Thursday, 20 May 2004 | Air America

The Air America Radio studio reminds me a lot of the studio at my former university. It's small and modest and apparently not top-of-the-line, which is what I'd subconsciously hoped it would look like. The ceilings are low, the rooms fan off in a maze of tight corners, and some of the equipment looks like it has seen other decades. The only obvious extravagance is the view of Midtown, which presents itself like the city's beating heart, complete with busy veins and arteries that stream in and out, far down below.

My friend Joel, who works at Air America, had suggested I stop by last week to take a look around and watch Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder host their show, The Majority Report. I arrived in time to see the last fifteen minutes of it.

After we got out of the elevator on the top floor, Joel disappeared around one of the corners. I blindly weaved my way through the maze and ran into Bill, the newsman with a voice of syrup. "He went that way," he pointed, referring to my friend. "Down the hall and to the right." He added, "It should be to the left, I know, but it's to the right."

I found Joel in a room adjacent to the studio, where I could see Janeane and Sam from behind glass, a few feet away, mouthing the words that were being broadcast over a speaker above my head. I reminded myself that thousands of people were listening at that moment, that I, myself, had just been listening on my radio at home, that that was Janeane Garofalo sitting there, doing her weekday job, and that I was watching something that is politically important and new and still learning how to walk.

"You get used to it fast," a coworker of Joel's told me, saying something about how it stops being so surreal. I wasn't there long enough for that to happen to me.

When 11:00 came, the hosts relaxed, took off their headphones, sat back in their chairs, and began silently talking to each other, their words no longer coming through the speaker.

Joel led me through the rest of the station, a tour that included a very important-looking room full of metal boxes and blinking lights reminiscent of a Star Trek spacecraft. It made me nervous, as if there were a real possibility that I might accidentally bump into some sort of all-powerful button and throw the station off the air.

After Janeane and Sam left, I (reluctantly but willingly) took some pictures of the studio, including a few in which Joel and I took turns sitting in the pilot's seat, as if it were our radio show. It made me feel simultaneously like a tourist and a seven-year-old, but I think that's OK in this case.

sound board
me
joel
sound board (two)