'Are You Kidding Me?': LaGuardia Travelers Forced To Wade Through Indoor Pond

LaGuardia Airport knows it bores you. It knows that the relentless construction, scheduled to end never, frustrates you. Perhaps to make itself a little more appealing in your eyes, a few degrees more interesting, it sprang a fun new water feature right inside Terminal B. (The one Joe Biden once called a "Third World country," and the one that recently debuted its glossy makeover.) Please note, though, that the addition does not appear to have been the result of deliberate choices made by the governor's Airport Advisory Panel, but rather, the manifestation of LaGuardia's tremendous will to enthrall you.

A Gothamist tipster, who asked to remain anonymous, reports that she encountered this vast airport lake around 10:30 on Tuesday morning, after getting off a flight from Canada. "The immediate area where you board the plane was fine, but then, as you followed the signs out towards baggage claim," she recalled, "there was a queue forming and it probably was at least 100 people deep." The reason for the crowd? "This massive puddle that started somewhere underneath the escalators."

Our tipster suspected seepage from the adjacent construction zone, but answers were not forthcoming.

"You couldn't not go through it: there was no other way to get through the arrivals area and actually get to your bags or get to ground transportation," she added. She estimates that Lake LaGuardia had sprawled to roughly 600 square feet, and reached four to six inches at its deepest points.

Airport personnel reportedly brought out the wet vacs, and implored people to STAY BACK until better, more effective wet vacs materialized, but no one wants to stay in LaGuardia for a minute longer than they absolutely have to, and resolute travelers would not be deterred: They intrepidly forded the indoor river, roller bags be damned. Hat tip to the quick thinker who appears to have repurposed Hudson News bags as galoshes.

"I think the overall reaction was, 'Are you kidding me?'" our tipster said, adding that airport staff did the best they could, under the circumstances. And yes, the interminable shutdown of the federal government has only exacerbated the preternaturally high strain airport workers face on any given day.

According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the issue was not actually an underground spring burbling up into the arrivals hall, nor did the unreasonable chill that descended upon NYC this weekend lead to a water main break. No, the reported root of the problem was a busted sprinkler, which is to say: Lake LaGuardia also features a majestic indoor waterfall and authentic mists!

Well, or it did before airport officials cleaned it up, which Port Authority believes they have. (This happened Tuesday morning, after all.) In any case, LaGuardia operated an ersatz bus service to rescue stranded passengers from the arrivals hall and ferry them around to the baggage carousels.

Certainly, I can see where it would be annoying to walk off a plane and into a sprawling puddle. I can see where you might be miffed, if you've just spent the past three hours with your knees crimped up under your chin, walled into your seat by a sleeping neighbor, and now it's your time to sprint for the toilets but you can't because there's a pond in your way. But LaGuardia is nothing if not a sea of headaches, and maybe it's better to just embrace our fate. Boats have always been better than airplanes, if you ask me.