Top 5 Best Airports

By Ned Hepburn on April 21st, 2009

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1. Denver

The Denver airport looks like a gigantic awesome thing in the middle of the mountains because that’s precisely what it is. Flawlessly designed and incredibly easy to get around in – with a progressive, simple layout – even the food is good. The bars are weirdly affable, and you can smoke in them should you need to. Hopefully you really like surprisingly cheap airport beer and increasingly friendly airport personnel: I’ve had the honor of riding one of those little carts due to an almost missed connection flight. Nobody said I couldn’t because I wasn’t old: they know what it’s like to fly, and that’s why Denver’s on the top of the list. And the place looks like a circus from Blade Runner. Did I mention that yet?

2. LAX

While some have described this West coast behemoth of an airport as a “clusterfuck”, “a terrible place” and “hard to get around in”, it still stands as one of the most efficient places to take a flight. It’s also one of the only places you’re likely to see random celebrities on any given day in line at the Cinnabons or perusing magazines and overpriced candy. It’s the great equalizer, the airport, and in a city where image and status beat out humility and talent on a regular basis, it’s good to know this mini-metropolis is around. It’s not bad, it’s not great, but seeing as its the closest airports in either direction are just too damn far away to be considered part of the city, LAX does it’s job pretty damn well.

3. Minneapolis

Solely for the fact that the employees are the nicest bastions of goodwill in the entire Midwest. Catch them on a good day and you’ll swear you’re in a Coen Brothers movie (sans wood-chipper). I almost didn’t want to leave the airport bar I was having such a good time. In an airport bar! I know, right?

It’s a homely place. Unlike, say, Atlanta, the Minneapolis airport doesn’t at all forget that it’s smack dab in Minnesota. It’s homely and without sounding weird, I really enjoyed all the pictures of ducks and wildlife and lakes and shit like that. There’s nothing worse than some crazy rat bastard modern art thing in the middle of a quaint airport.

The observation “deck” is a good place to see the “view” of the city (actually just a place to see the whole airport); although the inclusion of a FOX News store nearby is just damn unnecessary. If I wanted to see Bill O’Reilly every morning I wouldn’t buy a coffee cup, I’d check myself into a psych ward to make sure the apparitions stopped.

Honorable Mention: Oklahoma
There’s nothing to do in Oklahoma but you wouldn’t know it by their airport, which makes the town look like the city from Blade Runner in comparison.

4. San Francisco

The food IS AMAZING. While most airport food consists of the saddest ever looking Bummer Plates served by unsmiling, unflinching, uninviting sad individuals with nary a smile or a whimsical nod, the people at San Francisco International serve you amazing food. Fresh sushi? I’m down. Interesting pizza? Sign me up. And I’ll have a microbrew with that. And some oysters. And scratch my back while you’re at it.

It’s a breeze to get around in and doubly so to spend time in. This isn’t your average ‘bookstore over there, tired looking pastries over there’ kind of place. True: if you’re not into the socially up-to-date atmosphere that is San Francisco (read: obviously this is one of the most liberal cities in America and a healthy population of gay people which, if you’re some crazy homophobe and I did see this happen once where a guy got up and left mid-bite of his burrito) you might not be intrinsically down with the liberal, free thinking atmosphere.

Honorable Mention: San Jose
San Jose is the heart of Silicon Valley – tech capital of the world. But if you’d visited their airport about 5 years ago you’d have thought you’d landed in 1953: the place was tiny, cramped, and seemingly built for midgets. Thankfully they’ve added a whole new terminal and redesigned the place so it doesn’t look like a cross between Smurf Village and Mad Men.

5. Vegas

Included almost entirely because you can gamble up until you board the plane. True story: dude sitting next to me at the gate got up, put in a single dollar, and won $900 thirteen minutes before we boarded the plane. Hooooly shit. Pure luck, too. He was some tech dude that “never really liked to gamble”.

Other than that, this place is almost exactly like any of the other West coast airports like San Jose, San Diego, Phoenix, and what have you. But the people watching here – as you can imagine – is amazing. Fear & Loathing may have seemed like “a good book” but this airport gives it justice by bringing it slightly up to date. Trust me. Nothing says “American Dream” like haggard people stumbling back onto the plane after a 4 day alcohol and drug binge where they lost thousands of thousands of dollars.

Honorable Mention: Seattle

Seattle is one hell of an amazing town and while the airport leaves something to be desired it more than makes up for its somewhat elaborate floor plan with – and this is a weird thing to notice but I couldn’t help it – some of the best signage in the city. If you’ve ever flown into London’s Heathrow airport and been confused as hell, this is totally the opposite.