Bronx 'Ghetto' Tours Stopped: 'Real Bronx Tours' Took Tourists Through Projects

After Bronx borough officials and residents alike found out that "Real Bronx Tours" was indeed a real tour of New York City's formerly infamous borough, but not the type that would send tourists to the Botanical Gardens or Bronx Zoo, the tour company agreed to end its trips through the mainland borough.

The website for "Real Bronx Tours" has since been taken down, but reportedly invited tourists for a three-times-per-week ride through areas that reveal and remind people of darker side of the Bronx.

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Those who partook in the tours were reportedly foreign tourists from Europe and Australia, eager to see where such American genres like hip-hop music began, as well as to see what gave the Bronx its formidable reputation.

The New York Post featured a picture of tour guide Lynn Battaglia of Pittsburgh, Pa. taking guests around the 'ghetto' as the former website reportedly described. Guests would be taken past soup kitchen lines and along the borough's Grand Concourse, a major uptown-downtown arterial divided into four separate motorways. It forms the backbone of the western Bronx from Mott Haven in the South Bronx to the Mosholu Parkway in Woodlawn. "Do you feel like we're on the Champs-Elysees?" Battaglia reportedly once asked a group of French tourists.

While the Grand Concourse may have been modeled after a European boulevard, it has an infamous history of incidents such as homeless people reportedly sleeping along its concrete dividers, and overall becoming known for being a haven for drugs and street crime.

However, today, thanks to investment into the borough's most noted avenue, the Concourse does indeed resemble a bustling boulevard, with new shops and food options popping up along much of its route. An $18 million investment in its improvement in 2008 widened much of the lower stretch of the Concourse; turning it from a shady back door exit from Yankee Stadium to a great opportunity to get a taste of changes in the borough as one leaves the Bombers' latest win.

In addition to cruising the Concourse, "Real Bronx Tours" reportedly departed the Bronx' Broadway to show tourists a number of other infamous sights such as St. Mary's Park in the South Bronx which was known to be a pickpocketer's paradise in years' past.

Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., D-Bronx, denounced the entire operation, calling the tour "sickening".

The Bronx still has a number of rough patches, but on a sunny day, those in need of some exercise need look no further than a quiet walk along Allerton Avenue or through the Bronx River Park in the central Bronx.

Far from the bustle of Times Square and Midtown, one can experience New York City via the Bronx without having to stop short to avoid running into a pausing tourist or weaving their way through Fifth Avenue crowds.

Even the displaced Fulton Street Fish Market, a Financial District staple for decades in Lower Manhattan, recently found its way to the Hunt's Point area overlooking Long Island Sound. Al Quinones, a community park caretaker echoed the message of a revitalized outer borough: "The Bronx is not burning, not now! Now, it's resurgence."

Sweeping boulevards and thoroughfares like the Concourse or the crosstown Pelham Parkway even offer vehicular visitors an opportunity to both tour the borough and make good time getting where they are going; much better than 42 Street, Canal Street or Broadway on any given day. Despite the borough's volume of interstates, it seems that all of them, especially the clogged Bruckner Expressway may be the new Bronx's biggest downside.