NEW YORK — A company that promised sightseeing tours to the Bronx that included a ‘‘ghetto’’ has stopped the bus rides after local protests.
Real Bronx Tours, which took mostly European tourists from Manhattan to see life in the South Bronx, said it would cease all tours there.
Three times a week, the $45 ride took visitors past food-pantry lines and a housing project. Tourists were told they would get a look at the Bronx that reflects one of the dark chapters of the city’s history, the 1970s and ’80s, when the tour website said, ‘‘this borough was notorious for drugs, gangs, crime, and murders.’’
But residents say the tours misrepresent the area where former secretary of state Colin Powell and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor lived in as children.
Borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. and City Councilor Melissa Mark-Viverito sent a letter to the owner saying they were ‘‘sickened by the despicable way’’ the borough was being portrayed.
The company did not reply to requests for comment.
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Related: Bloomberg's Buckshot
Shoot the homeless!
FLASHBACK:
"Katrina victims want tour bus operators out of Lower Ninth Ward" by Stacey Plaisance | Associated Press, October 05, 2012
NEW ORLEANS — Some New Orleans residents and city officials are pushing back against tour operators who bus out-of-towners into the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, where Hurricane Katrina unleashed a wall of water that pushed homes off foundations and stranded residents on rooftops when the levees failed.
Getting any ideas, New York and New Jersey?
About 9 million people visit New Orleans each year, mostly to see its stately homes along oak-lined avenues, dine at its renowned restaurants, and take in the jazz and ribaldry of Bourbon Street.
But Katrina’s devastation in August 2005 unleashed an unexpected cottage tourism industry, drawing a daily parade of rubbernecking tourists for a close-up look at the city’s hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward.
Worried that a flood of tour buses and vans would interfere with clean-up efforts, the City Council approved an ordinance in 2006 banning them from crossing the prominent Industrial Canal entering the neighborhood that received Katrina’s fury.
Now, tour operators are crying foul, saying the ordinance had been thinly enforced until recently.
They contend that a business bringing them and the city tourist dollars is being hurt.
‘‘I can’t afford to keep paying tickets,’’ said David Lee Ducote, owner of Southern Style Tours.
As the Lower Ninth Ward slowly rebuilds — vacant lots still attest to where homes once stood — visitor interest has also been piqued by housing built by actor Brad Pitt and his Make It Right foundation.
Councilman Ernest Charbonnet, who represents the neighborhood, said residents complain that the tour vehicles block streets and damage roads. They also are weary of being gawked at.
Charbonnet said city officials didn’t enforce the ordinance unless someone filed a formal complaint, an infrequent occurrence as a daily parade of buses, vans, and shuttles packed with camera-wielding tourists trouped by the Pitt houses and the home of rock ‘n roll legend Fats Domino.
That changed in recent weeks when complaints prompted officials to stop and fine operators.
‘‘We’re fed up and tired of them coming through the neighborhood like we’re some sideshow,’’ said Vanessa Gueringer, a lifelong resident....
The first bolded comment describes my feelings towards my increasing pile of unread Globes, which is why I always check the second.
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Related: New Orleans Back to Normal
Whatever you say, Globe.
