iPads, Pirate Swords and Adult Diapers: Will Florida Push Back Against TSA Madness?

Better known for terrorizing toddlers than for catching terrorists, TSA is 'allowing' Sanford/Orlando airport to opt-out of government-sanctioned groping of Florida visitors.

The announcement was made by TSA and U.S. Congressman John Mica (R-FL 7th) at the airport Monday, according to The Sanford Herald. 'As part of the Screening Partnership Program, the Sanford airport will be allowed to use private contract screening services under TSA oversight. “I hope this opens a new era of reform for TSA operations, not only at Orlando Sanford but across nation,” Mica said.'

We hope so too.

For a state which depends on some 85 million annual tourists worth revenues of $60 billion per year, it's about time to give Florida visitors a little dignity along the heavily-traveled air routes to theme park and beach destinations.

It's not like TSA has actually caught any terrorists. They manage to find guns all the time, usually in x-rays of carry on bags and on forgetful passengers, but those could be found with any old-school metal detector.

What the agency does seem good at is picking bad targets for its invasive searches, resulting in viral vids of crying kids and Grandma putting a brave face during her diaper check. If bad publicity is better than no publicity, then Florida airports have TSA to thank for a public image that is equal parts outrage and ewww:

• TSA agents indulged in a bit of imaginative play at Ft. Lauderdale airport in 2009, when they confiscated Pirates of the Caribbean "weapons" from an eight-year-old boy who had recently lost his father to cancer. The youngster was treated to Disney World dream vacation, until TSA confiscated his souvenirs. "It's very upsetting because at one point I had told one of the employees, 'You know this is not a real weapon,' and he said 'Yes, I understand that, it doesn't matter,'" said mom Maria Edge. She said she became even angrier when she saw the TSA officers who had confiscated the items playing with the toy sword and gun. Stay classy, swabbies.
• TSA had a banner year for incidents in 2011, the most famous of which has got to be forcing a 95-year-old woman cancer patient to remove an adult diaper up at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last June.
• That same month, TSA admitted to 'bad judgement' for singling out a mentally disabled 29-year-old for a full bore, terrorist pat-down on his way to the Magic Kingdom. 'David Mandy said agents at Detroit Metro Airport took his son Drew, 29, and asked him about the padding underneath his pants, which turned out to be adult diapers. Drew, who is severely mentally disabled, had trouble understanding the agents’ orders because his family said he has the mental capacity of a 2-year-old,' according to MyFoxDetroit.
• The next month TSA spokesperson issued a statement saying that "As part of our ongoing effort to get smarter about security,” they would be making a “policy decision” that would give security officers more options for resolving screening anomalies with young children.
• Unfortunately, that same day TSA made its promise, agents subjected a a six-year-old boy from Washington state to not one, but two invasive pat-downs while the family was en route to Disney Land in Anaheim, CA. “They just treated him like he was a terrorist,” the boy’s father, Alex Long, told King 5 News. Apparently the kids was carrying a hand-held video game. 'Immediately after this happened, my son, I hugged him and he started crying and saying, ‘I don’t want to go to Disney Land anymore,’” says the child’s mother, Jenine Michaelis.
• "Fear of getting through the lines can kill travel plans," said a South Florida senior. No kidding, Ruth. Ruth Sherman, 89, of Sunrise, was one of three women who said she was forced to disrobe during a secondary screening at New York's John F. Kennedy airport in November. She said she is still angry. "I couldn't go through that again," she said in a Sun Sentinel story.
• Last December TSA cowboys caused a pregnant 17-year-old to miss her flight to Jacksonville -- where her mother was waiting for her -- because the teen's Western-themed purse was embellished with a decoration in the shape of a six gun. They sent the young woman to Orlando instead. Giddy up, Ma, y'all got some driving to do.
• In March TSA screeners refused to allow the father of a visibly shaking three-year-old to hold the boy's hand as he and his wheelchair were swabbed for explosives at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport while the boy and his parents, grandparents, and two siblings were on their way to Walt Disney World. Not exactly the happy family group Disney likes to feature in its advertising. What is the stuff this kid's dreams are made of?
• Last month TSA fired five employees and reprimanded 38 more in the Ft. Meyers airport for goofing off.

These are only TSA incidents with a Florida/attraction angle, just a sampling of TSA operatives' bad judgement.

The agency did get off to a great start this year with arrests of two TSA screeners in Miami for their eBay store, worth $400,000 profits from iPads and other electronics thoughtfully 'donated' by unsuspecting passengers over the past few years.

'Our employees are prohibited from taking backpacks, lunchboxes or any other personal carrying item into baggage screening operation areas,' TSA says on its official blog. All that means is that the thieves among them just target smaller, high priced items. (A TSA baggage screener at LAX was taped attempted to steal a high-priced watch from Paris Hilton, but apparently though the better of it and put the item back. Unfortunately, an average traveler has no such notoriety and is likely to receive no such comparable consideration).

Despite convictions resulting from TSA  employee theft rings in N.Y.C., TSA's official blog says that only 200 of their 110,000 employees have been accused of stealing; Shrug. Such a teensy percentage, you should worry? Of course their claim garners a bit less sympathy once it comes out that TSA counts ALL of its employees in order to best skew that ratio. Hey, TSA, if you don't count the pencil pushers in the back office, what's the real percentage of thieves who have access to passenger/luggage frisking areas? 

Women passengers routinely complain that TSA officers only seem to confiscate really expensive cosmetics for being outside size limits for liquids and gels, according to Airsafe. Apparently bottles of drug-store make-up get a pass.

Yet in every instance TSA issues the same cookie-cutter press release, defending the actions of its employees as 'professional' and done in a 'sensitive manner'. Really? Exactly how does one check a 95 year-old cancer victim's diaper in a 'sensitive manner?

The reasonable and professional folks at TSA find plenty of probable cause to submit children to nude photography, grope private parts and dose them with radiation because they are heading to Disney World. After all, it's not like U.S. invasions of other countries or American drones killing women and children half a world away could possibly have anything to do with terrorist attacks here.
 

So, to date, Sanford Airport joins 16 other airports allowed into TSA's opt-out program. Mica, (R- FL 7th), who chairs the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, engineered the change this past February. “Orlando Sanford will be the largest airport to convert to the private-federal screening model under the opt-out program. As more airports across the country will be encouraged to opt out, both taxpayers and air travelers will benefit from this cost-effective program,” he said. Sanford had applied to opt out through the Screening Partnership Program on two previous occasions, but was denied its right to do so. TSA denied other airports’ applications to opt out as well. The Committee cites benefits such as greater screening efficiency, better customer service, improved employee morale, and greater flexibility for airports. (It remains to be seen if private contractors are given the same latitude to grope Granny).

Here's hoping Mica and the Transportation Committee follow through to push TSA to accept more airport opt-outs.

Rep. Mica wrote some pretty good legislation last year with his bill to stop automatic pay raises for members of Congress; Although he's also introduced his share of pure PR, Miss America-type bills such as those on
calling for commemorative coinage for air marshals and scenic highway designation for the overland route to Key West.

Speaking of Miss America, TSA made her cry too. Is this a great country or what?

Raw milk vending machines in France

In Florida, you have to pretend you are an animal if you want raw milk.

SpaceX Dragon Capsule Connects With ISS

http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981357552

SpaceX Rocket, Gamer Changer for America's Space Program

SpaceX Rocket, Game Changer for America's Space Program

Rocket City Retro, Mid-Century Style Florida Space Coast

Nichole and Billy Meyers

That stylish interior shot of a Space Age home featured in Kennedy Space Center's newly-released commercial, "One Day," is the real thing. It features authentic Mid-Century architecture, and those are authentic furnishings.

The commercial was shot in the home of Nichole and Billy Meyers, a thirty-something couple who collect 1950s-1960s-era pieces. The house is a sweeping, tri-level structure built in 1961-'62 and located in Cocoa's River Heights subdivision. It features one room of their home which has been finished -- as much as any avid collectors ever finish rooms -- and eventually the couple plan to complete the entire house in vintage. 'I am a purist,' Mrs. Meyers said. 'It will be 100% period.'

The inevitable overflow from their personal passion first spilled into a vintage furnishings store down in Eau Gallie which they ran for about a year, but now they've expanded into a larger venue in Cocoa Village: Rocket City Retro store, launched a few days ago at 9 Rosa L. Jones Place.

Mid-Century style describes architecture and furnishings design which is heavily influenced by streamlined shapes, experimentation with methods of industrial production and was frequently inspired by science and space travel.

Genesis of Billy Meyers' collecting bug began when he purchased his first home at age 20. A bungalow built in 1952, it featured all the typical design elements of the era: A house conceived as a system for living, incorporating passive solar heating and cooling, seamless indoor-outdoor living space, clerestory windows providing pleasant, indirect natural lighting, and a spare interior.

'It had the pink, grey and black terrazzo,' Mrs. Meyers said, 'It had site sensitivity -- the patio was built around a tree. The outdoors, was just another room.'

"It was not kitschy at all,' said Mr. Meyers, referring to a common misconception about collecting American style. With its open, uncluttered interior space and spare, distinctive furniture shapes, 'These houses are easier to clean. Less time spent on housework means more time spent with family,' said Mrs. Meyers, noting the couple have a 12-year-old.

Hand made tile table, late 1950s; Danish Modern table, 1962

The Meyers scour the Eastern Seaboard 'from the Hamptons to Key West,' Mrs. Meyers said. They are part of a network of pickers who repair, refinish, re-upholster and re-wire relics, which might be cherry-picked from estate sales, or sometimes found forlorn and threadbare in thrift stores.

Among their best customers are college kids who have good jobs, and are their late 20s to 30s. 'A lot of people come in because they have seen this type furniture in advertizements, and on TV,' said Mrs. Meyers. Popular items include everything from clothing, tube radios and record players, table furnishings to complete furniture suites.
"we are also getting a lot of retirees,' Mr. Meyers said. 'They're downsizing. They're moving into beachside communities and looking for those 1,500 sq. ft. houses. Not only is this the furniture they grew up with, and that they love, it also fits the scale of these homes perfectly.'


Generally, the Meyers say their customers are people who are looking for '...pride in workmanship and superior materials,' said Mrs. Meyers. 'Made-in-America brand names still hold value.' The Meyers said their customers don't want furniture which have been made in China. 'Our customers say, 'Hey, this furniture has lasted 50 years, it can last 50 years more, Mrs. Meyers said.

'The decision to buy vintage furniture is a decision to buy a certain quality,' Mr. Meyers said. 'It's as much emotionally driven as it is calculated purchase. It's good furniture, made to last.'

------------------------------------ 30 -----------------------------------

More info:
Rocket City Retro
Kennedy Space Center commercial, 'One Day'

Rocket City Retro shop/ Mid-Century collection

JPMorgan Chase: Too Dumb to Learn?

Too Dumb to Learn?

Mid-Century style on Florida's Space Coast

Now that the last of the shuttles have been picked apart and dispersed for points elsewhere, and Americans have to hitch a ride beyond the blue, it can be said also that the original dream of a Space Age, which so gripped the nation's psyche during the golden 1950s-60s seems to have run out of fuel here as well.

Once a nexus of launch activity and a parabolic building boom, the Space Coast was arguably a near-perfect time capsule of Mid-Century Modern design. The style of the time was an exuberant explosion of vaulting roof lines, angled plate glass, sine wave arches, boomerangs and atoms.

Florida Memories Collection

Mid-Century Modern. It was streamlined, it was copied, it was a physical manifestation of faith in science and in an unlimited future. It influenced the world, from housing to industrial design. It was the 'American Look,' indigenous as Jazz music and uniquely our own.

 The Space Coast once had the American Look in spades, although little of it has been preserved; there are a few worn details left, but those may well already be on someone's list to 'update'. The great irony is that Mid-Century Modern design has now come full circle.

 Elsewhere in the world, Hipsters snatch up remnants of Atomic Age furnishings, art and clothing. Gen Xers vie for the un-renovated 1950s-'60s homes. Urban explorer websites send pilgrims to Cocoa Beach's unique and once-spectacular Glass Bank. Although dim and crumbling, the 1961 structure is considered vastly more interesting than older, but, yet-another-non-descript Greek Revival buildings in the area.

Conservation groups are vigilant in protecting Mid-Century buildings in California, Washington, Nevada and Oregon; efforts are ramping up in other states as well. Enclaves of the playful, distinctive architecture have proven to be major tourist draws in Phoenix, Arizona and along New Jersey's Wildwoods Shore.
Variations on the Mid-Century style -- Atomic, Vroom, Ray Gun Gothic, DooWop and Googie are increasingly cropping up on our nations' Historic Register. Renovators reap tax breaks and the amount of money for rehab grants is growing.

 In residential housing, today's young architects look at Modernist and Mid-Century style as they lead a backlash against the excesses of the housing bubble, when boom-time contractors raced to pack homes with the most square-footage-under-air in order to qualify for ever-larger construction loans. Critics call those results bland and bloated warrens of rooms, rather than livable spaces.

They suffer from choppy layout, wasted space and wasted materials. Interiors are climate control nightmares, and exteriors a pastiche of illogical roof lines and stuccoed foam gewgaws. Garage Mahalls.

 In a 2006 article The Wall Street Journal noted a rise in 'minimalist' houses, sparing of energy, materials and square footage. The trend has rippled out into commercial custom home design: The National Association of Home Builders' 2012 awards went to models which demonstrated simplicity, cost-effective use of materials and to those which incorporated indoor-outdoor living space. To American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, that would sound quite familiar.

Wright, as always, was ahead of the curve. In the late 1930s, a post-Depression scarcity of building materials (more likely, a dearth of moneyed patrons) prompted him to re-think single family home design. He was among the first to observe that advances in industrial production techniques and in transportation would likely yield a more autonomous working class ready to venture into suburban enclaves to raise families.

Toward that end, Wright designed faster, cheaper, and more comfortable homes. He called his concept Usonian, and these are its basic elements: low-cost building materials; spare roof lines, most of them on a horizontal axis; passive solar heating and cooling attained by extended roof overhangs and covered walkways for shade; clerestory windows and patterned concrete block fenestration for pleasant, indirect interior lighting; strong visual and physical connection between the interior and exterior spaces through glass walls and spacious patios; open floor plans for kitchen and living areas; concrete slab floors and carports. Yes, Frank Lloyd Wright invented carports.

Usonian Basic, Wikimedia Creative Commons

Just as Space Coast high tech began to come into its own, Wright completed his 'Child of the Sun,' a 10-year opus which is the whole of the campus of Florida Southern University in Lakeland (designated earlier this year as a National Historic Landmark by the Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior).

 Let's just understate and say Wright was influential in Florida home building in the early '50s. Ever the entrepreneur, Wright reprised his Usonian concept. Essentially, he went into the building supply business, producing the both modest floor plans and a patterned, concrete block-and-rebar system for modular, expandable houses. He envisioned this system would be a hit with the DIY homeowner crowd and assembled on weekends, after barbecue parties.

 Most homeowners, however, passed on it and just hired building contractors to produce similar-looking designs. Wright's original proportions got re-interpreted into standard concrete block sizes. Further, few of the maestro's horizontal roofs ever remained water tight for long, and his glass walls didn't particularly lend themselves to privacy in subdivision settings.

Illustration from a 1952 Sherwin Williams brochure

Nevertheless, most of Wright's 'natural house' concepts formed the basis of Mid-Century housing design.

 Meanwhile, in California, architect John Lautner, with a nod towards Italian Futurist architecture circa World War I, took design off the chain and created motion. He is primarily responsible for the American kitsch known as 'Googie' or 'Ray Gun Gothic', architecture, for upswept roofs, geometric curves and glass, steel and neon Space Age designs.

 Concurrently, designers Charles and Ray Eames revisited and refined Wright's sometimes-chunky and overdecorated lines, consulted Modern art, threw in a little Miro, a little Mondrian, and made use of new technologies in extruded metals and molded plywood. Generally, they set about streamlining American industrial and consumer products from chairs to World's Fairs.  They were highly-influential in the look of Mid-Century interior furnishings.

 Through all this the sleepy little Space Coast built on, a blank slate with a big need. The Town of Cocoa Beach saw a 1000% increase in building permits between 1950 and 1960 to the point where, as noted in City archives, a moratorium on permits was declared in order to 'sort things out'.

Mosquito Beaters archive

 Relatively modest and utilitarian, Space Coast buildings of the time lacked some of the more exuberant excesses of 'Ray Gun Gothic,' but nonetheless represented with sinage of Vanguard rockets and the airborne buttresses of the Starlite Motel.

Low cost houses with the signature overhangs and open plans made best use of sea breezes in the era before central air. Most of the housing design hereabouts was decidedly plebian, but isn't that what Wright would have wanted? And most of those early homes are long gone; such as the subdivisions razed for Launch Complex 39.

If you look closely, though, you can still see vestiges of the Space Coast's contribution to Mid-century American style. One distinctive feature in our area seems to be that actual rocket scientists liked the look of sine waves in their concrete entry canopies. A few of these remain.

Saturn Condo, Cocoa Beach

Cape View Elementary School, Cape Canaveral

Cape Royal Building, Cocoa Beach

What an interesting little Petri dish the Space Coast once was. Most of the Mid-Century buildings here were never surveyed or cataloged.

An apochryphal story, but it is believed the iconic Moonhut sign ended ignobly on a dump.

In 1984 parts of Cape Canaveral Air Force station were added to the National Register of Historic Places, but we locals failed to take a cue from that.

The erosion continues. Little Cape Canaveral bungalows and bits of buildings are going, going, gone, leaving subsequent generations to weigh the history of a seldom-seen audacity of American design against salt-rotted rebar and asbestos-wrapped pipes.

 Fly me to the moon
 And let me play among the stars.
 Let me see what Spring is like, On Jupiter and Mars...