For $45, tourists can now have the opportunity to hop on a bus and go on a more unconventional tour than most folks are normally accustomed to. According to NewsOne, a bus company has created the "Real Bronx Tours" which allegedly caters to white European and Australian tourists, and takes them on a tour through various areas in the Bronx, showing the struggling and impoverished black and Latino individuals within the community.
The bus tours make stops at housing projects, a food-pantry line, and St. Mary's Park. The gritty tour is seen by many to be controversial and insensitive, for obvious reasons. One unnamed tour participant claimed that a tour guide named Lynn Battaglia tried to make jokes about the suffering community they passed through. She allegedly painted the picture of the South Bronx as being a crime-stricken area plagued by violence and severe poverty, and that it has been that way since the 1970s.
She allegedly went so far as to describe a food line to the passengers by saying, "I don't know what that line's about, but every Wednesday we see it. We see them go in with empty carts, and we see them come out with carts full."
Ms. Battaglia also described St. Mary's Park:
"If it were 1980, and you said to me, 'Lynn, I want to die.' My answer would be, 'You're in the right neighborhood."
We'll keep you posted on whether or not Bronx residents respond to their neighborhoods being put on display and mocked in the process.
Source: bossip.com
