MADELEINE BRAND, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Madeleine Brand.
Here in Los Angeles, we've long had star tours where you can get a peek at the lifestyles of the rich and famous. But aside from being the entertainment capital of the world, L.A. is also the gang capital of the world. And now there's a tour to show that side of the city. For $65, organizers promise you'll, quote, "experience areas that were forbidden until now." Unable to resist, we recently joined the tour on its inaugural trip, and talked to a few of the people waiting to board the bus.
Mr. BERT RIETVELD: You go to Paris to see things and understand that culture, and go to other places to understand it and this is so close by.
BRAND: Bert Rietveld is Dutch, but he's lived in Los Angeles for 20 years. Still, he'd never ventured into South Central.
Mr. RIETVELD: Probably because I always thought, well, you can't really go there on your own.
BRAND: Why not?
Mr. RIETVELD: It seemed too dangerous. I once took a wrong turn off the freeway, and I ended up in some neighborhoods where I thought, hmm, better get out of here as quickly as possible.
BRAND: From the safely of an air conditioned bus, Rietveld is eager to learn the ins and outs of thug life.
Mr. RIETVELD: What are the Crips, what are the Bloods, what is graffiti? I had never thought about what is graffiti. I just thought it was just weird paintings on the wall.
BRAND: Another passenger on the tour today is Daniel Auld. He is a young backpacker from Australia.
Mr. DANIEL AULD: I have been traveling for nine months. And I spent a lot of time in India, and I lived in an orphanage for a few months on this trip, so it's just a natural extension to see this part of L.A.
BRAND: What about the other part sights of L.A.: the Hollywood sign, the Hollywood Boulevard?
Mr. AULD: You know, I've done that on my previous trips here. And yeah, they make a good Facebook photo album, but that's about it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BRAND: Our tour guide today is Alfred Lomas. He is covered in tattoos from his neck on down. He used to be part of the Florencia 13 gang, but has turned his life around and now works to stop gang violence. Lomas sees his tour as helping toward that goal. He says the steep admission fee will go back into the community, and he says by bringing outsiders into gang areas, he's encouraging rebuilding and investment.
Mr. ALFRED LOMAS (Tour Guide): Are you excited?
Unidentified Group: Yes.
Mr. LOMAS: Excited, all right. Good deal.
BRAND: Lomas has his critics who say this tour amounts to exploitation or some put it, ghettotainment. In response, Lomas nixed his original plan to take the tour through housing projects and to give passengers a T-shirt that said: I got shot in South Central. Still, Lomas uses the supposed danger of the tour as a marketing tactic and encourages passengers to get their picture taken with the ex-gang members he's recruited to sit next to the tourists on the bus.
Mr. LOMAS: If you take a Hollywood tour, you'll probably see Brad Pitt's house, but you'll never really get a chance to take a picture with Brad Pitt. Here, you have an opportunity to take pictures, to meet and interface with individuals that are influential in their gang communities, but have made that effort to change.
BRAND: Finally, the bus departs and Lomas takes us over the L.A. River, which he explains is a favorite target of gang members' graffiti. And then we drive by the huge L.A. County jail.
Mr. LOMAS: If we look to our right, you will see what is known as the unofficial jail to over 120,000 gang members. I can safely say that everybody on this bus with gang intervention has been housed there at one time or another, including myself.
BRAND: It's around here that the tour is ground to a halt by the most L.A. of experiences bad traffic. Lomas doesn't miss a beat. He pops in a DVD on the bus's entertainment system. It's a documentary of L.A. gangs. All quite meta we're watching a movie about L.A. gangs while we're on a tour that's supposed to show us L.A. gangs. Midway through the movie, we are interrupted by reality.
Mr. LOMAS: If you look to your immediate right, you'll see Compton Avenue with a bullet hole on it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BRAND: Aside from the bullet hole, this looks like a pretty unremarkable working class neighborhood on a quiet Saturday morning. Almost no one is on the street. There's a Starbucks a couple of blocks away. Still, we aren't allowed to get out of the bus, and we keep going to something called the Pico Union Graffiti Lab. It's a place where people in the neighborhood can legally spray paint on the walls.
(Soundbite of shaking paint can)
BRAND: One of the artists here is Moz-art. He's been decorating the city with graffiti since he was a kid. He's creating what he calls a quick burner of an abbreviation of his name, Mo. He says he's in a crew of artists, not to be confused with a gang. As far as what he thinks of this gang tour?
MOZ-ART (Graffiti Artist): It could be looked at two ways, like, you know, it's (unintelligible) being pried upon, you know, stared at, you know, like some kind of sideshow. And on the flip side of that, it could be looked at as a positive thing, you know, it's going to give people a closer eye of to see what goes on in the hood. I'm not
BRAND: Do you feel like you're being looked like an animal in a zoo?
MOZ-ART: No, not really, you know, because I know who I am.
BRAND: And that was about as close as we got to experiencing life in the hood.
Mr. LOMAS: If we could work our way back on the bus - you guys are awesome, wonderful. This is something to write home about, huh?
BRAND: Lomas escorts everyone back on the bus and we spend some more time in traffic. After it's all over, Aussie tourist Daniel Auld, gives us his assessment.
Mr. AULD: The most important thing about this tour that it, you know, it was to reinforce the fact that these guys are human.
BRAND: But having signed a frightening release form at the beginning of the tour warning that it was inherently dangerous, Auld was hoping for a little more excitement.
Mr. AULD: The scariest part of that tour was being on the freeway. I think that was the only time we were in danger in the whole tour.
BRAND: For his part, Lomas is happy to have the tour finish without incident. He calls today a success and he is planning another L.A. Gang Tour next month.