Sioux City Explorers

74

Logowise, we're clearly not ending the season on a high note here at the Bush League Factor. After two reviews of highly generic logos (the New Orleans Zephyrs and les Capitales de Québec), our season ends with this yawner. At least the Zephyrs and les Capitales had the excuse that they picked a name that's hard to make into a logo. No such excuse here: it's easy to draw an explorer. In fact there are so many ways to draw an explorer that it's not funny. Draw someone wearing in a pith helmet. Draw someone wearing an arctic parka. Draw someone wearing a coonskin hat. Hell, draw a fucking Ford SUV for all I care. There was absolutely no need to just draw a big letter X.

This isn't, I might add, the only problematic use of the letter X in town. And no, I'm not talking about porn movies. I'm referring to the airport code for Sioux Gateway Airport, which is located in Sioux City. Some wise guy with the FAA decided that it would be funny to saddle the airport with the code SUX. Serio— okay, maybe "seriously" isn't quite the word I'm after here, but that really is the airport code for Sioux Gateway. Predictably, there have been complaints from time to time. Back in 2002, the mayor referred to the designation as an "embarrassment". The airport board petitioned to have a new code (this was their second such attempt), and one of the alternatives they were offered — again, this is true — was GAY. At this point the people of Sioux City realized that the FAA was clearly messing with them, and decided to stick with SUX. In fact, they embraced it. The website for the airport is now www.flysux.com, and if you go to the Gift Shop page, you can order T-Shirts and Coffee Mugs that say "FLY SUX". (I'd have gone with "FLYING SUX" personally, but FLY SUX works fine.)

I have to say, however, that I'm not certain why they decided to stick with SUX if they were so dissatisfied that they were moved to petition for a change. Sure, I get why they didn't want to switch to GAY if the whole point was to get people to quit snickering at the designation. But remember that I didn't say that this was the only alternative they were offered; I said that this was one of the alternatives they were offered. Other possibilities included GWU, GYO, GYT, and SGV. These may not be the most memorable designations (on the other hand, wasn't how memorable the SUX designation is part of the problem?), but they're not bad. And given the rule that you can't duplicate the airport code of another airport anywhere in the world, options that clearly referred to Sioux City and didn't make people giggle were in short supply (SIO, SIU, and SCY are all taken).

And besides, it's not the worst designation out there. First, you've got the various abbreviations that are shortened forms of vulgar words (Japan has FUK, India COK, Portugal HOR). But for my money, the hands-down winner of the "Designations You Don't Want" contest is Arrachart Airport in Antsiranana, Madagascar. The designation? DIE. Before 1975 Antsiranana was known as Diego-Suarez, and for whatever reasons they've never gotten the designation changed. Sure, English isn't one of the official languages of Madagascar, but surely there are people there who know enough English to understand that this may not be the best designation to have. So while I can sympathize with the people of Sioux City, my opinion is that I'd much rather fly into SUX than DIE.

Final Score: 74 points.
Penalties: Equipment, 13 pts; Letter (egregious), 49 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None.