PORTLAND, OREGON, AIRPORT REPLACING CARPET; CITIZENS FREAK OUT

Portland, Oregon, International Airport is replacing its a 30-year-old carpet, and people are freaking. Locals and visitors – more than 800 – lined up last week to snap photos next to a segment of the floor covering hung up for an event called PDX Carpet Fest. The city threw a farewell party for the airport’s trademark teal carpet, decorated with dark-blue liners and red, lavender and purple dots meant to symbolize air traffic controllers’ view at night. The floor covering flew under the radar (!) until officials started putting down a new carpet last year. Some locals realized how much the old carpet meant to them as a symbol of returning home. Once word spread the carpet was going to be torn up, the weathered floor covering became an online sensation. More than 40,000 “foot selfies” – photos people took of their feet on the carpet – were plastered on Instagram. Companies even started to sell T-shirts featuring the pattern. “I can’t imagine another city getting this worked up over carpet,” said Sierra Prior, a Portland resident who posed for photos before boarding her plane to New Orleans.
* This may be the first time an entire city needed to get a life.
* Wait’ll they hear about the new doormats.
* Ah, Portland, or as we like to call it, West Florida.
* Teal with dark-blue liners and red, lavender and purple dots meant to symbolize air traffic controllers’ view at night. Or the time Homer Simpson tripped out on chili peppers.
* Guess what kind of coverage this is getting in Portland? That’s right … wall to wall.
* It was time. The first people to walk on the old carpet were Lewis and Clark.
* That was before the airport, when Portland was just the end of the Oregon Trail.
* Changing the carpet is the biggest news story out of Portland since they captured Tonya Harding.
* At first they tried to keep this a secret but it was too hard to sweep it under the carpet.