Flights of Fancy

How fast can you get from La Guardia Airport to John F. Kennedy Airport? 

Mapquest says it takes 17 minutes to drive the 11.48 miles between the two Queens airports. I did it in 8 minutes one Sunday morning some 20 years ago. And that included paying and exiting the parking garage at La Guardia and entering a parking lot at JFK.

Just as I hope my blogs conjure up memories for my readers, I’m reminded of personal events by articles I read. Today’s withdrawal from the memory bank was prompted by last Sunday’s NY Times article, “Right Day and Airline. The Airport? Um, No” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/nyregion/for-fliers-mixing-up-la-guardia-and-jfk.html).

I was scheduled to fly to Las Vegas in early May for my first exposure to the annual convention of the shopping center industry. Back then, pre-9/11, it was not uncommon to arrive at an airport just minutes before departure time. I gave myself plenty of cushion for the 8 am flight by sauntering into the main La Guardia terminal at 7:40. I looked up at the America West flight schedule screen. Odd. There was no listing for the non-stop flight to Las Vegas. It took several seconds for it to register in my brain. My flight was scheduled to depart from Kennedy, not La Guardia!

I raced back to my car, parked on the ground level of the garage. 7:42 am. Luck was with me. There was no one ahead of me at the parking lot toll booth. I hurtled onto the Grand Central Parkway into the Van Wyck Expressway, for once a road that lived up to its name. With virtually no other cars on the Van Wyck that Sunday morning, I floored the accelerator of my 1986 Mazda 626. I veered into a parking lot at JFK. 7:50 am. 

I could easily make the gate by 8 am if I just walked briskly but remembered the advice I’d been given to get there early as America West usually overbooked this flight and wasted no time in bumping no shows. The next flight was not until late that afternoon. I ran from the parking lot through the terminal to the gate, arriving just before 8, to find out the flight was delayed for half an hour because of mechanical problems. I checked in. My seat had not been given away. 

Arriving at the wrong airport led to my one and only helicopter ride. I wasn’t at fault that time. My La Guardia-bound flight was diverted to Newark. Rather than shuttle-bus a handful of us to Queens, the airline transported us in style, aboard a helicopter. The vertical sensation of lift-off and descent, plus the bird’s-eye view of the Manhattan skyline, made for a memorable experience. I truly get the whirlybird fascination.

Getting to the airport at an appropriate time is but one of the travel offenses I have inflicted on my family. During our family’s first trip to England around 1986, we almost extended our stay in the Mother Country. We had to race through the terminal, like OJ in an old Hertz commercial, to get to our plane before they secured the boarding area. When Gilda and I attended a retail industry conference in San Antonio, I was embarrassed to find out we arrived one day late and our room had been reassigned. Only through the intervention of the conference chairman did Gilda not terminate my existence then and there.

Perhaps my most almost-egregious mishap occurred during a trip to Luxembourg. I was a featured speaker at a SAP software conference. Gilda and I turned my speaking engagement into a two week trip through Amsterdam, Brussels and finally Luxembourg. We arrived in Luxembourg Monday evening. I was to speak Wednesday morning, so Tuesday we decided to tour the city. 

As we waited for our car to be brought to the front of the hotel Tuesday morning, I thought I’d go to the restroom on the lower level. The conference registration area was on the way, so I took the opportunity to tell the coordinator I’d arrived safely. She was more than relieved—she said they were wondering where I was. I was to give my presentation in 20 minutes! 

Zounds! Yikes! Sacre Bleu! I no longer had to go to the bathroom. Instead, I raced upstairs, found Gilda wandering the lobby and told her I had to hurriedly change out of my jeans into my suit because I was to go on in now less than 15 minutes. I made it back down with a minute or two to spare and with the resolve to double and triple check my schedules from then on. How embarrassing that would have been had I failed to deliver my presentation after enjoying a two-week vacation underwritten by their confidence in me? It makes me shutter to think of it even to this day.

My Link to Newt

The presidential campaign season is heating up with its never ending quest for votes preceded by its more sordid side, its never ending dual quest for donors and dollars.

Last week’s edition of The Jewish Week asked, “Will Gingrich Bomb With Jewish Republicans?” The consensus answer was, yes. Despite his unwavering support of Israel, Newt Gingrich has too much baggage to appeal to most Jewish voters who see his domestic agenda as repugnant to their more progressive positions on issues such as abortion, gay rights, and entitlement programs.

Accordingly, Gingrich can expect little financial support from GOP Jews. Except from one deep-pocketed fellow, noted The Jewish Week. Namely, “gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson.” Forbes ranked Adelson the thirteenth wealthiest American, with $14.7 billion in net worth.

Gingrich’s week has been less than spectacular for a kickoff of a presidential run, but I’m not here to bury his candidacy. Rather, my attention is focused on Adelson.

I first met Shelly Adelson about 25 years ago. At the time he headed up The Interface Group which produced COMDEX, the computer industry’s biggest exposition, attracting some 100,000 conventioneers to Las Vegas. COMDEX was run as a closed operation. With rare exception, attendees booked their plane and hotel reservations through COMDEX. The turnkey program was a big moneymaker.

With a convention system structured around Las Vegas in place, Interface cast about for another conference theme. It discovered the National Housewares Manufacturers Association had recently scrapped its July show, opting for just one big expo a year, in January, in Chicago. Adelson et al decided to pounce on the opportunity to outmuscle the housewares association. It proposed a show in Las Vegas in August.

To jumpstart his idea, Adelson came a-courting to our offices in New York. Together with Chain Store Age General Merchandise Trends, of which I was editor and publisher, our three other merchandising publications were important media for anyone who wanted to reach housewares industry influentials, both at the retailer and vendor levels. Adelson came down from his Boston headquarters to gain our support.

He could hardly have been less accommodating. Instead of listening to our ideas, he told us how he would upend the industry, how buyers and sellers would flock to Las Vegas regardless of how hot the town could be in August. By the end of the meeting, our two camps were as divided as the North and South after Lincoln’s election.

The show was a disaster. Though scheduled to run three days, exhibitors started tearing down their booths in the middle of the second day, a violation of every standard at any trade show. They could hardly be blamed, for there was virtually no retailer traffic. No one wanted to come to Las Vegas in 110 degree heat.

I didn’t really care as Gilda had joined me for her first trip to Las Vegas. When the vendors started folding up their tents, they also started selling floor samples. We bought a 12-inch heavy metal skillet we’re still using today, a constant reminder of Adelson’s flaming out in the sun.

Of course, Adelson took it all in stride, never held another housewares show, subsequently sold COMDEX and parlayed the proceeds into casino holdings in Vegas and around the globe. He’s also become quite a philanthropist. Among his many endowments is the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in Israel, headed up by Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik and prisoner, Israeli politician, human rights activist and author.

About three years ago I was leafing through a magazine on Jewish philanthropists when I came across a picture of an “unidentified man” with Edelson and his wife at a gala honoring them for their support of the Adelson Institute. I couldn’t contain my cheekiness so I sent an email to the editor alerting him to his twin error—not only did he fail to recognize and identify the world famous Sharansky, but he also double-dissed him by not knowing that Sharansky was the head of the institute. Yes, I know that was bad form. But really, how could the editor of a Jewish magazine not know Natan Sharansky, one of the seminal Jewish figures of the last 30 years of the 20th Century?

Blockbuster Press

Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy today. Though the video rental store hopes to emerge reorganized as a more viable enterprise, it is doubtful it will be anywhere near as impactful as it was before Netflix and other digital alternatives intermediated its unique selling proposition.

Blockbuster was a ubiquitous store of the 1990s. By 2001 it operated nearly 8,000 outlets. I was a card-carrying Blockbuster member, but, in truth, I rarely frequented the chain. Instead of renting video tapes, I turned to Tommy, a mailroom employee at work, to provide what charitably can be described as bootlegged copies of films. Three films to a tape, for $10. Eventually, through Tommy’s efforts and my own taping off cable, I amassed a sizable cache of films, more than 500. I have nowhere near that many these days. That’s what happens when your kids grow up and out and there’s no longer pent up demand to watch Beaches or Superman or The Parent Trap upteen times.

Being no more than a casual customer of Blockbuster made it somewhat difficult to follow the nuances of one of the more dynamic companies of the last three decades. Good thing I had staff members who were more regular patrons. The same thing can be said for Starbucks. I’m not a coffee drinker; I probably can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been inside a Starbucks. Again, my coffee-caffeinated staff kept us up to date.

When I first shifted my career from newspaper journalism to business to business reporting for a restaurant publication based in Manhattan, none of the staff writers had been inside a Wendy’s. This was 1977. There were no Wendy’s in the greater NY metro area. Yet we were supposed to write stories about this fast-growing Columbus, Ohio-based chain that was seen as a real threat to McDonald’s, especially with young adults. Had the foodservice industry known about our knowledge deficiency I am sure it would not have entrusted us to report accurately and intelligently.

Of course, the press rarely lets you see behind its black curtains. We prefer exposing the foibles of others. Two amusing stories surfaced this week, both revealing how dumb people in business can be.

In launching its Canadian service Wednesday, Netflix staged a media event in Toronto. It hoped to show ordinary citizens excited about the video service. Trouble was, Netflix hired actors to play the part of ordinary citizens, to especially pretend to be excited if a member of the press approached them. Caught in the ruse, Netflix issued a red-faced apology.

Earlier this week, Assif Mandvi of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart reported on union efforts to picket Wal-Mart in Las Vegas. The United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 711, is fighting Wal-Mart’s use of non-union labor. According to Mike Giddings, a spokesman for the 7,000-member Local 711, the retailer’s workers receive minimum wage and have no protection should the company cut back their hours.

It was an argument sure to resonate with many sympathetic to the workers’ plight, especially when Mandvi noted the picketers walked the line in temperatures well above 100 degrees. It was then he dropped the “gotcha” as deftly as any Mike Wallace 60 Minutes piece. Turns out the picketers were not members of the union. They were hired, temporary non-union workers, earning minimum wage whose hours were summarily cut back from five to three days a week when the union’s treasurer left town for a few days. Tripped up by his own complaints, Giddings provided a human portrait of a deer caught in headlights. See for yourself in this clip http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-20-2010/working-stiffed (if the clip doesn't load on The Daily Show page, search for Working Stiffed.)

For nearly four decades I made my living asking questions. For 30 of those years I, in turn, was the voice of a national magazine on retailing, fielding questions from reporters from around the country, even internationally, about the retail industry. Occasionally I even appeared on television and spoke on radio. All those interviews, by far, were the most harrowing part of my job. Not because I had stage fright. Rather, it was because you really never knew how your responses would be used by a reporter. So every word I passed I first had to parse in my brain on seven second delay, to make sure I would not say something out of context.

Take my advice—if a reporter asks you a question, politely decline to answer. Trust me. It’s not worth your 15 minutes of fame, or infamy.