The Tourist Dvd

[Yahaira Petrov]

Duringthe noisy, chaotic third week of September 2001, my father wrote letters to the New York Times and the Post, and was published in both, asking simply that the press stop calling his daughter, who'd been murdered on live television a few days earlier, a hero. The heroes ran into the buildings; she was just a person who happened to have gotten to work a little early on a Tuesday morning, and that was horrible and heartbreaking and difficult enough without the extra assignation. On Sept. 21, the day that would have been my sister's 28th birthday, he gave a eulogy to this effect at her memorial, speaking steady-voiced at a podium in front of several hundred friends and relatives and people who read an announcement somewhere and didn't know what else to do with themselves.

In the days and years after, this was less a mantra than our only way forward: Find a way to separate what happened from what happened to us, to decline participation in most of the ceremonies and pageantry in favor of figuring out on our own our family's new geometry just like any family that has suffered a loss. Sometimes this works, sometimes it feels like its own form of grandstanding. Others, of course, feel the opposite: The world's attention validated the size of their grief. Their sons and daughters and mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and fiancs and friends were worth starting a war over. We understood this and respected this and just chose another, quieter way, at least until my father got sick and couldn't stop blurting it out, over and over, to strangers in parking lots.

After the full-bore TSA-style security check, complete with body scan, there's a dark corridor with word clouds and photographs projected onto tower-like pillars, while disembodied voices tell snippets of stories about the morning, an overture warning us about the symphony ahead. We are eased into it in a sense, lowered into the maw down a ramp along the original foundation of the towers, a marvel of engineering. Girders and rubble and broken staircases, among the ruins. An impossibly mangled hook-and-ladder truck, showroom parked.

The crowded memorial hall is lined with photos of everyone who died and touchscreen consoles that call up their obituaries; my sister is found, as she has been for 12 1/2 years and will be forever, between Gavkharoy Kamardinova and Howard Lee Kane. The names are read aloud on a loop in the adjacent darkened atrium lined with benches. My sister's profile has incorrect information in it that we'd never signed off on or even seen, and the annoyance is tempered by the realization that nonparticipation in the pageantry has its drawbacks. It also occurs to me that I am the only person here alone.

The fact that everyone else here has VIP status grimly similar to mine is the lone saving grace; the prospect of experiencing this stroll down waking nightmare lane with tuned-out schoolkids or spectacle-seekers would be too much. There are FDNY T-shirts and search-and-rescue sweatshirts and no one quite makes eye contact with anyone else, and that's just fine. I think now of every war memorial I ever yawned through on a class trip, how someone else's past horror was my vacant diversion and maybe I learned something but I didn't feel anything. Everyone should have a museum dedicated to the worst day of their life and be forced to attend it with a bunch of tourists from Denmark. Annotated divorce papers blown up and mounted, interactive exhibits detailing how your mom's last round of chemo didn't take, souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with your best friend's last words before the car crash. And you should have to see for yourself how little your pain matters to a family of five who need to get some food before the kids melt down. Or maybe worse, watch it be co-opted by people who want, for whatever reason, to feel that connection so acutely.

There are two recording booths for people to tell their own stories of the day, or remembrances of loved ones who were lost. A man exits one of the confessionals, sees me, shakes his head, and says, "Amazing idea." I enter, sit down, and stare at the screen ahead and say Shari's name and how I was 3,000 miles away that morning and didn't even know she was working there until I got the call at 6 in the morning and that I wish I had seen her more in those last years and remembered more about her and had something better prepared to say and that I wished my kids would have known her and that she'd think it's pretty fucking weird that I'm talking about her to an invisible camera in the bowels of a museum dedicated to the fact that she was killed by an airplane while sitting at her desk and at some point the timer is up.

There is one small room on the main floor of the museum that is in fact not operated by the museum itself and is not available even to many of the families. Tucked away off to the side, behind an unmarked door, it is overseen by the medical examiner's office. This is called the reflection room.

He points me around the corner to a cramped, dark space but does not follow. A box of tissues sits on a wooden bench and a family huddles silently looking through a window, about 4 feet by 5 feet. They leave almost instantly and I can now see what is through the window: aisles of dark-stained wood cabinets of rosewood or teak maybe, floor to ceiling, lit by small overhead spotlights. I let out a loud, sharp laugh.

Inside these cabinets are the remains that, after nearly 13 years of the most rigorous testing known to man, have not been matched to the DNA of any of the victims. Just drawers and drawers full of...stuff. I wouldn't really want to think too hard about what exactly that stuff is, but given that it's a picture window looking out at cabinetry, there isn't really anything else to think about. This chamber is meant to be a sanctuary, but I cannot ruminate about the arbitrary cruelty of the universe or lament the vagaries of loss and love because all there is to see are armoires packed with carefully labeled bags of flesh too ruined and desiccated even for science. My sister is among the many for whom there have been no remains recovered whatsoever. Vaporized. So there's no grave to visit, there never will be. Just this theatrically lit Ikea warehouse behind a panel of glass.

The presence of the tomb has been a point of contention among families more vocal than ours who want more from a final resting place than the basement of this museum of unnatural history. I don't know how to feel about the matter because to do so would require any of this making even a bit of sense. It's dumb, sure, but what could possibly be less dumb? Where is the right place to store pounds of unidentifiable human tissue so that future generations can pay their respects? I would not wish what's happened to my family on anyone, but I begrudgingly admire its infinite weirdness, still, after all this time. A hushed flute rendition of "Amazing Grace" wafts reverently over the escalators as I head back up to sunlight.

Printable Scorecards for both of our Cedar Falls disc golf courses

About the Park

Acquired in 1922, this area originally held tourist cabins and included animals as attractions. At one time animals were in Island Park as well. The park is set in a mature grove of floodplain trees and dense under story vegetation lines the west bank of Snag Creek. The levee between the Center Street Bridge and the dam separates the Park from the riverfront, but provides access to a commanding view of the dam, Cedar River and downtown Cedar Falls.

The City Council adopted the Tourist Core Area Plan on October 15, 2013 and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency adopted it on November 11, 2013. The Area Plan defines a vision for the future of an area of the City that has previously been guided by the Stateline/Ski Run Community Plan. This is an area of special attention in the Tahoe Basin for a number of reasons. It is the center of tourist services and recreation access, spanning the California and Nevada state line and has traditionally been the area with the highest concentration of services and density.

The area is envisioned as a central destination that provides full services for tourists and permanent residents and offers unique experiences related to the many outdoor recreation possibilities that surround the Tourist Core area. The revitalization of the Tourist Core will catalyze the transformation from a vestigial gaming economy into a sustainable outdoor tourism recreational destination by incorporating active streetscapes, shopping, entertainment and outdoor dining opportunities that are easily accessible by transit and alternative travel modes.

To achieve the vision the Area Plan addresses land use regulations, development and design standards, transportation, recreation, public services and environmental improvements for the area. It encourages general improvement and enhancement for the built environment and provides a framework to change the existing conditions into opportunities for redevelopment with a focus on achieving on the ground environmental improvements and creating a sustainable, pedestrian oriented, vibrant tourist center

The Tourist Development Tax (also referred to as tourist tax, bed tax or resort tax) is a 6% charge on the revenue from rentals of six months or less. This tax is in addition to the state sales tax (7% in Sarasota County). The state sales tax is sent to the Florida Department of Revenue. The local Tourist Development Tax is sent to the Sarasota County Tax Collector.

Tourist tax is to be paid on the rent and other fees included in the rent such as: accidental damage insurance, cleaning fees, roll away bed fees, pet fees, and utility fees. If you have questions about what is taxable, contact us.

The Sarasota County Tourist Development Council, which is appointed by the Board of County Commissioners, is a county-wide advisory council that recommends tourism policy to the Board and oversees the use of revenue pursuant to Florida law. In Sarasota County, tourist tax revenues are used for promotion, beach maintenance and re-nourishment, the arts, the sports stadium and the Suncoast Aquatic Nature Center. To view current and historical data on revenue collections and annual collection information about the tourist development tax, view the Annual Report.

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