Perennial "Fuck the Blue Angels" post.

8 months ago

Previously, previously, previously.

Tags: big brother, doomed, sf

12 Responses:

1. thielges says:

   8 months ago at 3:43 pm

   I got buzzed by one of the Blue Angels on Monday.  I didn’t hear it coming and when the jet blast washed over it scared the [insert smiling pile emoticon here] out of me.  He was low and moving fast, maybe 500’ high and 500MPH.  

   I don’t scare easy but nearly fell off my bike.

2. narf says:

   8 months ago at 6:06 pm

   2

   Lived "near" the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Two hours away by car, so probably 30 minutes in their fighters. They would fly just above the power and telephone lines and feeling the sonic boom was... unpleasant. They would aim straight towards the mountains and pull up at the absolute last second. Lot of money to be putting on the line for "training".

   • tfb says:

     8 months ago at 7:14 am

     I don't know about the US, but I did, long ago, have to do with people who flew fast jets in the UK (the company I worked for made the beacons pilots carry so they can be found if they end up in the sea or whatever).  Their claim was that if you wanted to train pilots to fly very low over mountains you did actually need to do that by having them fly very low over mountains, and you expected to lose a few planes (and, I think, implicitly, pilots) doing so.

     Perhaps it's different now but I suspect it's not completely: simulators will be far better but you can't simulate acceleration (ie turning fast) without actually turning fast.

3. Tarragon says:

   8 months ago at 5:48 am

   I worked with someone who was in WTC 1 when it was hit. The office was also under one of the paths the Blue Angels used when advertising* the local airshow.  It was not a good couple of days for my friend.

   * They always called it "training"

4. beesneeze says:

   8 months ago at 7:23 am

   1

   I lived in the Richmond back when San Francisco Fleet Week was a thing. They flew under the Golden Gate Bridge at rush hour and sonic boomed my house when I was trying to sleep after working night shift. Also, the navy regularly went into North Beach and assaulted sex workers and punk rockers at the neighboring clubs. Fuck these people.

5. Michael V. says:

   8 months ago at 1:08 pm

   Back in the late 90s, I worked on the 64th floor of the second tallest building in Chicago. When the Air and Water show was in town, those damn jets would buzz down the streets of Chicago, *underneath* my office. Freaked me the hell out.

   9/11 put an end to that practice, but now they buzz the lakefront, and the noise still terrifies me.

6. CSL3 says:

   8 months ago at 1:52 pm

   Y'know who else hates Fleet Week? My fellow SF native Karl the Fog - which is why I'm so happy to hear that he's been straight up ruining everyone's bullshit military fetish air shows this week.
   (PS.: that image is actually unrelated, I just thought it added well.)

   • Elusis says:

     8 months ago at 10:11 am

     Came  here to post "Thanks, Karl!" but was ninja'ed.

7. Eric says:

   8 months ago at 2:29 pm

   1

   Thankfully today's targets of the US military don't have to worry about noise pollution as the missiles fired from drones are relatively quiet.

8. MattyJ says:

   8 months ago at 12:05 am

   1

   Dissenting opinion: things that go real fast are badass and fun to watch. See: jets, rockets, drag racers, F1 cars, rocket sleds, Bonneville, Jesse Owens, meteors, luge.

   • jwz says:

     8 months ago at 2:08 am

     3

     Those aren't things designed exclusively for mass murder and the promotion thereof.

9. J. Peterson says:

   8 months ago at 1:56 pm

   When I was younger, it was like "Oooh, a live performance of Star Wars". Now, it's a cringey waste of $$$.

   Manned fighter jets are a thing of the past when a gamer in a trailer in Arizona can wreck more havoc via an (much less expensive!) drone.