There are five senses. I think that the one that is the least appreciated would be the sense of smell. Call it the Zack Greinke of the senses, if you will. Memories can be so intertwined with smells. Just think of the smell of fresh cut grass and where that immediately transports your brain to. Maybe it’s the backyard on a warm summer evening sipping on a glass of cool lemonade where the beads of condensation are lapping down the glass. Maybe you catch a whiff of apples and are taken to your mom’s kitchen where a fresh apple pie is cooling in the window sill.
Not all smells are great, however. For years there was an odor that took me back to the old Penguin Park on Vivion Road. This is before they closed off the penguin and the elephant. They used to be slides you could climb up and slide down. But at the top was a distinct, pungent smell. My youthful brain hadn’t put it together that what I was smelling was human urine and probably pigeon droppings. But it logged it in the database nonetheless. Now, when I walk down a busy street and that whiff comes off of an alleyway, I’m taken back in time.
Last week, I got my first opportunity to visit the New KCI Airport terminal and was just as awe-inspiring as most of you who have been to visit it can attest. While I’m sure many of us had a fondness for the old airport, going to the new one just makes those memories comically wrong.
The thing I like best is that the storefronts aren’t just generic cookie-cutter stores – they have real ties to local communities like City Market and Brookside. I am still waiting for the Red X store to be set up there, but let’s walk before we run.
There are really only two major flaws with the airport that I noticed. The first is that I could not pick up a copy of the Platte County Landmark – basically the oldest continually operating newspaper west of the Mississippi. This needs to be rectified immediately.
The second is more nuanced. It smells. You notice it when you walk down the long hallway from security. It smells like hickory and brisket and flames. It smells like your backyard on the Fourth of July after the cookout. It smells like you’ve walked into Arthur Bryant’s for the first time. It smells like Kansas City. The smell permeates every part of your nasal cavity. It immediately causes your mouth to water as you anticipate the first chomp into a slab of ribs or that burnt end sandwich.
Why is this a flaw? I’ve been to dozens of airports across many, many states in this country and others. There is NOTHING like this anywhere else. You don’t fly into Chicago Midway and have it smell like Old Style beer. You don’t fly into Orlando and have it smell like anything other than sweat-through Tommy Bahama shirts and feet. LAX doesn’t smell like failure after writing that first screenplay. Kansas City smells.
It changes the game for airports. Now ALL airports will need to come up with a gimmicky smell to greet arrivals to their city. Maybe Cincinnati will smell like chili and onions. Maybe Boston will smell like beans or watered down tea. Perhaps Dallas/Fort Worth will smell like spent shotgun shells. KCI has changed the game.
As I was leaving the airport this weekend, Kansas City’s Mayor Quinton Lucas was passing me by. As he is a friend of The Landmark, we stopped and exchanged pleasantries. I expressed to him my displeasure that KCI will forever be tied to the smell of the fire pit at Q39 or the baked beans at Jack Stack. He told me “It smells like Kansas City.” And I guess it’s hard to argue with that.
If you haven’t made it to the airport yet, just know that the airport smells… like home.
(Fly away with Chris Kamler anytime on Twitter, where you’ll find him as @TheFakeNed)