Do you want to stay at a Hyatt if that’s the value they place on their room cleaning services? The bare minimum spent and not a cent more? Please take a second and got to hyattboycott.com and sign the petition to have these workers reinstated.

Jim

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http://www.1explore.com
Your life deserves a place like this.

@Anonymous (with the wonderful stories of people dying on NYC subways) there is NOT a person dying every day on the NYC subways. These events do occur several times a year, but they hit the papers. If it were one death every day, I suspect your subway driving “friend” would have hit more than just one person in their career. Please do not make up facts just to support your argument. It makes me think your argument is entirely without merit. For actual death statistics, see e.g. http://www.nysubway.com/safety/subwaysafety.html which states there were only 23 deaths in 2006.

Of course, if you are creating concern or a distraction with your photography, you may be stopped and questioned, in which case if it’s someone official, you should definitely be chill.

Just something to consider about taking photographs of trains/subway: while its prohibited in the NYC subway system (and iirc you can even be arrested if caught, you’ll definitely be detained, searched, questioned, and all your details will be placed into a NYC police database), it still happens.

There are other instances which may – at times – be of concern. We may have celebrities staying with us during which time we are particularly sensitive to photography. We also have prominent policians who stay with us, in which case government authorities have already inspected the property for security and then instruct us on further measures. And finally, sometimes it is simply a case of designers photographing our interior designs to copy – which is why photography is also prohibited in the decorated (furniture) sections of many department stores.

I hope you will take it easy on us and perhaps understand where we’re coming from. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

An even more serious issue is if someone is on the tracks or someone falls onto the tracks when the train is entering the station and someone blinds the operator with a flash…that person doesn’t have a chance. The operator I know has had his share of individuals who’ve jumped from the platform onto the tracks to retrieve something they’ve dropped (a camera, for one, a watch, an earing, camera bags, computer bags, briefcases, a sandwich, yes a sandwich – still wrapped) and depending on where (beginning, middle, end) they’ve jumped, makes the difference on whether they get hit (die) or not. It’s a split second reaction of the operator seeing the person on the tracks immediately upon entering the station and putting the train into emergency stop to save that person’s life. In NYC subway system, there is on average at least one person killed EVERY DAY by being struck by a train while standing on the tracks due to retrieving something, falling, being pushed, or intentionally jumping (a lot of jumpers, especially around the holidays).

And for those that are run over by a train…it’s not pretty. They don’t all die right away. Those that are run over by the wheels over the middle of their body, sometimes they are conscious and live long enough for their family members to be picked up at home and brought to the station by the police for them to say good bye to their relatives because as soon as the train is lifted off of them rolled off, they die. This includes the individuals whose lower bodies are sandwiched between the train car the the platform. Their lower body is reduced to a few inches deep, yet some still are conscious until the train is moved to release them and then they instantly die. The operator I know successfully reacted fast enough to save the lives of many jumpers and individuals on the tracks where they shouldn’t be. But he’s also had a jumper end up under his train and those are tougher to prevent because they jump suddenly without indicating, wait until the train is very close and position themselves closer to where the train is entering the station so the train is traveling faster. And he’s also had many tourists snap pictures of his train entering the stations, with their flashes firing, blinding him. As for other security concerns, he doesn’t care. The tourists and photographers can deal with NYC transit police.