I met a Japanese woman the other day who told me she had only been to the US once, to Los Angeles for a few days. My first response "Why would anyone want to go to Los Angeles?!?" but I bit my tongue and made polite statements about her trip. She apparently went as a tourist, but all I know is that she went to Universal Studios one day. She may have been visiting a friend too, I dunno.
This made me realize how little esteem I have for L.A. Seriously, is there anything about that city that is attractive? I'm sure I'm just uninformed and ignorant about how great life can be in a smog blanketed, crime infested, urban wasteland dominated by, uh, the type of people who live in L.A. No overgeneralizations or stereotypes in my world, no way!
I assume that tourist to LA don't see the bits of LA that make me cringe at the thought of visiting. They see family and friends, check out the beach maybe, go shopping, hit some big theme parks, whee-la! But maybe some of them would be interested in seeing the darker side of life, the reality of what life in LA can be like.
So I thought about ghetto tours. Get a couple people, load them in a car, and cruise through the degenerate neighborhoods. Expose them to the utter decay that typifies American urban cores and see what it does to their worldview.
Then reality kicked in and it became clear that the liability on such a venture would be insurmountable. Once the ghetto clued in to what was going on, the tours would become targets faster than a street clears during a drive-by, either driving by sport or profit-motive. You'd have to outfit your tour rigs with bullet-proof glass and hire serious drivers and security goons armed and ready to return fire. But that would only make the vehicles even easier to identify. Might as well paint them white with concentric red circles on them.
But what if...
What if you could buy up a huge a tract of land in the ghetto and fence it off, with serious security that keeps the riff-raff out. It would have to be big, like a square mile or two. You could make it cheap, get government subsidy or something. Security controls would keep guns, drugs, and evildoers out, the people inside get to live a normal life. Their only responsibility would be to live like actors, the pimps, thugs, and whores that add color to the streets (damn, that is a bad pun, but it wasn't intentional and I'm not taking it out). The tours could be conducted from a big building on the fringe that was built in a way to keep the ruse hidden. It would basically be like Jurassic Park on crack, only no electric fences, no dinosaurs, and no real crack. You could probably orchestrate some street fights, burning cars, and potshots at the tour vehicle for spice though if needed.
Whaddaya think? How much could we charge for a tour of depravity?
(Editor's note: What this entire idea really illustrates is the depths to which a person can plumb to avoid working on their dissertation.)
Posted by Nutrimentia at September 15, 2003 09:04 PM | TrackBack