Tikis and TSA

Haven't been on the forum in years, but I wanted to share this. Trying to "carry-on" a tiki, by palm tiki, out of the Pensacola airport did NOT sit well with TSA. Said he could be used as a weapon and he had to be checked.

[ Edited by: jtiki 2017-06-19 10:14 ]

It would be funny if you suggested some familiarity with the weaponization but took it the curse/hex route instead!
I came back yesterday from CA where I bought a small 1ft Tiki from Oceanic Arts in Whittier. TSA wanted to have a look at it but they let me pass.

we tied the rope around it just so I could carry all 40 pounds, but the TSA guy demonstrated how the rope could be used to swing it as a weapon. - I REALLY wish I had a pic of the TSA guy with the tiki.

Yeah - the Chillean version of the TSA took an 18" moai from me for the same reason. It was supposed to be checked in some special way or something. Net, net, it did not arrive in Tahiti with us - never got it back totally screwed by LAN Chile. No $$. No nothing. SOL. Fortunately, I contacted our Innkeeper & her daughter was willing to go to the carver we purchased it from (at the prison) to make another & they shipped it to me. Better than nothing, by far, but I wish I had the first one I picked out!

2014. I had been at Ohana: Luau At The Lake and then spent a week in Illinois hitting all the bars and a heap of antique stores so i had accumulated a lot of stuff. Flying from Chicago back to Tucson i had placed all the mugs that i really didn't want anything to happen to into a carry-on bag. The bag went through the scanner and i was pulled aside and escorted to another area where the TSA agent proceeded to start taking everything out the bag and by this time my partner had joined me and asked what was going on. I had no idea so i asked the TSA agent what they were looking at/for. She showed me the 'anomaly' on the screen and all i could think of was "What the hell is that?". As far as i knew the bag was full of nothing but mugs wrapped in bubble wrap.
      After getting to the unknown object and unwrapping it a huge smile came across the TSA agents face. She showed me what it was with a bit of a chuckle, left me to pack everything up (of course) and let me go on my way. It was large(ish) wooden carving of a Ku i had forgotten about.

Coming back from Tiki Oasis III in Palm Springs...we went a little overboard with our purchases. We bought a wood tiki, a cement tiki, and more. We bought a new suitcase just to fit all of them together. We were pulled aside and questioned, etc.. One of the agents came over and got very excited about our haul. He was a big tiki fan and wanted to know all about the Oasis and the whole community. Got us through the line and told us not to worry about the safety of the tikis. He couldn't have been more awesome...all because of tiki.

Great stories guys :lol:

Reminds me of this thread...

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=27276&forum=1

I flew home one year from the Hukilau. I packed two mugs in the middle of my checked bag so they wouldn't get broken. While I was in town for the show I also hit some junk stores and found a great 60s pocket transistor radio and threw that in as well. I guess the TSA didn't like the look of two cylindrical items with a small box of electronics next to it for some reason :D When I finally got my bag back it had been torn apart and tagged. They left a nasty note inside but other than that everything ended ok.