On Thursday afternoon Sam and I flew to New York City to visit her friend M (who had very generously invited us to stay at her apartment in mid-town). When we walked out of the airport to find our pre-booked towncar at 1am EST we discovered a “pick ups” lane at JFK that was nothing like LAX (or any other American airport I’ve seen). Typically in airports (and LAX has an army of security officers to enforce this) the pick-up lanes can only be used if you actually see your party and can swoop in, pick them up, and get the hell out.
At JFK people just park. Three lanes deep. Get out of their car and wander. Occasionally a tow truck meanders through and attempts to warn people that they’ll get towed if they leave their car. However, these people say “yeah, whatever” and wander off again since being bumper-to-bumper with the next car, the tow truck wouldn’t be able to pull the parked car out anyway.
Finally our car came after about 20 minutes and we were on our way.