Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Iconic Carpet?

Pop quiz: What's the carpet look like at the airport closest to you? Or, any airport for that matter.

Forget airports, can you think of any carpet pattern in any public space anywhere? I can visualize the carpet pattern on the bulkhead of an Alaska Airlines flight quite clearly because I've stared at it for countless hours over the years. But that's on a wall, not the floor.

If you ever saw it, you could never forget the circles that were spray-painted onto the carpet in my childhood home. Sure, it was the 60's but the pattern was really just an elaborate scheme to cover up a spot in the rug.

But I couldn't tell you the pattern in the rug at the library, for instance. Or the color of the linoleum tile at the grocery store. Could you?

Jasper Fforde likes taking pictures of carpets. (You can see his photos by following him on Instagram or Twitter.) He even took one of the carpet at Portland International Airport. According to Oregon Live, the nearly-30-year-old carpet is iconic.

Iconic. (Spray-painted circles is iconic. Any carpet in Las Vegas is iconic. Maybe they meant ironic.)

If I don't update the carpet in my house for another 20 years with that be iconic too? (I should let Zillow know that's an architectural feature.)

Portland's airport carpet has it's own social media accounts and now you can buy clothing that sport the carpet's pattern. (It's like Gone With The Wind only with carpet.)

PDX's most famous feature is being replaced but don't despair! As the airport spends the next year replacing the 13 acres of carpet, you have the opportunity to buy some of the old carpet. It's only slightly used - by some 300,000,000 people. (Should I let Jasper know?)

Hey, we just bought a new condo. Maybe I can put some of the PDX carpet in the living room. What do you think?

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