Shoes in hand, do the security dance

Tyler Brule is not enjoying the workout he’s getting at airport security checkpoints.  His take on the stripping, frisking, and queuing is funny, sad, and dead-on. Some excerpts from the International Herald Tribune:

Which of the following do you prefer? “The Barcelona Way,” “the Finnish Body Punch” or “the Hounslow Conga”? If you’re not familiar with these various regimes, let me explain. In the Catalan version of the airport security check you have to take off as many articles of clothing as possible, fill up as many plastic bins as you can balance in one arm while towing a wheely suitcase in the other and then deposit all of them on a conveyor belt…The Hounslow Conga is an Anglofied version of this ’50s party classic, only slower and without a theme tune. Like a regular conga line, lots of people (in this case thousands), all squeeze together in a long snake and dopily follow the person in front them…Having sampled all of the above over the past two weeks, I found Heathrow airport’s Hounslow Conga to be by far the most soul-destroying. — read the entire piece here.