The latest list of Best / Worst Urban Things concerns airports, and buckle up for this one: We're No. 1. A new survey of North American airports put MSP at the top -- and third-best on the planet for airports of comparable size. It's easy to see why. Let's look:

1. It's finished. Most airports people visit are in a state of perpetual construction, with signs that say "To serve you better on some theoretical future point in time when you won't care, we are making you walk through a plywood cattle chute with exposed wires." Not us. We're done.

2. The classic disaster movie "Airport" was filmed here, so you know you are walking in the footsteps of Dean Martin. There should be a statue. Over by the bar.

3. Food. Obligatory by-jiminy-old-coot recollection: You kids today with your Wolfgang Duck restaurants -- you know nothing! In olden times, everything at the airport was controlled by HOST, a company that managed to make everything taste like deep-fried napkin wads. It's the only place I've ever been served salty coffee. Ghastly stuff, all of it, ladled out Gulag-style by workers who wished a plane would crash already so they could go home early. It was the nadir of airport culture. Now we have clam smoothies. Organic clam smoothies.

4. Our security is reasonably brisk and cheerful, and the metal detectors aren't set so high they buzz when you're thinking about tinfoil.

5. The moving sidewalks are nine kinds of awesome, when they work; you feel like you have super powers. I am Walkman -- no, Sony copyrighted that. I am StridePerson! It has lanes, although some people still refuse to move over when you come up behind and flash your lights. Best part: when it comes to an end, you can shout FLAPS DOWN! FULL REVERSE and the pilots give you a nod: hey, he's one of us.

If the moving sidewalks aren't working, it's like taking the back roads instead of the highway, but the airport still isn't so huge that you need to pause halfway to the gate and chew on some pemmican before staggering on.

In short, we have a great airport, and it deserves to be No. 1. Of course, some people ranked it low, but they have conditions the airport is not designed to accommodate. Like "Wide Stance."

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/buzz