The decline of the airshow

My wife and I love to go to airshows - or at least we used to. Oh, we still go every year, but we just don't enjoy it as much, and we find ourselves getting bored and anxious to leave. The problem is that the organizers are ruining the shows by trying to make them more popular.

As an example, let me tell you about the Russell Mills Outlet Store. Russell Mills is a world-famous brand of athletic wear that is manufactured right here in Alabama - Benjamin Russell placed his home office and plant in Alex City, ALabama, and Russell is highly respected and competetive with Nike and UnderArmour. In the 80's, they opened a factory outlet store at the plant, and it was heaven on earth! The place was LOADED with discontinued t-shirts, shorts, jackets, etc., and everything in there was $1, $2, or $5. You could leave with an armload of stuff for $20, and it would be stuff they were going to throw out anyway. Oh yeah, you had to dig through a ton of stuff to find what you wanted, but that was part of the fun. And it was all good, quality Russell athletic wear. Then, somebody got the idea of trying to make the store more appealing to the ladies, and that was the beginning of the end. There were no longer random tables piled high with stacks of random t-shirts and shorts. Suddenly, everything was organized and color-coordinated. Suddenly, there were tons of matching jogging suits, matching leg-warmers, iron-on stations, headbands/wristbands, pink hats, and NO random t-shirts to be found anywhere. ANd the prices suddenly went way up, too. What had started out as the coolest "guy" clothing store on earth, devolved into a clone of every other athletic-wear store at the mall. At first, the women flocked to it. Within a year, they'd abandoned it, and it eventually closed down.

They ruined it by trying to make it more appealing to the wrong market.

Now, back to the airshows. I'm a WWII buff, and I LOVE looking at vintage airplanes. Grancey and I would go to the airshows every Spring, and I would be like a kid in a toy store. I'd race around like a total geek to each vintage aircraft and give to my wife a complete rundown on the history of each plane. There would always be P-38's, P-40’s, P-47's, P-51's, Spitfires, FW-190's, ME-109’s, ME-110’s, a very rare ME-262, Betty’s, Zero’s, Kate’s, B-17’s, B-24’s, B-25’s, Corsair’s, and several others. And the best part – the ABSOLUTE best part is that many of these things would FLY! They would crank up those gigantic engines, rumble down the runway, and FLY! Usually, my wife was fairly bored at my historical ravings, but she always loved to see those big bastards actually fly. The sound they made was incredible, and very unique, and I would say, “Now, try to imagine an entire squadron of those things all taking off and circling overhead at the same time.” You could pay to climb through a B-17. You could pay to RIDE in a P-51. Unbelievable.

And then something changed. I don’t know what happened, but the airshow flight demonstrations suddenly changed into all these stupid fucking multicolored biplane and ultra-light stunt flights. Who gives a shit to watch a basically overgrown radio-controlled plane do rolls and flips? That’s not an airshow – that’s a freakin circus. Where are the planes? The real planes? Not the cutesy little froo-froo planes, but the REAL ones? What happened to the vintage aircraft? At yesterday’s show in Columbus, Georgia (the home to the massive Ft. Benning US Army Base, by the way), there was only ONE vintage airplane – a lonely B-25. They let it fly, but it had to circle the western part of Columbus for 20 minutes while some stupid fucker in a purple and green stunt plane did the same stupid, fucking, boring dives/rolls/flips, etc., etc., etc. Okay, I know those are probably hard to do and are probably impressive to somebody, but I wanted to see the REAL plane fly. That single lonely B-25 made it POSSIBLE for you idiots to enjoy the freedom to allow you to fly your stupid toy airplane in the first place, so how about a little respect? And then, when the B-25 was finally allowed to give us a few flybys, they blasted some ridiculous Top Gun music from the loudspeakers so that you couldn't hear the fucking plane!!! I don’t want to hear Kenny Loggins – I want to hear those gigantic Detroit engines rumble past.

It’s been getting that way a little bit at a time over the past several years, but yesterday’s show was the worst. And the worst part about it – the airshow was PACKED! There were thousands of people wandering around everywhere spending a fortune on souvenir stands that were set up where the P-51’s used to sit. I’m afraid this is the wave of the future.

It’s the Russell Mills Outlet Store all over again.