Quote:
Originally Posted by antinimby
I was there today. There were lots of people standing around underneath the Oculus taking pictures / selfies. I think the PA has given up telling people "no pics." The security people were just standing around.
I love the space and openness of the Oculus but gettting in and out of the station can be a hassle. You have to take a bunch of stairs / escalators, then walk through a maze of corridors. It is not as free flowing as it appears.
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It may well be that the policy is to allow pictures in the Oculus but not in corridor/ancillary areas. In my opinion it's almost inevitable that this will become the de facto policy anyway whether the PA endorses it or not, simply because there will be millions of tourists a year in Oculus and 99% of them will have smart phones and be snapping pictures like mad. How can the PA stop all this? It's ludicrous.
The PA's organizational culture of rudeness to visitors is shameful, and should be regarded as what it is, an embarrassment to the city. It's a great argument against guaranteeing any organization, public or private, a perpetual existence and role. In actuality the PA is a weird kind of hybrid that was created for a very special and narrow purpose due to unique circumstances in NY/NJ and muddied over the decades by a ton of politics and mission creep. Objectively it makes no sense for them to be operating this facility at all and their performance record so far certainly does not justify their continued viselike grip on the WTC site.
No one has forgotten the valid reasons for high security on this site. But the security measures should be intelligent and proportionate and allow for legitimate public use. Realistically, if terrorists decide to attack the site again there are countless ways for them to evade the photography restrictions. Even if photography was banned, there is no way to prevent close observations being made of a public facility which is used by thousands of people every day. Furthermore, what about the public's legitimate right to enjoy a very expensive, high-profile piece of architecture which THEY paid for? It makes absolutely no sense to blow $4 billion on an audacious, flamboyantly artistic structure like this and then prevent people from taking pictures of it. Even if obstructing photographers would protect the structure, which it will not, there is just something so Kafkaesque and absurd about this, like preventing picture taking of the Eiffel Tower, or London Bridge (both of which are also potential terrorist targets, lest we forget).
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