There have been a lot of post-apocalyptic movies made, ones where there's just one person or a tiny handful of humans left alive, for whatever reason. Those types of movies often have a scene where a solitary character walks through a city, or a mall, shouting out something like "Hello? Is there anybody out there? Hello?"
The smart money says Jackson was smart to get his money, but...
And that was the scene that popped into my head when I read about the new sign at the "William R. Fairchild International Airport" in Port Angeles. As signs go, it's a lonely cry for help in the wilderness. Perhaps a more truthful name would be the "William Redheaded Stepchild Irony Airport." And maybe actually put some quotes around the word "Airport," just to make it clear.
How weird is it to have a new sign now? How weird is it to have your "environmental specialist" announce this new sign? What does the Port's "environmental specialist" think of using urethane foam rather than wood? (And what do all the timber products people think about that?) And, uh, doesn't the Port have, I don't know, a marketing or publicity person who might be better suited to announcing this? This being the shiny new sign for an essentially non-functioning airport? Jackson Smart was smart to take the money and run, but that's the only smart on display here.
The PDN article on this ends on a typical supposed-to-be-hopeful-but-actually-meaningless note:
City and county officials have met with Kenmore executives to find ways for the business to resume service. A meeting in early December with Kenmore President Todd Banks was said to have been positive but inconclusive. The meeting ended with a consensus that representatives of the county's public and private agencies "need to get back together," said Jennifer States, director of business development for the Port of Port Angeles, then.
In other words, we need to get back together to save face, and possibly - maybe - find enough public funds to waste on a bribe - I mean supplement - to get Kenmore to come back.
Now boarding!
This last part makes me think of these white trash kids without a pot to piss in who rent a limo for one night to party, and feel like they're royalty. They don't realize that that very activity only points out even more how desperately poor they are, how unworldly they are. Kind of like the white trash morons who run the Port, and don't seem to realize just how foolish and desperate their actions show them to be. Desperate, and desperately out of touch.
OMG! Are those some tall trees seen in the distant background of the sign?!? Clear cut them quickly, lest anyone get the wrong impression about Port Angeles!
ReplyDeleteYou know that old cliché about how Americans don't do well interacting with people who don't speak English? Instead of realizing that they aren't being understood, they JUST TALK LOUDER?
ReplyDeleteThis is like that. Our airport is a failure. We don't have the business to sustain it. Kenmore can't make money here. BUT WE BOUGHT A NEW SIGN! A BIG SIGN!
So, so stupid...
Probably was funded by a grant!
ReplyDeleteSomething to do with "marketing" Port Angeles" as a "destination"? Or was that devastation?
DeleteHey! Remember that Port Angeles is among the top best places to live in the USA! They said so, just a few months ago.
DeleteOr, can you really believe everything you read in the PDN?
An airport that's not an airport gets a new sign. A luxury hotel in Port Hadlock gets turned into housing for the homeless. Locals can't seem to drive a logging truck or even a car without turning it over. The city of PA is about to spend another $15 million on a stupid stupid stupid sewer project. Heroin everywhere, meth everywhere. Yeah, life on the Olympic Peninsula just keeps rolling along.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I visit Victoria, 22 miles away, I am struck by the number of seaplanes coming in and out of the inner harbor. We have an inner harbor. There is a nice harbor near Boing Field where a lot of seaplanes land and take off. Why aren't we contacting some of those seaplane carriers to fill the gap left when Harbor Air took off for the last time? No terminal to heat and cool. No hangars to secure. No personnel to pay. Just build a dock the planes can float up to and board and de-board passengers. Is this to simple for the decision makers here?
ReplyDeleteYes, but you have to want to come to Port Angeles, in the first place!
DeleteKenmore operates seaplanes out of Victoria Inner Harbor every day. Have been for years. Even has competition from other seaplane companies, like Harbor Air, and has for years. People come from all over the world to visit Victoria. Have for years.
Have you seen the ferry terminal up in Sidney-by-the-sea? Like a modern airport. Seen the ferries that operate out of there, coming and going every hour? Huge. With elevators for the disabled. Conference rooms. Child care.
But the run to Port Angeles? Used to be three ferries running back and forth. Now the Coho runs partially filled twice a day. And it is tiny, compared to the hourly ferries bringing people from Vancouver/Seattle/I-5 to Vancouver Island.
Like the airlines trying to provide service out of Port Angeles, the ferries have cut back and eliminated service out of Port Angeles. It isn't that less people want to go to Victoria. The BC ferries are packed, with waiting lines for the next ferry common. But, fewer and fewer want to come out to Port Angeles.
This city needs to get a clue, and see that people are not coming out here in numbers that will create a year 'round sustainable town.
And, unless the seaplanes you envision setting up shop in Port Angeles only fly to US communities, they will have to have Immigration and Customs, Border facilities.
No problem, since they Feds increased the local Border personnel from a half dozen to over 50, and they're driving around the Peninsula doing nothing, anyways.
Kenmore didn't want to be here. They couldn't make the numbers work because they never figured out how to price the tickets, set a schedule, or understand what the population needed. All of their flights involved a several hour layover to when the flights are grouped out of SeaTac. Good way to operate an airline -- if you want to show red on the books, and exit, and/or shake down the port for subsidies.
ReplyDeleteAdd to that the flight tickets went up, and up, and up, and up, and they ceased to have a "multi-ticket" (coupon book, if you will) for frequent fliers. They --- originally -- had a low cost, last minute option, that would discount the tickets, to keep the planes full.
Everything done was obviously done to be anti-business.
Meanwhile, the port, full of itself, as usual, did everything they could to ramp up costs --- the parking at the airport (more expensive than some of the off-lots at SeaTac), the really crappy "remodel" (when they took out the big airplane models and put in a lowered ceiling, all the charm was lost, and it became a bus station, without the smell of urinal cakes).
It was like watching the port put on the daddy shoes and clomp around in them. "Look at me, I'm a man."
It was, so, so obviously pretend. Pathetic. The port has a screw loose. More than one, a whole board of them. What self-servicing little boys.
What made me decide to never use the local airport again (I had been using it 3-4 times a MONTH, from the time of Horizon, a real "regular") was with the thinly veiled greedy insanity of clear cutting the park, to adhere to FAA rules (utter and total horseshit nonsense).
It was so transparent a ploy to put some money in someones pockets that it couldn't have been clearer if they were lighting their cigars with 100 dollar bills. "Oh we NEED to do it, the FAA is MAKING US". I don' know whats worse a place calling itself an "international" airport, when the last scheduled flight to Victoria ceased when Horizon left, or a place pretending that it needs to cut trees, to adhere to FAA regulations, that don't apply to teensy prop planes, with a 3x a day scheduled flight. What next? Bomb sniffing dogs? Skycaps? TSA agents and a full body scanning machine?
And, then what sort of group-think acid trip was the whole idea of changing the entrance so that there were all these vacant lots, and having the audacity to call it a "business park" (or wishing it were). Never mind the rental car "lot" wasn't even 100 feet from the entrance (notice, that one of the big "oh no terrorist threat" is locating car rentals a mile or more from the airport, because, you can't have bombs in rental cars disrupting the airport that way. I kept waiting for that.
That was it. I couldn't in good conscious fly out of there, anymore. Instead, I make the drive to SeaTac, and park at an off-site lot. It's not so bad, once I got used to it. Plus, the added incentive: Let the port fuck off, and not get a dime of my money.
Let Kenmore leave, fine.
Who wants to pay 3x 4x the price of any other commuter plane trip, anywhere else in the country (including in the state of Alaska)?
No thanks.
Let them circle jerk themselves to oblivion. (Which they did, and clearly, are hoping to keep meeting to do more of it.)
I like your writing style, "daddy shoes and clomp around in them..." good visual. You know if two commissioners voted to close the port it would close. Otherwise we would need a petition to go on the ballot and half the voters plus one decide to shutter it. It can be done. What a waste of good money.
DeleteAnd yet,,,Jim Hallett, well known buffoon, ran unopposed for his seat on the Port-a-Potties...Unopposed.
DeleteThe fact remains that fewer and fewer people want to come to Port Angeles for any reason. We offer no reason for anyone to come here. We're a dying mill town with poor leadership, no vision, and with too many people desperately clinging to the past. There are dozens of towns just like us out there. So again, why would anyone come here?
ReplyDeleteThat is why we need to use our Lodging Tax money at home instead of sending it out to radio and television stations to beg tourists to come here. All the chamber wants out of the contract is the 40 percent "take" for administration fees. If the city would do it's own promotions then they would have 40% more purchasing power. We could light Civic Field and have all star games or other bowl style games which would bring visitors for overnight stays. There is so much we could do with that half million instead of giving it over to the chamber mob who merely shove it up a pigs ass and holler "soueee"
ReplyDeleteIs it actually an airport? It looks more like a log yard to me.
ReplyDeleteForget the new sign. How about the dollars spent on that new "road" added recently (the road extension goes straight at the curve where you turn right to get to the terminal). It has appeared finished for several weeks but orange cones continue to block the entrance. What is the purpose of this "road to nowhere" that seems to end south of the hangars? And, of course, it is landscaped with new trees, etc., just to piss away more money (most of it no doubt from a federal "grant," meaning taxpayer dollars). Is this the road mentioned in this two-year-old PDN article, the same article that mentions a potential "new terminal" in the future? It's a hilarious article to read given the recent developments.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20130121/NEWS/301219999
I have suspected for awhile that city officials (including some former ones) have been stealthily improving that area at public expense, with the long range objective of subsidizing development by someone connected to the insider crowd.
DeleteSeveral years ago, the construction of a large water supply pipeline to this same "nowhere area" appeared in the city's public works budget and work plan.
Hmmmm.... the road to nowhere is in. The water line from the city's new, wildly over-built federally funded municipal water treatment plant is in. Is a water bottling plant and distributorship coming soon?