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SeaTac Airport. You can actually move the chairs at the new Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the soaring, new central terminal is designed to help travelers remember "when air travel used to be fun," reports Douglas Gantenbein in The Wall Street Journal. It's a small thing, really -- the chairs aren't bolted down like they are at other airports. It's a big deal, though, because everybody loves to move a chair, if only slightly. It puts us in control of our environment. At SeaTac, such power is especially intoxicating because you can move your chair to face a "massive window ... a series of 449 glass panes stitched together" that affords a spectacular view of "the distant Olympic mountains," as well as the parade of 747s and A340s.
Or you can simply move away from people who don't believe in taking a bath. Moving around actually seems to be the main idea at SeaTac. At other airports, once you've gone through security you're not only stuck in an "uncomfortable, stuck-in-place" chair, but you're reduced to grazing at whatever second-rate kiosks may be at hand. But at SeaTac, you have to go through security -- with a ticket, of course -- to get into the central terminal, which is also known as Pacific Marketplace. There you'll find your Starbucks and your Borders, naturally. But you'll also find Seattle's finest merchants, such as "Ivar's, ivars.net -- a popular local fish-and-chips joint -- and Anthony's, anthonys.com, an upscale Seattle-based seafood restaurant where the bar now may have the best view in a city full of them."
The gift shop, meanwhile, isn't just the usual trinkets-and-trash -- it's "a locally based store called Fireworks" fireworksgallery.net, that "sells artsy and whimsical gifts and housewares." Cooler still is that the prices at the airport are the same as they are downtown. "Street prices" at an airport! And you don't have to worry about getting lost at SeaTac, as "new clear maps and directions" are plentiful while "big video screens ... update travelers on arrivals and departures." Built at a cost of $133 million, the "240,000 square-foot structure" was designed by Denver-based Fentress Bradburn Architects, fentressbradburn.com. As Douglas Gantenbein writes, it "succeeds wonderfully, in ways large and small."
Tim Manners, editor
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