@Cyan Lightning
San Fran and New York are amazing cities - you can spend days wandering through them just getting lost and finding amazing buildings and stores and parks :) [PROTIP: Buy a pair of shoes from a local Good Will if you’re going to be spending time walking through these towns - panhandlers will look at your shoes to guess whether you’re a local or not, so scrubby shoes is a plus if you want to avoid talking to others while walking, especially in San Fran).
Chicago is … uhm … very pretty from far away and up really close, especially during the boating season downtown. But there’s a VAST middle ground of “They aren’t sure what to put here, so here’s another factory, I guess”. And, yes, driving in Chicago is just as horrific as you’ve heard.
@Lord Goku
… I went through Kansas City International Airport while they were still renovating, and I am not making this up - they had chain link fences INSIDE THE PAVILIONS with signs on them saying; “NO POLICE PROTECTION BEYOND THIS POINT ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK” in the concourse, and of course the gate I had to get to was on the OTHER SIDE of those fences. Yay. The people working there advised against walking through the airport itself and there were cabs giving people rides AROUND the airport just to get from one gate to another.
Now, granted, that’s A. Kansas (fifth highest murder rate in the U.S.) and B. Unusual for any airport.
And don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying US airports are not safe - the US is unbelievably safe despite the level of panic and paranoia its residents display.
But … “safest”? Their airports?
Perhaps most paranoid. I would believe that. But most of the “security” in U.S. airports is propaganda. The effective, gets things done, really works kind of security they have is no different than any other airport in any first world country.
Ever been to … I don’t know … name an airport. Narita, Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle (just don’t take a fucking cab there unless you don’t mind ending up on the wrong side of the city from your hotel) … whatever Belgium’s is. Zaventem. Sounds like a sleeping pill name.
And, I’m not saying Frankfurt is safer, but … the cops there are walking around with fucking machine guns.
I mean - again - I’m not saying they’re necessarily “safer”, but other countries fuck around with their security A LOT less than the U.S. does. They worry more about implementation than perception, they have stuff in place that they don’t talk about as much as the U.S. promotes what it’s doing (some of which is hard to tell if it’s just for show, or if they think they’re actually doing something useful), and whatever security other countries tend to put in place is rarely done by people with just 120 hours of training.
If you want to see real security, fly into Tel Aviv some time. In Tel Aviv, they will swab every single part of your body and everything in your luggage in 30 minutes and someone in their security team will personally make sure that you don’t miss your flight. All the while you’re allowed to use your cell phone and there’s water and a pop machine and you don’t have to worry about your personal possessions disappearing. They’re doing it for “Your safety, not OUR safety” and it’s professional, fast, and just about as thorough as a pre-op with your physician.
By comparison, TSA is a silly security theatre designed to create an illusion of security. They’ll spend 2 hours trying to figure out if your name is on any interesting lists while you miss your flight sitting in a room with nothing to drink, no bathrooms, and when you get your luggage back it’ll have been cut open (even though it wasn’t locked) and sealed with a giant strip of yellow “TSA” tape, for no reason other than that you’ve “flown an awful lot this year, don’t you think?”
But I’m not bitter.
