You are too old if you remember.......

[kkt]

The City of Paris department store on Union Square in San Francisco.  Damned shame, that building survived the 1906 earthquake and fire but couldn't survive Neiman Marcus.

[roadman65]

Being able to walk from the gate to the curb at all airports holding a lit cigarette. 

Being able to not only meet your party at the gate proper, but to walk on a plane without being screened.

Being able to drive in Manhattan on a Saturday without any traffic.

When a store called Two Guys in North Jersey were everywhere and Howard Johnson had their diners throughout the nation.

When toll roads did not have chain restaurants in service plazas.

[PHLBOS]

Being able to walk from the gate to the curb at all airports holding a lit cigarette.

I'm surpised you didn't mention Smoking sections on flights. 

When toll roads did not have chain restaurants in service plazas.

What would you call Howard Johnson's?  Those were at every service plaza along the MA, NJ & PA Turnpikes in their earlier decades of operation and there were non-turnpike HoJos around as well.  Sounds like a chain restaurant to me.

[kkt]

Being able to drive in Manhattan on a Saturday without any traffic.

I thought Manhattan was insanely crowded from prior to the Civil War on?

[Brandon]

When toll roads did not have chain restaurants in service plazas.

In Illinois, they have always had chain restaurants.  Illinois started with Fred Harvey, then Howard Johnson's, then the fast food.

[formulanone]

Being able to walk from the gate to the curb at all airports holding a lit cigarette.

Thank goodness some things are history. You'll still catch an occasional 1970s-80s movie with smokers in the office, and they're not necessarily portrayed as negative.

Being able to not only meet your party at the gate proper...

This is a rare sight anymore. I fly nearly every week, and upon the rare moment you see this (usually permitted if picking up a minor/child), you're almost taken by surprise.

When a store called Two Guys in North Jersey were everywhere and Howard Johnson had their diners throughout the nation.

Heh, I remember my folks seemed to use them as their department store of choice, when I was very little. Don't remember anything memorable from the HoJo's, although we'd wind up at our fair share of those diners when traveling.

[msubulldog]

Being able to walk from the gate to the curb at all airports holding a lit cigarette. 

Being able to not only meet your party at the gate proper, but to walk on a plane without being screened.

How about when you had to walk through the elements to board or leave an airplane--no jetways? Or how about the people movers at Dulles and the old Atlanta terminal that came up to the plane for boarding and deplaning?

[kkt]

Being able to walk from the gate to the curb at all airports holding a lit cigarette. 

Being able to not only meet your party at the gate proper, but to walk on a plane without being screened.

How about when you had to walk through the elements to board or leave an airplane--no jetways? Or how about the people movers at Dulles and the old Atlanta terminal that came up to the plane for boarding and deplaning?

Free stuff when flying: deck of cards with backs featuring a DC-3 in airline's paint scheme, magazines, newspapers, plastic jewelry or plane models for the kids.

[OracleUsr]

Being able to walk from the gate to the curb at all airports holding a lit cigarette. 

Being able to not only meet your party at the gate proper, but to walk on a plane without being screened.

How about when you had to walk through the elements to board or leave an airplane--no jetways? Or how about the people movers at Dulles and the old Atlanta terminal that came up to the plane for boarding and deplaning?

JFK Airport had that too.  We were shuttled in one to a 747 waiting to head to London.

[formulanone]

How about when you had to walk through the elements to board or leave an airplane--no jetways? Or how about the people movers at Dulles and the old Atlanta terminal that came up to the plane for boarding and deplaning?

If take any commuter/regional jets through Denver and Houston, United will gladly remind you of the old days, regardless of the weather. USAir does it on a tiny handful of their props at Charlotte, too...naturally, many regional airports also lack jetways, but there's probably not too many places in America where you're exposed to the elements on a medium-sized jet (say, an MD88/737/A319).

I've seen the little busses tucked away for Dulles and Atlanta. I wonder how they managed in ATL a few months back when the Plane Train broke down for a few hours...

[Big John]

I wonder how they managed in ATL a few months back when the Plane Train broke down for a few hours...

Odd thing in that airport is that you can use the moving sidewalks instead on the train between concourses.  Most people take the train.  But there are no moving sidewalks in the concourses themselves where they would be a lot more useful.

And United make you go outside on the small planes at O'Hare too.

[cpzilliacus]

I've seen the little busses tucked away for Dulles and Atlanta.

That's because they are still used to transport arriving passengers on international flights from the midfield terminals at Dulles to immigration and customs.

[place-saint-henri]

for all us Quebeckers here:

If you remember when you could get ENGLISH service no questions asked anywhere in Downtown Montreal and when you didn't need to know a word of French to live here, you could have a professional career as a unilingual anglophone and if you were an immigrant you could choose to send your children to *god forbid* english schools!

When the Metro was only three lines and there were no articulated buses.

WHEN WE HAD A BASEBALL TEAM and the Olympic Stadium wasn't falling down.

When there were referendums on whether or not we would stay in Canada or not (if you remember the "OUI" and "non, Merci" buttons everyone had)

When walking down Rue Ontario Est in Hochelaga or Rue St-Jacques in St-Henri was actually really dangerous because of the biker gang wars.

Names like Robert Bourassa, Rene Levesque, Pierre-Marc Johnson, Nick Auf der Maur, Jean Drapeau, Jean Dore, and Camille Laurin ring a bell for you.

"On etait battu par l'argent pis le vote ethnique" absolutely made you mad as hell and when you heard Jacques Parizeau say it you felt shame to be from here.

the 35 Bus ran from Ville-Emard to Concordia University

there were no young hip kids in the Plateau and it was generally an area you avoided.

It was a BIG DEAL when the Olympics came to town and/or you went to Expo 67.

As divided and screwey as it was, I kind of miss Montreal of the 1980s, it was definitely a different place and I can appreciate some of the quirkyness you found in this city back than that you don't now.

[Brandon]

How about when you had to walk through the elements to board or leave an airplane--no jetways?

Bob Hope Airport (Burbank, CA) says hello.

[agentsteel53]

Cabo San Lucas is that way; not that "the elements" are all that tough to endure!

I can't think of any in the US that have had that as a regular feature, but I've never flown out of Burbank.  I have had it happen on occasion when one of the jetways wasn't working, so they rolled up a staircase and walked us across the tarmac.  Cincy comes to mind, a few years back, but I think it was a malfunction that could have happened anywhere.

[corco]

but there's probably not too many places in America where you're exposed to the elements on a medium-sized jet (say, an MD88/737/A319).

The Boise airport is the only one I know of- when Alaska runs 737s on the BOI-SEA route you have to walk out onto the tarmac to board- Boise has plenty of jetways, but the Alaska/Horizon wing of the airport doesn't have any, since the vast majority of those flights are on Q400s (Boise has I think 8 daily flights to Seattle, 7 of which are on Q400s, and then all the other Alaska routes out of Boise are on Q400s too)

But yeah, in this part of the country more often than not when I fly I end up walking to a plane on the tarmac for at least one leg.

[1995hoo]

I used boarding stairs on a 747 at Heathrow when my flight arrived an hour early once. They sent us to a remote stand, pushed up boarding stairs, and had us take buses to the terminal. There were a lot of boarding stairs available in that area, suggesting to me it was a regular occurrence. (For the flight home, in contrast, we boarded directly from the waiting lounge, but "R" class travel was a bit different from the subsonics!)

[J N Winkler]

How about when you had to walk through the elements to board or leave an airplane--no jetways?

As several others have said, it is still a fairly routine occurrence.  Budget airlines (which tend to fly workhorse Boeing 737s or the Airbus equivalents) routinely board their passengers without jetbridges in much of Europe, particularly at smaller airports.  In the US it is particularly common with commuter flights, even at major hub airports like O'Hare.

This practice causes all sorts of problems for disabled passengers--the mobility-limited have trouble with stairs while people with vision or hearing impairments often end up in the wrong plane--so I would like to see it come to an end.  However, it doesn't rank nearly as high on my personal priority list as ensuring that passengers can carry water bottles and refill them with tap water between security screening and boarding the aircraft.

[agentsteel53]

However, it doesn't rank nearly as high on my personal priority list as ensuring that passengers can carry water bottles and refill them with tap water between security screening and boarding the aircraft.

you've been hassled over an empty water bottle?

the "no liquids" rule seems to be a protection racket for vendors of overpriced bottled water.

[Brandon]

However, it doesn't rank nearly as high on my personal priority list as ensuring that passengers can carry water bottles and refill them with tap water between security screening and boarding the aircraft.

you've been hassled over an empty water bottle?

the "no liquids" rule seems to be a protection racket for vendors of overpriced bottled water.

That's been my suspicion for quite some time.  If it is so damned important we not carry bottled drinks through security, then the bottled drinks on the far side of security should be market price or lower.  Instead, they're often two to three times as much as at the 7-11 outside.

[J N Winkler]

you've been hassled over an empty water bottle?

I have not had that experience yet, but on the other hand I have not attempted to fly with a full water bottle out of an airport that has security checkpoints at the boarding gate (such as Amsterdam Schiphol or Zürich Kloten) since the ban was introduced in 2006.  (I did fly out of Schiphol in 2007, but arrived at the gate late and did not have a chance to explore what, if any, opportunities there were for visiting the bathroom or refilling a water bottle after clearing the checkpoint.  When I last flew out of Kloten in 2004, the security checkpoints were actually clustered so that they serve several gates at once, and I am reasonably certain there was at least a bathroom past security.)

the "no liquids" rule seems to be a protection racket for vendors of overpriced bottled water.

One element of this racket is marking taps, which almost certainly have to be fed from a public piped water supply, as "Not drinking water."  And years ago, when I caught an Eurostar train from London Waterloo (which was then the departure station for Paris and Brussels services--they now leave from London St. Pancras), I cleared airport-style security and then had to deal with a janitor in the bathroom who was trying to discourage me from refilling my water bottle there.

[cpzilliacus]

I used boarding stairs on a 747 at Heathrow when my flight arrived an hour early once. They sent us to a remote stand, pushed up boarding stairs, and had us take buses to the terminal. There were a lot of boarding stairs available in that area, suggesting to me it was a regular occurrence. (For the flight home, in contrast, we boarded directly from the waiting lounge, but "R" class travel was a bit different from the subsonics!)

I have boarded both 747s and 777s at Heathrow having to ride a bus to the aircraft and then shlump up the stairs.

[thenetwork]

You Are Too Old If You Remember....


....The Cleveland Browns with a legitimate shot at the playoffs halfway into the season.  They way QB Brandon Weedon played today -- and last week -- stick a fork in them, they are done for the season!!!

[Alps]

You Are Too Old If You Remember....


....The Cleveland Browns with a legitimate shot at the playoffs halfway into the season.  They way QB Brandon Weedon played today -- and last week -- stick a fork in them, they are done for the season!!!

They had a legitimate shot within the last 10 years, IIRC. 2007 they were 10-6.

[thenetwork]

You Are Too Old If You Remember....


....The Cleveland Browns with a legitimate shot at the playoffs halfway into the season.  They way QB Brandon Weedon played today -- and last week -- stick a fork in them, they are done for the season!!!

They had a legitimate shot within the last 10 years, IIRC. 2007 they were 10-6.

But to most Cleveland fans, that was the anomaly in the 20+ years of subpar playing.