LA Gang Tours Has Inaugural Run in Los Angeles
LA Gang Tours was founded by Alfred Lomas (former South Central gang member and current director of the Dream Center’s mobile food ministry) “to provide an unforgettable historical experience for our customers with a customized high-end specialty tour.”
LA Gang Tours pledges “to use the profits from the tours to create jobs and provide opportunities for the residents of South Central.”
On December 5, LA Philanthropy Watch featured a post on LA Gang Tours (and a comparison with the Magic Bus Tours in Amsterdam in the early ’70s).
Erin Aubry Kaplan weighed in on LA Gang Tours in a January 7 op-ed (”L.A. Gang Tours: Just ghettotainment?“) in the Los Angeles Times. She compares them with the Bankers Bus Tours conducted by Operation Hope in the early ’90s. I will make no attempt to try to summarize her commentary, but she is doubtful about the wisdom of the enterprise.
“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.”
Last weekend, Randal C. Archibold of the New York Times was on board during the inaugural tour (“On Los Angeles Bus Tour, an Insider View of Gang Life”).
“Mr. Lomas’s sometimes humorous, sometimes somber commentary highlighted a dozen locales that played a prominent role in the formation of the city’s street gangs — or had some criminal notoriety. They included the Los Angeles County jail; a mostly dry concrete riverbed favored by graffiti taggers; and the sheriff’s station used by the National Guard as a staging post during the 1965 Watts riots.”
Tours – at $65 a ticket, lunch included – are planned monthly.
(The image is a screen grab from Bus slogan generator.)
