The Bronx, NYC

Planes Flying So Low You Can See The People Inside

Anthony DelMundo/New York Daily News

A man watches as a jet flies in low on approach to LaGuardia Airport.

Ghetto Tour Ditched

R. Umar Abbasi

SCREECHING HALT: Real Bronx Tours won’t be sending its buses, like this one, on ‘ghetto’ tour.

The Bronx “ghetto” tour is no more.

A tour company exposed by The Post on Sunday for bringing tourists to the South Bronx to gawk at food pantry lines, a “pickpocket” park and a housing project, yesterday announced it would stop all tours “effective immediately.”

“Good riddance,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. “The Bronx is more than what it was in its darkest times, and this company refused to see that.”

In a letter to the Bronx Tourism Council, Real Bronx Tours, which took mostly European and Australian tourists from Midtown to the South Bronx, wrote, “Effective immediately, Bronx Tours will cease all scheduled tours to the Bronx.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/bronx_ghetto_tour_ditched_5SCxSP7qRfbbVzeRmWnJOI

Hey guys

vanillafrappes15:

I’ve got theories. I need help though. I am trying to investigate deaths that aren’t recorded. The deaths that go overlooked, so any followers in New York (specifically Bronx area) that are curious? Enough to help? (:

Ghetto Tour

So that tour bus rolling around the Bronx is actually a “Ghetto Tour”

Rich folks observing the less fortunate for laughs at $45 per person

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz slammed the guide as “the biggest fool on the planet.”

“They should tell people about The Bronx that we all know, and that’s The Bronx that’s had the lowest crime rate since 1963 last year,” he said.

“To have foreigners come and gawk at a long line of people who are less fortunate than they are and to make money off of that and to view them as they are some sort of entertainment is pretty disgusting.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/ghetto_gawking_ffMgfDAaCD76GXNYDrth7L

Raised in the Poorest Congressional District

I don’t have the energy, or luxury of time, to be angry at what environment I was raised in. But, knowing so much more after the fact, revisiting my old Bronx neighborhood is both exciting and disappointing.

The excitement comes from having a much better idea of what was happening around me then, and what is still happening now.

The children and teens roaming the streets are looking for an escape. Albeit, in the moment the escape is from their cramped tenement-style apartment. In general though, the escape is from a system much larger than any one person in New York’s 16th Congressional District. The district encompasses a large swath of the Bronx, including my old Fordham neighborhood.

Systems run the world, that’s what I learned throughout and after college. Systems, run the Bronx. And unfortunately, Bronxites have had little to no control over those systems.

We really should hate Robert Moses. There are highways running through people’s backyards now because of him. There are people living in affordable public matchboxes, under the guise of “improvement,” because of him. Commuting into the Bronx, without a car, is a nightmare because of him. Over half a century later, we inherited Mr. Moses’ wet dream, and all the urban decay that accompanied it.

The BX 3, 13, 12, take your pick. They’ll all give you a comprehensive tour of just what urban decay means for the poorest among wealthy.

It’s that context that keeps me from sharing the distaste that some have with this borough. I know the Bronx, and I know how your environment influences so much of your personality and self-esteem. I can’t shame what is perceived as a propensity to steal in a place that has already been robbed of a fair shot. I can’t mock fat kids waddling down the block, because I know the supermarket that their mom shops in: it’s the same one mine did, and it sells bruised apples and canned spaghetti that’s cheaper than grapes.

The violence is scary, but it can teach you how to have faith in statistics. The data says that as long as I don’t mess with the necessary local drug economy, I should live long enough to die from diabetes. Special thanks to President Nixon for that war on drugs, and large chain banks’ willingness to finance statistically successful fried chicken joints over anything else.

I almost developed asthma. Many do though, and more will. For that, a special applause to all the mayors of past and present that saw no need to build additional truck routes into New Jersey, ones that wouldn’t run through our parks.

My disappointment is because Bronxites deserve just as much of an opportunity to enjoy what their borough has to offer, without getting the short end of the urban planning stick and the crime that accompanies that, without perpetual economic woes, and without social stagnation. The Bronx is beautiful, and in any other context would be a pleasurable escape from the thick and overreaching shadows of Manhattan towers. But in the context of the prior issues, the Bronx’s vast parks, vivid communities, and amazing architecture are obscured by the visible effects of systemic profiteering on poverty.

I have no regrets about being raised in District 16, let alone The Bronx. The borough, its residents, its culture and history, all exist as something far better than the social issues they face. It’s a beauty probably only appreciated after growing up here.

http://theblinker.com/mainpage/2013/05/15/raised-in-the-poorest-congressional-district/