HOPE Forums

Emmanual, you stated "The historical elements of Hotel Pennsylvania are a very big piece of this. "  I wonder if a historical group/society could be contacted in the New City area, that would get involved in saving the hotel.  I don't have a background in this area but I want to help out.

To maltman23:  You have a great idea, since the organizations that use/rent out the Hotel Pa.  don't want to pay, they might have pull with the hotel.

John

nx-01 wrote:

Emmanual, you stated "The historical elements of Hotel Pennsylvania are a very big piece of this. "  I wonder if a historical group/society could be contacted in the New City area, that would get involved in saving the hotel.  I don't have a background in this area but I want to help out.

We've gotten in touch with the Landmarks Preservation people and will file whatever paperwork is needed to at least explore the possibility of having the building declared a landmark. My gut feeling on this though is that someone would have done this by now if it was a strong possibility. But we're still going to try.

I think the only way to save the hotel is to let them (or someone) kill that fucking elevator or else make it work in a sensible way. It's not the corporation's obligation to provide us with a cheap place to meet, and I think it's a lost cause trying to save any building with that-shitty an elevator in it. The rest of the building may be a good thing, or not, but that elevator has to go -- hopefully BEFORE the next HOPE!
JMR

(edited: bad joke referencing early 90's tv cartoon with catchy elevator-related lines in a specific episode)

Last edited by lexicon (2007-01-18 06:19:28)

Unfortunately that rings true.. everyone I've ever introduced the Hotel to over the yeas have marveled at the fact that a place this affordable was right across the street from one of the biggest hubs in town.  The place really would be a goldmine to anyone with the wherewithal to do something more profitable with it than run a budget hotel, and it's by the sheerest luck that the powers that be haven't set their sights on the place before now.

adamp wrote:

Wondering if you'd seen this article: http://www.nationaltrust.org/magazine/a … 010807.htm . The president of the NYC Landmarks Conservancy briefly explains why they don't care.

Now that is disheartening.

I agree with the previous poster.  New York City is just too expensive.  I will miss the HOPE.  Maybe the company will be slowed down enough for us to have one more go in the Hotel Pennsylvania.  It's important, though, to focus on other, cheaper venues.  I'm from the midwest, so I'm not sure which cities are cheaper and which are more expensive.

You could really make me happy, though, by moving it to Chicago.  :^)

I suspect, however, that as Bush's economy implodes, so will the real estate market.  Maybe that'll put the hotel destruction on the back burner.

GhettoBlaster wrote:

Sad to say , more then likely money will do the talking.  While I have never been to the Hotel Penn I know of it very well due to the Glenn Miller song and the Hope Conference.  And I agree with Emmanual in that many events like Hope are more than just the event itself and involve the buildings themselves.

I know what you mean.  For me the 'HO' in HOPE has always meant 'Hotel', and the 'PE' Pennsylvania... not sure if that was the intent (new to the whole HOPE shebang). All I know is hackers are good at taking on tasks with impossible odds of success, and suprising the shit out of people.  This seems like one of those times...   So with that said let's:

    KEEP HOtel PEnn ALIVE!!!

Last edited by ghelix (2007-01-18 06:24:27)

bobanero wrote:

I am sure that this corporation (correctly) feels that this property is a GOLD MINE, sitting across the street from Penn Station, and there's no way they are going to allow status quo to continue.   I'm afraid that the absolute best we can hope for, if we are successful in declaring the building a landmark, is that the corporation will totally refurbish the building and the result will be a much nicer space, but the room prices and hall rentals will also be more in line with nicer hotels in NYC, and HOPE will be priced out anyway.  At least the Hotel would be saved.  Whatever the case, this is the time to consider alternative plans for the HOPE venue for 2008

In all honesty, I would gladly accept that scenario if it meant saving the building and keeping this stupid financial tower from going up there. It's just going to become another fortress with barricades and sharpshooters, closed off to everyone walking by. And, while admittedly not knowing much about the financial world, I have to wonder if this is really a time when five trading floors are in demand. Isn't much more trading done online these days? My financial friends tell me that trading floors are dying out. But regardless, what about all the financial stuff downtown that's supposed to be rebuilt? Isn't this what the "Freedom Tower" and all of the construction down there is all about?

While keeping HOPE in its current location would be great, as a New Yorker I'm much more concerned with keeping bad ideas from reaching fruition. It was only a little more than a year ago they wanted to build a huge stadium in that neighborhood. Fortunately that plan floundered but there always seems to be a new nightmare lurking around another corner.

ghelix wrote:

For me the 'HO' in HOPE has always meant 'Hotel', and the 'PE' Pennsylvania... not sure if that was the intent (new to the whole HOPE shebang).

If you can believe it, we actually went through the entire first conference back in 1994 without catching that.

emmanuel wrote:

Is there a particular elevator you had in mind?

All of them are prone to stopping on each floor while already-full of people to the point that
no others can fit on, anyway. I'm not sure how to fix them, but I'm very sure other people hate
them, too. And maybe they don't need destroying, but in that case they definitely need to be
fixed.
JMR

I think that our best bet, for the moment, is not to try to save the hotel permanently, but to delay the destruction of it for as long as possible.  That is to say, in real estate, time spent waiting to build is pretty much considered money lost.  You force a developer to wait long enough and they start looking at other properties.  A bit will change in 2 years, but how much will change in 4?  I'm guessing a lot.  If we focus on postponing the destruction of the hotel for now, we may be in a better position to save it later and at the least, postponing is a more attainable goal and will hopefully get us 2 more conferences out of the deal.  Really, let's aim for 2, let's slow this thing down till 2010.

So far as how to go about it I suggest a multi-pronged attack.  By all means we should try to get the hotel registered as a landmark; really what we need is a person who has done this work before.  Seriously, getting something registered as a historic site or a landmark is a ridiculous amount of very specific paperwork and procedures, we need to find someone who has done that before to help us take on the task.  Also for this purpose I suggest registering SaveHotelPenn.com and setting up a mailing list to attract historians, politicians, lobbyists, and all those who might want to save the Hotel Penn, but couldn't care less about the conference.  We need a wiki there too devoted to the historic preservation proccess, proposals, and anyone with connections need to solicit experts in historical preservation fields to populate the wiki and weigh in on the issues.

The second part of the attack (okay, maybe it's more of a defense) will be to enlist the help of the hacker community.  This should be done by registering SaveHOPE.com and adding a wiki and mailing list there to cover the hacker side of things.  What IS the hacker side of things?  Research.  We need a list of the organizations who have rented space at Hotel Penn in the last 8 years (at least), as well as investors in Vornado, and basically the name, contact info, and title of anyone whose ever broken wind within 100ft of a Vornado property... and that's just for starters.  We'll need more academic research of newspaper articles and historic records as well detailing the colorful history of the Hotel Penn and why we should save it.  We'll want names of celebritys who have partied and stayed at the hotel, maybe we can even get them to speak on behalf of preserving it.  Has Leno every spent a night there?  Has he ever come out of Penn Station and seen it?  I'd like to know because that'd be an awesome plug for our campaign.  Stickers, yes stickers, not to jump topics, but I want to see some yellow bumper stickers with black text read "Save HOPE" available somewhere online with the money going to support these efforts sometime in the 10 minutes after this post, so get moving!  Really though, in many ways stickers are at the core of this movement, they represent the dedication of us die-hard-transistors-in-our-pockets 01d 5k00l haxors who beat our heads against a wall, pretty much in vain for like forever trying to get Kevin a fair trial.  We need that dedication again and if we can't muster that, well I'm not sure I really want to see a HOPE '10 in that case.

Who knows that guy who runs Defcon?  Someone make sure he knows what's going on and is poised to deploy the West Coast hackers to our aid.  If he can't do poised, at least get him to send out some emails on our behalf.

James Christy - Christy is an old school hacker who happens to work for the DOD... who by the way recruits from Defcon and possibly elsewhere for his network of hacker informants.  He certainly can't stop the wrecking ball by himself, but he might have some advice to give on the situation.

Someone let Chesire know he may need to come up from Florida to inspire the ranks with tales of phone hacking from back in the days when the wires were powered by mastodons running on wheels.  ..but no, I guess I just can't imagine saving HOPE without him.

So in short:
1. Set up websites to cover the two angles we want to work (to start with, hopefully more options will become apparent).
2. Research Hotel Penn History and Vornado like crazy (I want to see a vornado of activity on this damnit!)
3. Start reaching out to celebrities, experts, and anyone with influence.
4. Make stickers.

(5?  Since Kevin's all legit and a security analyst now, how's about a whitepaper discussing the possible effects of an East Coast hacker community diaspora?)

That's all for now,
MrQ

Its time for a crusade. I would also add this. Contact the various Hacker related Podcasts out there BinRev, FBill etc... see if they can muster any support.

I'll be sure to do my part and  mention it on Living in Syn this week

Another thing is you have the CarolinaCon and the CCC Camp coming up soon It would be nice to have some sort of organized effort to promote at those events.

Notacon is coming up in April, a lot of the younger hackers attend this con.  Some of them are pretty heavily involved in the hacker scene.  In fact some of them have given talks at previous Hope conferences.  I'm sure if a campaign of some sort is started, it will make it's way there.  If it doesn't, I will take it.