The Symbol of Kuwait

Yesterday I posted a photo I took from the Kuwait Towers showing some of downtown Kuwait. I am posting some pics of the towers themselves today. The towers are iconic to most Kuwaitis. They state that these towers are the symbol of Kuwait. Indeed they are indicative of most of Kuwait. They are ugly, only partially functional, and expensive to boot.

Here is a shot that I took from the main parking lot. The towers are located on a point of land and the area has been fashioned as a recreation area. There is a beach, kiddie park, water park, paintball place, the towers themselves, and walking paths.

In my mind these towers are butt ugly. I'm not sure if they were going for the Buck Rogers look but it does remind me of a place we used to go when we were kids. There was this cheesy hamburger restaurant called "Spaceburger" in Tyler, Texas. I loved it as a kid but this is the kind of building you get when a design school dropout meets bad Science Fiction collision occurs.

There are three towers. A skinny needle, a skinny needle with a disco ball, and a fat needle with two disco balls.


The skinny needle serves no purpose whatsoever rather than to be asthetically pleasing and this it fails at. It looks like a SCUD missle with no fins.

The skinny needle with a disco ball is actually a water tower masquerading as bad art. It has huge tiles that look like sequins which fell off of a dress from a bad guy (girl?) in "Land Of The Giants".

The fat needle with two disco balls is the reason you come (That and there is really not a lot more to see) as it has a restaurant and a viewing floor. The restaurant is in the big disco ball and the viewing floor is in the smaller ball up top. I didn't eat and just elected for the viewing floor.

The ticket cost me 1 Dinar which is $3.45. Prices here are nuts. This place is way more expensive than Dubai and not near as much fun. I trodded around to the base of the fat needle and walked into the accessway. It was so dark inside so I had to take off my super dark shades to see. There was a metal detector and I walked through it. It went off like a smoke alarm while cooking stir fry. I had a pocket knife, cell phone, camera bag, car keys, and loose change. The Indian Guard gave me that ubiquitous head wobble from the subcontinent and I was through security. Gee, I feel good that I am so trustworthy looking. This guy is a real candidate for TSA employment.

I pushed the button for the elevator and it came all the way down to the restaraunt and stopped. It did not come to ground. I tried it several times and it was the same everytime. I push. The lights stop at the restaurant. I looked all around and there was no one else there, not even at the screaming metal detector station. I walked out and there was the security gaurd blithely puffing away on a cigarette. he saw me and scampered up to see what was up.

He tried the button and it did the same series of lights for him that it did for me. He then went behind a desk and picked up a phone. After a short delay he let loose witha flurry of Hindi and then the elevator lights began the descent to ground level. It stopped, opened up and there was another smiling denzien of the subcontinent with the full Monkey Suit like elevator operators wore in those old movies showing New York City in the 1930's. I walked in and the doors shut.


MORE TOMORROW