New tour takes visitors into LA’s ganglands

Tourists looking for a thrill in Los Angeles can now take a bus tour of the city’s most dangerous ganglands. For $65, LA Gang Tours takes visitors around the city, pointing out gang graffiti and stopping at sights like the Los Angeles Riverbed, Florence Avenue, and the Pico Union Graffiti Lab.

It seems tourists are always drawn to places with a dangerous auras and violent pasts, places that are the complete opposite of our comfortable lives at home. The question is, do we go to these places, places like the slums of Mumbai, the townships of Johannesburg or the streets of South Central LA, because we want to understand what life is like for the people there, or do we go to gawk or just so we can say “I’ve been there”? And do these tours actually help the communities that are put on display, or do they make them a spectacle?

LA Gang Tours was created by Alfred Lomas, a former gang member, who says the tour will create 10 part-time jobs for ex-gang members who will lead tours and share their own stories. He says his goal is to help residents of South Central,”to give profits from the tours back to these areas for economic growth and development, provide job/entrepreneur training, micro-financing opportunities and to specialize in educating people from around the world about the Los Angeles inner city lifestyle, gang involvement and solutions.”I’d actually be curious to take the tour, which is scheduled to run once per month. It sounds like, in this case, the tour may be run in a way that takes a more anthropological, rather than exploitative, look at the community. The tour bus is unmarked, and out of respect for area residents, riders on the tour are not permitted to take photos or video.

While in Cape Town, I had the opportunity to tour Robben Island, the prison where political “criminals” were held during apartheid. When the tour guide, himself a former prisoner, was asked why he would do this – lead tours and relive the pain of his imprisonment every day – for a living, he responded with two reasons. One, he said, was because he wanted people to know what happened. The second was that every boatload of tourists that came to the island meant one more person who would have a job.

Perhaps it’s naive to think that welcoming a bus-full of tourists once a month could help solve the many problems of the area. But if offering the tours keeps one more ex-gang member employed running tours and out of gang life, well, at least it’s a start.

[via Chicago Tribune]

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Los Angeles Slowing the Fast Food Nation?

Perhaps you’ve noticed that many trends in the U.S. either start in California or New York and then work their way slowly towards the center. Fashion and food come to mind. Once, I wrote an article on fall fashion in Ohio and did a bit of research by talking to designers and buyers to find out what will trickle to the Midwest from the runways in Milan and Paris. Basically, I was told, designers pick up on trends that will sell in New York and California and then from those will see what will sell in Ohio, but often the designs are more subdued versions.

Here’s a trend that might be starting in Los Angeles that I don’t envision getting many Ohions fired up any time soon. In some parts of Los Angeles the number of fast food restaurants has become so alarming that there is a proposed moritorium on new fast food joints in South Central LA . According to those that want to slow down, it’s hard to eat healthy when fast food is almost at every corner. The debate about whether government should regulate food choices is on. There are some that say if the only options in the neighborhood are fast food, then how are people to eat healthier? (see article) Perhaps, it’s not the fast food that is really the problem, it’s the not enough choices.

Of course, not all fast food is exactly the same. My LA fast food favorite is Astroburger where the garden burgers make me feel healthier with each bite. The Zagat Survey, Los Angeles lists four other fast food favorite options. One of them is In-N-Out Burger that has several locations. The hamburgers in this photo by jslander on Flickr are from one of them.