself to look after things here until his return – perhaps as a giant space fetus, he didn’t mention that part.
He told us… and I am still banned from italics 🙁
I’ve always thought it’d be interesting to put together a body of artistic photography using nothing but a phone-cam. Their limited functionality can cause some pretty interesting effects.
20 years ago they called it “The Terminal of Tomorrow”. Now it’s just kind of sad. I still like the ambient music, though.
There was a time in my misspent youth in which I used to ride that thing back & forth for an entire layover.
This was back in the day when Pink Floyd recordings were still analog.
I really like it, ever since the first time I saw it in the mid 90s. It’s a signature part of O’Hare.
Too bad the … moving … wahh wahh … walkway … walkway is always ending.
I grew up 20 minutes from O’Hare. That’s the walkway to get from the main terminal to the United terminal. My family always flew United, so we always took that. I loved it. LOVED IT. I still do. 🙂