According to an Associated Press story, Mexico City is beefing up security at Mexico City International Airport ((International Airport Benito Juárez/MEX) after a series of armed robberies against travelers who exchanged money at the airport. 350 police officers have been added since December; now an additional 460 police officers will be assigned to patrol the airport and surrounding areas.
The story says that at least 18 people have been robbed recently outside the airport. They were apparently followed after doing business at the currency exchanges inside.
And Denver International Airport’s Blue Mustang sculpture is in the news.
(Photo courtesy Denver International Airport)
According to this story from Monday’s New York Times:
A statue of a giant male horse – electric-eyed, cobalt blue and anatomically correct – was installed in February 2008 on the roadway approach to the terminal, and it is freaking more than a few people out.”
What do you think? Should they keep it, or send it out to pasture?
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I live in Colorado and fly from/ to DIA a lot. I hope that the city and airport authority don’t succumb to the pressure of the loudly offended because “it is freacking more than a few people out.” The stallion is in the middle of a a spacious open area between roadways. It’s not like a Colossus of Rhodes, where vehicles actually drive under the statue. The story of its creation is quite poignant.
As I wrote on http://travel-babel.blogspot.com more than a year ago, “Denver International Airport was under construction, Luis Jimenez, a sculptor from Hondo, NM, was commissioned to make a 32-foot sculpture for the Peña Boulevard approach to the terminal. While it was a work in progress, a section came loose from a hoist, pinning Jimenez against a steel support beam. He died in June 2006, leaving a widow, two sons and a largely unfinished, very large fiberglass horse. Susan Jimenez and her sons, Orion and Adan who were children when their late father began the work, completed it, and New Mexico painters Richard Lobato and Camillo Nuñez painted it using Jimenez’s color scheme. The mustang has finally been installed at DIA — 16 years after the airport opened.”
So for all those who are so easily freaked out, get a life!