Yesterday, I went to the Yahoo! Burbank offices for the first time (along with the MyBlogLog guys). I found it remarkable that the Yahoo! offices there are in walking distance from the airport — walking distance! It felt strange to leave the terminal and stroll to the office — no cab, no train.
I had a brief interest in city planning (mainly from reading Jane Jacobs seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities), and the proximity of air transport to actual office space seems like an anomaly in a world of misguided modern city planning — but a fortunate one as far as I’m concerned (not that the area around the Burbank airport is a vibrant city, but still. . . . )
Burbank airport is awesome. I used to fly in there once a month to visit the EarthLink offices in Pasadena. It’s small and you get mostly commuters, so it’s hardly crowded at all.
I don’t know if you know this, but it’s actually a widely spread theory that YSM office was uprooted out of Pasadena, just to make it easy on Sunnyvale-based execs & co. So while it’s a great treat for people visiting, imagine the current HQ location go from being based in downtown Palo Alto to right across the street from SJC (only with fewer lunch options, and an unsubsidized cafeteria).
Anyway, just another viewpoint.
Because I live only 10 minutes from the Oakland airport, travel to the Burbank office sometimes is faster than the time it takes me to travel to Yahoo’s HQ in Sunnyvale.
As I tell my son, “it goes further but it’s a faster bus”
Dude, come to San Diego and walk to my condo from the airport. Then you can walk to my office 3 blocks away. San Diego rules. The valley is so tiresome.