A sightseeing company that promised to take tourists into the slums of the Bronx and have them view some of New York City's most struggling neighborhoods has stopped their inner-city excursions indefinitely.
For $45 Real Bronx Tours would put visitors - mostly from Europe and Australia - on a bus and take a tour of areas in the Bronx "from a safe distance," harping on the city's most vulnerable, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The areas chosen were some of the worst, where on-lookers could gawk at folks standing on line at a food pantry or check out the scenery of housing projects and a place, deemed by the company, as a renowned pickpocket public garden.
Capitalizing on the "Bronx is burning" era of the 1970s and '80s, a time in which the city was at its worse.
It was not long before residents and borough officials spoke out against the tour group. "Those days are over, the Bronx is being rebuilt, it's rising again," Sanabria said.
In an open letter to the company, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverto said, "We strongly urge you to stop profiting off of a tour that misrepresents the Bronx as a haven for poverty and crime, while mocking everything from our landmarks to the less fortunate members of our community who are availing themselves of food assistance programs."
Combating the image Bronx Tours looked to highlight, the city launched an NYC & Company Bronx-centered program, which re-imagines the Bronx as "one of our safest, most exciting boroughs."
As a part of the program, Elena Martinez, a prominent anthropologist and resident of the Bronx, walks visitors through the same neighborhoods that the Real Bronx Tours did, but tries to expose the beauty of the borough through its vibrant history.
