LACP.org
 
.........
L.A. Gang Tours: Just ghettotainment?
- insight or titillation? (NOTE: also see UPDATE, below)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

L.A. Gang Tours: Just ghettotainment? (NOTE: also see UPDATE, below)
A nonprofit company's plan to conduct tours of South Central may be well intended, but will it offer insight or titillation?

OPNION

by Erin Aubry Kaplan

January 7, 2010
 

Way back in 1992, when the racial enmities laid bare by the riots prompted this paper to soul-search and decide that it needed more reporters of color on the ground in a city that was demographically almost impossible to cover on a good day, I started writing for The Times.

One of my first stories to run on the front of the old Metro section was about a Banker's Bus Tour arranged by the nonprofit Operation Hope. The idea was simple: escort a bunch of bankers and venture capitalists through South Central so they could see for themselves the tidy homes, the thriving small businesses, the investment opportunities that the media never bothered to show. The tour didn't avoid the ash and empty lots that marred the post-unrest landscape, but it did attempt to balance a picture of inner-city L.A. that had been skewed toward ghetto irredeemability long before '92. The goal was to cultivate optimism that would attract development dollars.

Fifteen years later, another South Central tour with ostensibly the same goal of community investment will begin rolling out Jan. 16. But L.A. Gang Tours has a radically different approach. Far from trying to balance a grim picture, founder Alfred Lomas is offering the grim picture itself as the main attraction. His tour is built around a dozen designated landmarks of gang history and culture -- Florence Avenue, the county jail -- that can only be described as anti-scenic. One stop in Pico-Union will instruct sightseers in the art and history of tagging. A headline on the L.A. Gang Tours website reads like an ad for a "Grand Theft Auto" video game: "Welcome to the Ultimate Urban Experience! Be the first in the history of Los Angeles to experience areas that were forbidden . . . until now!"

It's easy to construe all this as more calculated exploitation of the 'hood for entertainment, a phenomenon I call ghettotainment. But Lomas -- a minister, former gang member and longtime gang interventionist and aid worker -- says that would be a gross misreading of his intentions. He insists that he created the nonprofit tour solely to empower the communities where gangs live, by raising money to micro-finance small businesses and maintaining peace among the city's most hard-core gangs. "You can talk about exploitation all day long, but this is about spiritual redemption and change," Lomas says. "I'm not 'touring' the 'hood. I'm building awareness and insight."

That sounds good. But at the very least, the tour's marketing sends mixed messages and raises the question of whether it's even possible at this point to distinguish between showcasing the 'hood for altruistic reasons and showcasing it for titillation. Lomas says the tour is not geared to outsiders. Why, then, run a tour at all, especially one that charges $65 a ticket? He also admits to using Hollywood as a selling point. In detailing the tour's stops, the website breathlessly points out that celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Suge Knight have stayed in the county jail, and that movies such as "The Terminator" were filmed along the L.A. River. "L.A. is the film capital of the world," Lomas says. "It's a way of bringing people in."

And who would those people be? Who would spend money for a cruise through the toughest and least telegenic parts of L.A. except those who regard such parts as source material for all things urban, i.e., hip, black and cool? I shudder to think. Of course, the Banker's Bus Tour had an element of carnival barking -- Look, Ma, these folks are normal! -- that made me cringe. L.A. Gang Tours promises a more sober and educational atmosphere. But if you're looking at anything from a bus window, it's going to be awfully hard not to feel like you're on a ride. Especially a ride that offers a chance to see the "forbidden" L.A.

I'm not against taking bold action where gangs are concerned. They're a hardened local institution, one that's gotten more intractable the last 15 years. More than anything, gangs have battered the L.A. mythos as the last big American city where anyone can live out his or her dreams undisturbed. There's value in providing a visual education about gangs and the social ills and inequality that produced them. There's value in showing urban voyeurs the stark difference between reality and a movie or gangsta-rap soundtrack. But I'm not at all sure that L.A. Gang Tours will make those things clear. For all his enthusiasm, Lomas himself doesn't seem quite sure of what to expect when his project gets under way.

What really bothers me is the slap this delivers to the idea of L.A. itself. I'm nobody's booster; I was born and raised in South Central, and as a writer have argued for years against the narrative neglect of black and brown neighborhoods, which are too often miscast as the villains in our civic dramas. But as a native, I have a fierce and fundamental optimism about the city, including its gangs, and I bristle at the notion of anything that promises to show the world the "real" L.A. For me, the real L.A. is the one most of us still hold in our imaginations, a patchwork ideal that has taken plenty of hits and too many detours on the way to realization. It's an open-ended journey that we should all be making.

NOTE: SEE UPDATE BELOW:
.

LA Gang Tours
  Tourists pay to sightsee on gang turf

By Thomas Watkins, Associated Press

01/16/2010

LOS ANGELES - Only miles from the scenic vistas and celebrity mansions that draw sightseers from around the globe - but a world away from the glitz and glamour - a bus tour is rolling through the dark side of the city's gang turf.

Passengers paying $65 a head Saturday signed waivers acknowledging they could be crime victims and put their fate in the hands of tattooed ex-gang members who say they have negotiated a cease-fire among rivals in the most violent gangland in America.

If that sounds daunting, consider the challenge facing organizers of LA Gang Tours: trying to build a thriving venture that provides a glimpse into gang life while also trying to convince people that gang-plagued communities are not as hopeless as movies depict.

"There's a fascination with gangs," said founder Alfred Lomas, a former member of the Florencia 13 gang. "We can either address the issue head-on, create awareness and discuss the positive things that go on in these communities, or we can try to sweep it under the carpet."

Several observers have questioned the premise behind the tours, and some city politicians have been more blunt.

"It's a terrible idea," City Councilman Dennis Zine said. "Is it worth that thrill for 65 bucks? You can go to a (gang) movie for a lot less and not put yourself at risk."

More than 50 people brushed aside safety concerns for Saturday's maiden tour to hear how notorious gangs got started and bear witness to the struggling neighborhoods where tens of thousands of residents have been lured into gang life.

The unmarked chartered coach wound its way through downtown. The first sight was a stretch of concrete riverbed featured in such movies as "Terminator" and "Grease," where countless splotches of gray paint conceal graffiti that is often the mark of street gangs and tagging crews.

After that, it was on to the Central Jail, home to many a thug, past Skid Row's squalor and homeless masses and into South Los Angeles, breeding ground for some of the city's deadliest gangs.

Motoring through an industrial area, the bus enters the Florence-Firestone neighborhood, close to the birthplace of the Crips and current home to Florencia 13, a Latino gang that was accused by federal prosecutors of racist attacks against black residents.

Gray warehouses soon merge with single-story stucco homes as the bus heads south. Few gangsters risk hanging out on street corners, as local rules mean they could get arrested even for congregating, but graffiti on walls, road signs and convenience storefronts betray the presence of Florencia 13 and other gangs.

Sieglinde Lemke, 46, an American Studies professor from the University of Freiburg in Germany, said she enjoyed the opportunity to interact with former gang members.

"It brings to life the class divisions you have in America," she said. "This is an area that's blocked out of my mental map of the States. It's important to get a firsthand account of the area."

Junior high school teacher Prisca Ricks, 37, was of two minds about going on the tour after reading critical blog comments about it being "ghettotainment."

But ultimately, she was pleased she went, and said she appreciated the focus on trying to help the community.

Lomas, 45, a respected activist who has worked with the faith-based Los Angeles Dream Center to distribute hundreds of tons of food to low-income families across the inner city, left gang life about five years ago.

He stresses the aim of his nonprofit company is to bring jobs to communities along the route and to reinvest money through micro-loans and scholarships, though he's not sure how the tour will accomplish that. He also eventually wants to start a gallery and gang museum.

He said the tour will create 10 part-time jobs, mainly for ex-gang members working as guides and talking about their own struggles and efforts to reduce violence. The tour is initially scheduled to run once a month.

No tour quite like this runs elsewhere in the country. Chicago has a prohibition-era gangster tour, and another Los Angeles group buses people to infamous crime scenes, including the Black Dahlia murder.

Lomas faces a quandary as he tries to show the troubled history of the area once known as South Central, before politicians renamed it South Los Angeles in 2003 in an attempt to change its deep association with urban strife.

The tour is billed as "the first in the history of Los Angeles to experience areas that were forbidden." But tour leaders don't want it to be voyeuristic and sensational.

"We ain't going on no tour saying, `Look at them Crips, look at them Bloods, look at them crack heads,"' said Frederick "Scorpio" Smith, an ex-Crip helping narrate, who helped broker the cease-fire among the Grape Street Crips, 18th Street, F13 and the East Coast Crips.

Out of sensitivity to residents, passengers are banned from shooting photographs or video from the bus. The only place that is allowed is near the end of the trip, when they can step off the bus and film an outdoor area where graffiti is allowed.

Stretches of the tour have almost nothing to do with gangs, but instead exploit famous chapters of violence in the city's history, such as a deadly 1974 shootout between police and the Symbionese Liberation Army and the site of the riots that followed the acquittal of officers in the Rodney King beating.

If done right, the tour could highlight the decades-long struggle to solve the gang problem, said civil rights lawyer and gang expert Connie Rice.

Gang crime has fallen in recent years, but groups continue to grow and gain influence. Over the past quarter century, officials in Los Angeles County have spent $25 billion fighting gangs only to see the number of gangsters double to as many as 90,000 and a six-fold increase in the number of gangs.

"If it is carried out well and carefully and carried out with the consent of the community, it could teach people about the very entrenched culture that gangs now have in Los Angeles," Rice said.

City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she would rather tourists see the development potential in the neighborhoods that make up part of her district. About two years ago, she organized her own tour in the area for about 200 real estate agents and business representatives, resulting in the development of buildings with homes and businesses.

"I'd prefer we focus on showing the community in a positive light," she said.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14207494