10 Offbeat Fringe Festivals From Around North America

by Jessica Festa on

An array of fringe festivals are happening around North America, bringing together the most out-of-the-ordinary artists from around the world. From dancers, to acrobats, to buskers to unusual performance artists, these fringers will show that they are not only talented, but were born to perform. Want to see a show in the near future? Check out these 10 great fringe festivals to check out before the end of 2012.

Edmonton International Fringe Festival
Edmonton, Alberta

Advertised as “Canada’s largest and longest-running Fringe Festival,” the Edmonton International Fringe Festival features many bizarre events that will take place in Edmonton’s historic arts district, Old Strathcona. Themed “The Village of the Fringed,” spectators will see 1,600 performances of 220 uncensored productions. In fact, the festival refuses to restrain performances, which are chosen using an unbiased lottery system. Some acts to look forward to include:

  • “The Kif-Kif Sisters,” featuring twins who twist and intermingle themselves, make bananas appear, enter giant balloons and juggle umbrellas.
  • “Dr. Fondoozle’s Fantastic Show Of Awesome,” which features bizarre feats like whip mastery, contortion, contact juggling and poi spinning.
  • “The Lol Brothers Show,” which takes you on a tour of rock ‘n’ roll through risky circus acts and humor.

If you’re bringing children, KIDOPOLIS is safe and free for junior Fringers 12 and under, as well as their caregivers.

This year’s Edmonton International Fringe Festival will take place from August 16 to 26, 2012. Click here for more details. IndyFringe
Indianapolis, Indiana

Taking place in the Massachusetts Avenue Cultural District, IndyFringe provides opportunities for audiences to partake in the Indianapolis arts community. This wacky and wild festival allows emerging artists to display an eclectic mix of performances. From dancers, to story tellers, to visual art groups, this fringe festival is sure to entertain all festival goers. Some performances to look forward to include:

  • “Do Re Mi Fa So Latino,” which features President Rodriguez, the first openly non-American citizen President, and Mexican Harriet Tubman, smuggling hard working Hispanics out of Arizona to the less oppressive north.
  • “Iris and Rose – Wild and Thorny,” a show which features a pub singing duo belting out dirty tunes.
  • “Donating Sperm to My Sister’s Wife,” a performance about a man’s lesbian sister and her wife, and how he helps them get pregnant.

This year’s IndyFringe will take place from August 17 to 26. Click here for more details.

Boulder International Fringe Festival
Boulder, Colorado

The Boulder Fringe is actually a tax-exempt organization with goals to revitalize the community, help artists inspire each other and support local businesses by hiring administrators, technical crew and artists. This year’s Boulder International Fringe Festival will feature jaw dropping performances from over 300 artists. Some of the shows include:

  • “What To Do About Delusion,” where Andy Pratt will attempt to tame four personalities using juggle therapy, an experimental psychoanalysis technique for narcissists.
  • “Tobo’s Magic & Marvel Show,” which weaves magic, stories and history into an astonishing and inspiring experience.
  • “Flying Shoes,” where dancers use choreography to explore their relationships to each other, gravity and architecture.

Along with viewing artistic expression, attendees can enjoy the Fringe Encore Brunch, free Fringe Beer Garden, educational panels and presentations, west African song and dance classes, performance workshops, an interactive flea market and more.

This year’s Boulder International Fringe Festival will take place from August 15 to September 26. Click here for more details.

Chicago Fringe Festival
Chicago, Illinois

Taking place in the Pilsen neighborhood, the Chicago Fringe Festival features 50 unique performance groups like actors, dancers, impersonators, puppeteers and scientist-comedians. Some acts to look forward to include:

  • “55 Minutes of Sex, Drugs and Audience Participation,” a sketch-comedy performance where the audience is asked to suggest awkward topics and actors create emotionally honest stories of the pleasures of forbidden love, wretched excess, reckless living and making a good confession.
  • “Bruiser: Tales From a Traumatized Tomboy,” a true story of how a misplaced tomboy blossoms into an even more awkward adult.
  • “Konetic Concoction,” a bizarre yet thought provoking dance show where you’ll see acts like a ballerina dancing on pointe in a straight jacket and a dancer performing in a 24-foot long skirt.

This year’s Chicago Fringe Festival will take place from August 30 to September 9. Click here for more details.

New York International Fringe Festival
New York, NY

Pushing the limits with new ideas and new perspectives, the New York International Fringe Festival features innovative performances by over 200 companies from around the world all over downtown Manhattan. The festival boasts being the “largest multi-arts festival in North America,” with 1,200 unique performances from musicals to dances to rock ‘n’ roll Shakespeare. Some of this year’s performances to look forward to include:

  • “#MormonChief,” where Connor, an unassuming Mormon, becomes the center of media attention when he tweets inflammatory statements inspired by a Mormon presidential candidate.
  • “5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche,” a sketch comedy piece taking place in 1956 where communists threaten the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of the Gertrude Stein during their annual Quiche breakfast.
  • “Magic Trick,” a burlesque-style love story.

This year’s New York International Fringe Festival will take place from August 10 to August 26. Click here for more details.

Atlantic Fringe Festival
Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Atlantic Fringe Festival has an “anything-goes” attitude. Displaying a wide variety of original plays, shows, and presentations, the Atlantic Fringe is the definition of an artist-driven festival. This entirely volunteer run event is filled with musicals, dramas, comedies, dances and belly dancers. Moreover, these fringers will prove to audiences they were born performers in over 250 performances and 40 different shows. The website will be up sometime this week with the performance schedule.

This year’s Atlantic Fringe Festival will take place from August 30 to September 9. Click here for more details.

Vancouver Fringe Festival
Vancouver, British Columbia

As British Columbia’s largest theater festival, the Vancouver Fringe Festival brings in more than 30,000 attendees for over 750 performances by 97 groups. Audiences will see an eclectic mix of uncensored theatrical performances by artists who break traditional boundaries. Additionally, the artists receive 100% of regular box office revenues generated during the festival. Some shows to get excited for include:

  • “Say Wha?! Readings Of Deliciously Rotten Writing,” where some of the worst writing in print will be made fun of by performers.
  • “One Human Race,” a live music show based on traditional Igbo roots rhythms, evoking the spirit of highlife and Afrobeat with a splash of funk, jazz, blues, and reggae.
  • “Does This Turn You On?,” a lighthearted look at sexual fetishes in the modern imagination.

Along with watching unusual performance art, you’ll get the opportunity to partake in improv, puppetry and other performance workshops. Don’t have a date? Make use of the festival’s escort service, where a knowledgeable representative will not only help you choose a show, but will also go along with you.

This year’s Vancouver Fringe Festival will take place from September 6 to 16. Click here for more details.

Seattle Fringe Festival
Seattle, Washington

After almost a decade, the Seattle Fringe Festival is returning to Capitol Hill. The event will feature a variety of genres, and will showcase everything from raw, untested acts to perfectly executed performances. Moreover, all performers are chosen by a non-adjudicated lottery. Some acts to look forward to include:

  • “First Born,” where life and death comes down to a game of rock, paper, scissors.
  • “Chop,” which focuses on a man who is isolated from the world around him, until he meets a mysterious tattooed woman who brings him to an underground amputation fetish group.
  • “The Ukrainian Dentist’s Daughter,” a show about a woman who relives her life while being stood up at the alter.

This year’s Seattle Fringe Festival will take place from September 19 to 23. Click here for more details.

San Francisco Fringe Festival
San Francisco, California

The San Francisco Fringe Festival is an open-minded event where performers will showcase an array of talents. With 40 different shows and over 200 acts, attendees will have the opportunity to watch a slew of creative, daring and fun productions. The event is in its 21st year, and is offering some interesting acts like:

  • “Aerial Allusions,” a fusion of multiple performance styles such as acrobatic dance, clown and theater that come together to bring chaos, humor and control to the stage.
  • “Antipodes,” a mix of tightly synced video projection, acting and live music that tells the story of an American man and a Chinese woman who find stable selves by being deconstructed.
  • “Jesus, Do You Like Me? Please Mark Yes or No,” a complicated love story featuring murder, religion and “answers to all existential crisis.”

This year’s San Francisco Fringe Festival will take place from September 5 to 16. Click here for more details.

New Orleans Fringe Festival
New Orleans, Louisiana

As a city known for embracing artists, it’s no wonder this show is a display of wild, weird, fearless and original theater. The New Orleans Fringe Festival features artists such as buskers, puppeteers, dramatists, improv folks, skit-makers and hula-hoopers, who will take the stage at the crazy circus tent known as the Fringe Free-For-All. Because the official schedule isn’t out yet, you still have time to apply to be a performer if you think you have some original performance art to show the world.

This year’s New Orleans Fringe Festival will take place from November 14 to 18. Click here for more details.

Why Chicago Beats New York

by Dave Seminara on

Years ago, when I told a group of colleagues in New York that I was moving to Chicago, the reaction ranged from bemusement to outrage.

“Chicago?” one began, tentatively, as if they’d heard of the place but couldn’t quite place it. “Why would you want to live there?”

Another co-worker was more blunt.

“Chicago’s a dump,” he said. “You’ll be back in New York in a year.”

Like many New Yorkers who consider their city the capital of the world, he’d never actually been to Chicago, or anywhere else in “Fly Over Country.” My career ended up taking me away from Chicago after two stints totaling five years, but I never went back to New York, except for brief visits, and I never regretting moving to The Second City. How could I? I met the woman I would marry on my very first day in town.New Yorkers are always crowing that they live in the greatest city in the world. It is undoubtedly a singular place; perhaps the only can’t miss city in America for tourists alongside San Francisco. But I find all of the “We’re #1” bravado tiresome. There are a few things I like better in New York than Chicago – weather, weekend travel opportunities, pizza and bagels – but I’d much rather live in Chicago than New York for all of the following reasons.

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Less Attitude

Chicago attracts young people from all over the Midwest, so although it’s a big city, there’s a friendly, middle-of-America vibe. New Yorkers tend to be friendly towards tourists but rather hard on each other. When I lived in New York, I found that native New Yorkers were often friendlier than transplants.

I have a couple friends who are Staten Island natives, and I’ll never forget how newly minted Manhattan residents from other parts of the country would mock them as “Bridge and Tunnel” people. For me, the locals with the accents who live in the Outer Boroughs are the real New Yorkers, not all the transplants who live in Manhattan and look down upon everyone else as soon as they get a 212 area code.

More Affordable

According to Bankrate.com’s cost of living comparison, New York Metro’s cost of living is about 95% higher than Chicago’s. In the Windy City, you can buy a fairly nice three-bedroom home in a nice, close-in suburb with good public schools for about $450,000; whereas that same amount of money barely buys a small condo in a sketchy neighborhood in New York.

In New York, I lived in a neighborhood called Bay Ridge, a long subway ride from Manhattan near the Verrazano Bridge in Brooklyn, because I couldn’t afford to live closer to my office in Manhattan. But when I moved to Chicago, I felt like there were only a couple of neighborhoods that were completely off limits due to price.

Chicago is also cheaper to visit. I was in town last week for a visit and got a room at the Hyatt at Michigan Avenue and Wacker for $55 on Priceline. No chance you’ll get a nice room in NYC for that price.

Lake Michigan

There are more bike paths in New York now than when I lived there but there’s still nothing quite like Chicago’s killer lakefront, which has an 18-mile-long bike path and several very nice sandy beaches, including one just steps away from downtown.

Better Smells

Thanks to the Bloomer Chocolate Company, the sweet smell of chocolate permeates the West Loop neighborhood but New York has more foul smells than good ones. If you Google “New York smells” or “What does New York smell like” the most common results involve urine.

You Can’t Get Lost in Chicago

If you give me the east/west coordinates of any address in the city of Chicago, I’ll immediately know where it is, thanks to the city’s street coordinates system. Midtown and Uptown Manhattan are straightforward but the rest of the city’s a mess and God help you if you need to find something in Queens.

Billy Crystal and Yoko Ono Have no Apparent Connections to Chicago

Chicago has a few obnoxious celebs, but New York has scores of them. Donald Trump. Rush Limbaugh. The Jersey Shore kids. (some of whom are from NY rather than NJ) The list goes on and on.

Vintage Street Signs

Chicago has more vintage street signs than any city in the country and these old beauties are emblematic of the way the city preserves its past, rather than bulldozing it.

The Green Mill and B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted

New York also has its share of small, atmospheric jazz and blues music venues, but there’s nowhere I’d rather hear live jazz and have a stiff cocktail than the century old Green Mill in Uptown, and if I could hear blues in just one place in the world, it would be B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted, which features authentic live bluesmen and women 365 nights per year.

Conclusion

It’s silly to claim that one city is definitively better or worse than any other city. One man’s paradise is another man’s prison. But for me, Chicago’s the most livable big city in the country. It’s a place where it’s easy to meet people, easy to fit in, no matter who you are, and hard to leave.

There are harsh, long winters that stretch into hot, humid summers, legendary traffic tie-ups, and miles of boredom outside the city limits in every direction. But there’s something about Chicago – the neighborhoods, the architecture, the people, the vibe – that has hooked me in a way New York never did. It’s a huge city that still manages to be a well-kept secret.

[Photos by Dave Seminara, TheeErin, Spiterman, Cliff 1066, Nimatardji Photography, mdanys and Michael Clesle on Flickr]

Restaurant Rooftop Gardens: Five Of America’s Best

by Laurel Miller on

From where I stood on the roof of Bastille Cafe & Bar in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, I could see flocks of seagulls circling nearby fishing boats, as I catch whiffs of brine, gasoline and eau de canal water.

Despite the industrial marine supplies and salmon canneries across the way, up here I was surrounded by buzzing honeybees and dozens of varieties of produce, from heirloom French beans and petit pois to herbs, tomato starts, lettuces and cucumber vines.

Bastille is part of an emerging breed of urban restaurant (many of which are located in hotels) popping up across America. Not content to just source food locally, today’s seasonally- and sustainably-driven chefs and restaurateurs are installing rooftop gardens and beehives to augment the product they purchase from family farms.

Many of these restaurants offer public tours of their rooftop gardens, greenhouses and hives, so even city-dwellers (or line cooks) no longer have an excuse to remain clueless about where their food comes from – and the public can’t get enough. With the urban farming movement – backyard produce, chickens, bees, even dairy goats – at critical mass, savvy chefs, concerned about their carbon footprint and wanting more control over the production and quality of their ingredients, have turned their rooftops into kitchen gardens.

Few restaurants can spare the labor or have staff experienced in cultivating crops, which is where small businesses like Seattle Urban Farm Company and Ballard Bee Company come in. The Urban Farm Company’s services include construction and maintenance of residential backyard farms, rooftop gardens, educational school gardens, and on-site gardens at restaurants and businesses. With regard to the latter, chefs and cooks receive education as well, and become involved in caring for and harvesting crops and collaborating on plantings based on menu ideas.

Corky Luster of Ballard Bee offers hive hosting or rental, where homeowners keep hives on their property, in exchange for maintenance, harvesting, and a share of the honey. Bastille keeps hives, and uses the honey in cocktails and dishes ranging from vinaigrette’s to desserts.

Following is the short list of rooftop garden restaurants that have served as inspiration for imitators, nationwide. Here’s to dirty cooks, everywhere.Bastille Cafe & Bar, Seattle
Seattle Urban Farm Company owner/founder Colin McCrate and his business partner Brad Halm and staff conceptualized Bastille’s garden with the restaurant’s owners three years ago. After substantial roof retrofitting, rectangular garden beds were installed. Over time, beehives were introduced, and this past year, plastic children’s swimming pools were reinforced with landscape fabric and UV-protective cloth, expanding the garden space to 4,500 feet.

In summer and fall, the garden supplies chef Jason Stoneburner and his staff with 25 percent of their produce for Bastille’s French-inspired seasonal cuisine. Housed in a lavishly restored, historic 1920s building, it has the vibe of a traditional Parisian brasserie, but here you’ll find an emphasis on lighter dishes as well as cocktails crafted from boutique spirits and rooftop ingredients.

Every Wednesday, Rooftop Garden Tours are hosted by Seattle Urban Farm Company, and include a complimentary Rum Fizz, made with Jamaican rum, mint, sparkling wine, bitters and (of course) rooftop honey. Cost is $10 per person; limit 10 people. Contact the restaurant for reservations.


flour + water, and Central Kitchen, San Francisco
Thomas McNaughton of popular Mission pizzeria flour + water opened his newest venture on May 9. Both restaurants have rooftop gardens, and Central Kitchen is a lovely, modern rustic sanctuary serving simple, seasonal fare that highlights Northern California ingredients.

In addition to beehives, Central Kitchen is producing peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, berries, figs, citrus and herbs in a 2,000-square-foot space. Lexans (heavy-weight plastic storage containers used in professional kitchens) serve as garden beds, while herbs flourish in a converted Foosball table. Talk about recycling!

Uncommon Ground on Clark, Chicago
This big sister to the new Edgewater location features a 2,500-square-foot garden with solar panels to heat water used in the restaurant. Everything from beets, eggplant, okra and bush beans are cultivated, including rare seed varieties from the Slow Food “Ark of Taste.” The Ark is dedicated to preserving the “economic, social, and cultural heritage of fruits and vegetables,” as well as promoting genetic diversity. Expect refined crunchy granola fare with ethnic flourishes.

Roberta’s, Brooklyn
This insanely popular Bushwick restaurant made national headlines when chef Carlo Mirarchi was named a 2011 Best New Chef by Food & Wine magazine for his wood-fired pizzas and way with rooftop produce, including some heirloom varieties.

Mirarchi, who is passionate about urban farming and community involvement, uses two repurposed cargo containers on the restaurant’s roof for cultivating crops, and keeps a blog about the evolution of the garden.

[Photo credits: honeycomb; Laurel Miller; tomatoes, Flickr user Muffet]

In this video, Chef Robert Gerstenecker of Park 75 restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel, Atlanta, talks rooftop gardening and beekeeping. He grew up on a family farm and dairy in Ohio.



Doggie Bag Heaven: A Martian Chows Down In Chicago

by David Downie on

Chicago, Chicago – the city is so big and so fabulous you have to say it twice. Buildings are not just tall, they’re also as broad as entire cities. Alleyways are as wide as turnpikes. People are not built for bigness: they’re digitally enhanced for hugeness. Fittingly the portions on the giant plates in the vast eateries of Chicago are bigger than jumbo-size. They’re mega. They’re obscene.

An old-paradigm, European-size guy like me from San Francisco via Paris feels positively dwarfish in Chicago. On a recent trip, the balding pate of this European-Martian barely reached belly-button level in elevators. The Martian felt lost in a forest of fleshy Eiffel Towers.

Eiffel would never have been allowed to build an underfed, skeletal tower in Chicago. It dawned on me on our first day that Chicagoans must be unbearably hungry when in Paris.

It also became clear that extra-terrestrials seem like silly creatures in Chicago. They wear black socks with athletic shoes. They order single-shot small espressos and beg for drinks without ice. They ask for half-orders and doggy bags designed for Great Danes.

Martians also feel an extra-large burden of gluttonous guilt when eating out in Chicago. There is no way normal humans can finish a dish in the Windy City, which should be renamed.

San Francisco columnist Herb Caen once quipped that SF circa 1910 might well have been “the City That Knows How”: by the 1970s it was “the City That Knows Chow.”That title needs to be refreshed and shipped to Chicago; click on the city’s icon and you ought to read “Chow and Know-How.” The sprawling slaughterhouse Carl Sandberg dubbed “hog butcher for the world” has nothing to envy these days when it comes to the world’s dining scene.

Unlikely though it sounds, my wife and I started our culinary trawl of Chicago at the slender tip-top of the feeding ladder: Charlie Trotter’s hallowed temple of gastronomy. As invisible guests of honor – the modernist chef did not actually perceive our presence so glowing was his own – we feasted on Paris-sized nibbles of a surreal, sublime nature. They left us wondering where we were.

The names of Trotter’s dishes and their matched wines sent fellow diners into a gourmet heaven of bafflement: Charred Skipjack with Ponzu & Fava Beans paired with ethereal Cava “L’Hereu-Reserva” Raventos Blanc 2008. Skipjack, it transpired, was a kind of tuna and Ponzu is Japanese vinegar.

Next up, eel: Unagi Terrine with Grapefruit, Red Curry & Kaffir Lime. The whole slippery lot eased its way down my pulsing esophagus with Riesling Kabinett “Zeltinger Sonnenuhr” Selbach-Oster, Mosel 2010. Poetry!

Of the procession of main dishes served with hushed Rolls Royce smoothness I will limit myself to citing the Broken Arrow Ranch Antelope with Toasted Espresso, Crumbled Oats & Boudin Noir which, as everyone knows, is blood sausage. This gutsy work of edible art was worthy of Picasso or perhaps Salvador Dali. We savored the single exquisite bite of antelope with glasses of Rioja “El Puntido” Vinedos de Paganos 2006 that was inky and brawny yet entirely true to its subtle, bittersweet undertones and varietal character.

It would take the rest of the day to tell you of the Granny Smith Apple & Greek Yogurt with Pistachio & Tarragon or the Toffee-Glazed Banana Financier with Candied Hazelnuts, Date Jam & Frothed Pineapple, the Criollo Cake with Parsnip, Red Wine & Candied Vanilla, coddled with Samos “Anthemis” 1999 dessert wine, the chocolates & dainties, the house-baked bread, and more and more and more.

The meal might have been served in Paris by obsequious penguins. Here the waiters were more like English butlers a century ago. The spirit of Chicago manifested itself not in the posh premises, nor in the littleness of the dishes. Chicago was present in the number of courses and the slow, rhythmic cadence of what we ate: the lunch went on for over three hours. Even the stoutest Carl Sandberg Variety diners needed a snooze by the time things wound up.

How different, how ham-fistedly impressive and discus-like in size seemed the bacon cheeseburgers at Miller’s Pub, a Chicago institution not known for its culinary excellence but rather for atmosphere and a rough-cast wait staff. We loved it – the Giga-bite burgers, cooked dangerously rare, and the service, of rare good humor.

“There must be some mistake,” the Martian remarked to the waiter at Tavern at the Park, a cavernous, long-tusked establishment facing Millennium Park. “Is this a double order of mastodon ribs?”

Unused to extra-terrestrial humor the 7-foot-tall waiter chuckled. He seemed to wonder whether the Martian was complaining. Did the diminutive person in black socks want the entire hog? Perhaps the 2-foot-long section of ribcage was not enough?

Happily the ribs fed two of us for several days. They were not only abundant in quantity but succulent, perfectly cooked, moist and delicious.

Most disconcerting of all was the outlandish excellence of the “ethnic” food in Chicago, as if a mixing bowl of a place such as this could be anything but a smorgasbord of genetic material and cuisines, all of them ethnic, meaning totally American.

The salchichon, tapas and sangria at Café Ba-Ba-Reeba made me want to shout – a good thing: shouting was the only way to be heard in the roistering atmosphere. I’ve tasted salt cod fritters as great in a few places, but never so generously served.

And who ever would’ve guessed the best Indian food anywhere outside India might be served in Chicago, in the former meatpacking district? Such was the shock of exquisiteness at Jaipur Chicago, where the tikka and lamb Massala were fab but the most unexpectedly wonderful dish was made of humble lentils, spinach and ginger. It was not photogenic and as green as my gills! I wept with spicy delight, thanking Ganesh as we headed home laden with white cartons: no matter how good the grub, there was just too much of it.

Strange to tell, by the time the Martian made it to his flying saucer at O’Hare his wife no longer recognized him. He had begun to look less Martian. He wore elasticized shorts and white socks. He waddled, loosened his re-notched belt and wondered how he would fit into his third-class seat. The trick to surviving Chicago he knew was to grow tall and broad and carnivorous like a native, or collect vacuum-packed doggy bags and continue to eat Chicago on Mars.

Author and guide David Downie’s latest book is the critically acclaimed “Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light.” His next book, to be published in April 2013, is “Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptical Pilgrimage on the Way of Saint James.” His websites are www.davidddownie.com, www.parisparistours.com, http://wanderingfrance.com/blog/paris and http://wanderingliguria.com, dedicated to the Italian Riviera.

Rude US Customs Officials: How Not To Welcome People To The United States

by Sean McLachlan on

Some people should not be allowed to wear a uniform.

While flying from Spain to the U.S. to attend the Gadling annual team summit, I touched down first at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. I got into line at U.S. Customs to enter the country.

The line was in a huge room with a row of bulletproof glass booths manned by U.S. Customs & Border Protection officials checking passports and visas. These booths blocked entrance to the baggage claim area and, officially, the United States. The line for U.S. citizens and Green Card holders was long but moving steadily thanks to several booths being open and the generally efficient work of the U.S. Customs folks manning them.

The line for foreigners was a different story. Only one booth was open and the line was practically at a standstill. There was a bit of grumbling in various languages but no loud complaining. Everyone just stood there looking jetlagged while watching a big flat screen TV hanging over the booths.

It was playing a promotional video about all the things to see in the United States. Images of the Grand Canyon, Alamo, Yosemite and other great attractions flickered across the screen, interspersed with a diversity of smiling Americans saying, “Welcome.”

As I waited my turn, one woman in her early twenties who looked like she was from Southeast Asia walked up to the head of the foreigners’ line where an airport worker stood.

“Excuse me,” the Asian woman said with a heavy accent, holding out her ticket, “I will be late for flight.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” the worker said, waving her off. “Get back in line.”

“But the flight–“

“Wait in line!”

The Asian woman quickly retreated, looking at her watch.I was about to shrug this off as Case #4,589,513 of Airport Rudeness when the tale took a turn for the worse. After a couple of minutes, the airport worker called over a U.S. Customs officer. I hesitate to describe him because you might think I’m exaggerating, but believe me when I say he was short, with a big paunch and black, greased back hair. His face was also greasy and over a poorly trimmed mustache he had a big, pockmarked nose – a boozer’s nose, a Bukowski nose.

The airport official said something to him and pointed at the Asian woman. The passenger looked over hopefully. The officer summoned her by jutting his chin in her direction.

The woman approached with her ticket held out.

“Excuse me. I am late for flight. . .”

The officer gestured at the ticket.

“What’s this?”

“My flight. . .”

“So you’re late? Everybody’s late! Hey, is anyone else here late?”

“I am!” some British wanker chimed in.

“Go,” the Customs agent said, dismissing her with a wave of the hand.

She stood there a moment, looking confused.

“Get back in line!” he shouted.

I almost said something. I almost said, “I’m not late for my flight. I have a three-hour layover. She can go in front of me. And stop being so unprofessional.”

But I didn’t. Unlike last month’s run-in with a rude airport security official, I was trying to enter a country, not leave one, and speaking up against this lowlife wouldn’t help the Asian woman and would almost certainly get me in trouble. So I didn’t say anything. I still feel bad about it, but there really wasn’t anything I could do. The fact that he did this within full sight of several of his coworkers showed that his work environment didn’t discourage that sort of thing.

Another small man with a bit of power treating other people like dirt.

We kept waiting in line as a succession of TV Americans welcomed us with big smiles. After a while the Asian woman stopped looking at her watch. She’d missed her flight.

[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]