JFK Terminal 8 — It’s now 9:22 am and I’m learning about consumer protection from a food safety inspector aboard my second Bloody Mary. There is nothing better than alcohol to facilitate a wide range of conversations. Young people should be encouraged to consider a career in food safety, she says. She was on her way home from her business trip and found out that she always drinks Bloody Marys wherever she travels. She drinks a lot, but never at home. We move on to other topics such as Reincarnation, ExxonMobil, Karma, and the state of labor unions. The only thing that seemed off-limits was her full name (she said she couldn’t speak to the media because of work commitments).
We’re sitting in the New York Sports Bar across from Gate 10. There, next to a vending machine selling Solstice sunglasses and ready-to-eat salads in plastic Mason jars. Two fair-haired women are drinking white wine in the corner. A passing traveler asked, “Does this bar serve French fries?” The bartender said “No, she doesn’t start serving fries until 10:30”. Too early for French fries. But it’s never too early for white wine.
By the time security threw me into JFK Terminal 8 at 7:02 a.m., the bar had already thrown me a drink. At least he had regulars at four bars, including O’Neill’s Restaurant (a “cozy wood-paneled pub”). According to the JFK Directory) and bobby vans grill (“Elegant Ambience and Upscale Menu”). At JFK, alcohol service can start at 6am, and at LAX, the same time the bars open. This is never too early for a major airport. Even MSP outside Minneapolis, which used to open at 6 a.m., now opens at 4 a.m. There are no restrictions at Narita Airport in Tokyo and Heathrow Airport in London. Kenneth Shah, an alcohol habits expert at the University of Missouri, said early morning drinking at airports is not only accepted but widespread. The Internet world is also paying attention. “What the hell is everyone drinking beer at the airport at 6am?” wondered Redditor in one of the many threads dedicated to this topic.
Outside the airport, this is not how drinking should be. At least not in the way public drinking should be. Shah said that, with a few exceptions (brunch, tailgating), morning drinking tends to be a “sign of fairly severe alcoholism.” Legally, it’s not recommended: Non-airport bars in New York State are not allowed to start serving alcohol until 8am (10am on Sundays), and most bars Alcohol will continue to be served until at least the early afternoon, if not happy hour, said Andrew Riggie. The New York City Hospitality Alliance told me. However, normal drinking rules do not apply at airports. “I’m not judging,” said a bartender at Bobby Van’s Grill, pouring vodka over flutes of orange juice. “It’s already five o’clock.”
I was up at 4am to go to the airport, and when I met the food inspector five hours later, I would have believed it was time you told me. Despite accomplishing nothing, I felt adrenaline rushing, glamorous and vaguely sickening. Most of the trips are in queues of different types. I waited for people to see my ticket. I waited for various people to inspect my shoes. Even though the very idea of drinking at the airport felt romantic in a novel sense, I never felt particularly craving for alcohol.
At Bobby Van’s, perhaps Terminal 8’s most prestigious restaurant, I ate lukewarm potatoes next to a sad-eyed man drinking coffee and red wine. It was mostly quiet inside the terminal. how to live It seemed like an obvious question. I saw a man in a zip-up cardigan eating eggs.
What is anyone doing here with an early morning drink at Bobby Vans at the airport? I’m here because I’m trying to answer that question. Others have other reasons. Observation and experience allow us to summarize a basic classification of types of airport drinking. There is a single business traveler who can kill time and is not particularly interested in work. There are festive couples whose drinks at the airport mark the beginning of their vacation, and the resulting celebratory group of friends. And then there are the anxious travelers who are more motivated than excitement by the ambient fear of being inside a 36,000-foot pressurized metal tube.
At the airport where everyone is looking at the clock, there is no sense of time. “You look out and all you see is a tarmac and a few planes,” says University of Pittsburgh alcohol researcher Michael Sayett. There are few clues that you shouldn’t drink. teeth Happy hour for you actually. “People come from all over the world at different times of the day,” he points out. “It was really 5pm when they woke up.” The airport is perhaps best understood as the French anthropologist Marc Auger’s idea. Called “non-location”: A moment in space-time. “A person who enters a space that is not a place is freed from the usual determinants,” he writes in a book on the subject. “He doesn’t get any better than what he’s done and experienced in his role as a passenger.”
Going through security, in business terms, refers to the transition between ‘landside’ and ‘airside’, but you imagine a different version of yourself. On land, you are still anchored to your normal life. This means you can go back and forth, play with your family, and carry as much water as you like. Airside, you have acquired a new identity. You have become a traveler. No readable context, no apparent history. Are you a weekday morning cocktail drinker? who says? You belong to the airport now.
So does everyone else there. There is a sense of togetherness. As the same travelers, we are all infinitely trapped in the same timeless, placeless ship. why not drink? “It’s exciting for people to do activities that are normally very tightly regulated and time-bound, and then be put into a space where everything is okay,” says author Edward Slingerland. Drunk: how we drank, danced and stumbled civilization, he told me. Alcohol signals a transition from one rule to another. “We use this, albeit on a smaller scale, to transition into leisure time at home at the end of the working day,” he suggests. “Airport drinking is kind of an extension of that.
I heard from a bartender at a New York sports bar that women drink white wine and men order whiskey. Until recently, at Terminal 4, where she worked, she kept drinking five or six bottles of Prosecco every morning on her shift, she was told. Luckily for travelers, JFK has plenty of drinking opportunities including (but not limited to) Tiggin’s Irish Pub, Soi & Sake Asian Eats, Blue Point Brewery and Buffalo Wild Wings. And this does not include the numerous private his lounges, where elite passengers (or those with certain credit cards) are treated to an oasis of snacks and unlimited booze. In fact, the American Express Centurion Lounge in Terminal 4 has three unique bars, including a Prohibition-inspired liquor store with drinks handpicked by James Beard Award-winning Burst experts.
None of this is an accident. Modern airports produce a thirsty captive audience. Airport historian Janet Bednarek of the University of Dayton says airports were once permeable by design. Bars, shops and restaurants were open to everyone, and “airports were dependent on how non-travelers spent their money,” she told me. Then 9/11 happened, airports were shut down, security was increased, and once we got to Airside, we passed the point of no return. Bednarek said it turned out to be a business opportunity rather than a problem for the airport. People started arriving at the airport hours earlier and had to do something to pass the time: shopping, eating, or hanging out at the bar. . “Airports are looking for every possible way to generate revenue,” said travel industry analyst Henry Hartveldt.airport charge the airline Huge fees, and still considered pre-pandemic retail interests about 30 percent Percentage of total airport revenue, according to International Airports Council data.
But when it comes to airports, no one can control them. You can’t control the person sitting next to you or their children, the security line, or the CIBO Express pre-packaged sandwich option. And most of all, you have no control over when the plane arrives, if it arrives, or how late it will be.More than 20% of his flights arriving in the US in his first three months of the year delayhas exceeded the same growth every year since 2014. epic meltdown As a result, travelers may be stranded for several days. “In some ways, alcohol may be essential to air travel because it helps you relax and become passive helpless,” said Slinger, who was at the airport when we spoke. Mr Rand said. “In the past week and a half, he’s taken about ten flights, all of which have been delayed.” It delays gratification and prevents them from doing everything they need to be successful in their daily lives as functional adults. But at the airport you are not a functional adult. You are a giant baby brandishing a suitcase.
Perhaps there are darker readings out there. “I would say that 80 percent of the people you see would never drink in the morning in their normal lives,” Slingerland said.But at his JFK, where quite a few people still seem to exhibit normal behavior at 7:00 a.m., no one cared that passengers were drinking white wine or whiskey early in the morning. Another sign of something that seems to be, but it’s still hard not to see it everyone keep saying: Americans drink too much.
“Drinking is allowed in all sorts of other places where it wasn’t before,” it wrote. AtlanticKate Julian in 2021. “Salons and boutiques hand out cheap cava in plastic cups. Cinemas serve alcohol, Starbucks serve alcohol, Zoo Serve alcohol. A study published last year tracked One in five 20- and 49-year-olds is caused by alcohol consumption. Another study found that 1 in 8 American adults drink alcohol in the following ways: met the criteria Alcohol use disorders appear to have worsened during the pandemic. And drunk passengers pose a problem. Regular drinking is good for airports, but airlines aren’t too happy about it. “It’s totally unfair,” said a Ryanair executive. statement He said he is calling for stricter policies in 2017, saying “airports can profit from selling unlimited alcohol to passengers and leave the safety impact to the airlines.” claimed.
I thought alcohol at the airport was different from alcohol in the outside world. But perhaps drinking at the airport is no different. It still facilitates the transition from one state to another only literally. It still gives the illusion of softening the lower misery of life. And we are still friends today. I thought of food safety inspectors. I talked with him for almost an hour and I’m sure I’ll never see him again. our conversation was very pleasant,I thought. Why don’t you talk to people more? This is the strange duality of alcohol. Alcohol can dull the world and strengthen it at the same time. Both are absolutely necessary at the airport.
