Ode to the Air Shaft

Let us take a moment today to honor the humble air shaft, without whom many of our favorite filmic moments and plot devices simply would not be. The air shaft enables clever escapes, crucial infiltrations and rescues, mysterious hostile movements and attacks, convenient storage, and overheard conversations of relevant magnitude. In fact I would like to proclaim today, March 4, as International Air Shaft Day.

Whenever you see an air shaft employed to just such ends in any drama high or low, don’t take it for granted.  Raise your glass and take a moment to thank the special breed of Hollywood air shaft employed to just such clever ends. Why novelists, radio dramatists, comic book writers, playwrights, and other, less innovative media scribes have failed to recognize the miraculous qualities of this engineering marvel is quite beyond me.

For the Hollywood air shaft is accessible with a makeshift screwdriver or simple banging with a palm, vented large enough to enter and exit, at least roomy enough to crawl through, sturdy enough to take an adult male human’s weight throughout its length, and thoughtfully sound baffled so as not to disturb occupants as its user traipses along its metal length from place to place. Without the highly evolved and carefully engineered Hollywood air shaft, so many of our favorite films, classic and otherwise, would falter, requiring their creators (if you’ll pardon the exaggeration) to concoct some hitherto unexplored means of sneaking from place to place within a structure.

Why has the humble air shaft gained predominance over the the lesser employed but similarly convenient, accessible, and roomy sewer drains that clearly pervade Los Angeles (and thus by extension the remainder of the civilizable world)? I submit that our arboreal roots (yuck yuck) take precedence. We weren’t conscious when we rose from mud but we were getting there when we began to swing from tree to tree.

For the same reason we should honor the myriad films whose heroes and villains duke it out at the top of a building or analogous structure , often a framework under construction, to establish for the other primates who the real alpha male is after all. Here’s to you as well, framework building or analogous structure! Long may you wave — for certainly long shall you.