When I first started to travel I always found it fascinating and informative to take one of the many city bus tours offered through a number of companies. It was the perfect way to see a locale’s highlights in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.

 However, as I got older and logged a few million miles I’d long since gotten as much information as I was going to get. By that point I probably knew the cities better than the tour guides did. (By the way…is there some Tour Guide Academy where these people go to learn to talk through their noses?) I occasionally will stroll through a city, buy a bottle of Yoo Hoo and sit on a bench in some pleasant park and listen to the conversations of those around me.

I’m especially interested in hearing the comments of people who are obvious tourists. It’s easy to spot them, and I’m not talking about their checkered pants, straw hats or their clothing that says, “My Daddy Went to Folsom and All I Got Was This T-Shirt.” They usually are sitting with an ice cream cone, looking at a city map.

Al Vinikour

Their conversations generally revolve around what a great city they’re in and how there’s so many neat things to see. They usually preface this comment with their complete surprise at how clean the city is.

That’s what got me to thinking about the “Spin Zone” these visitors have gotten themselves in. Granted, seeing the sheer natural beauty of San Francisco can be a breathtaking experience. However, walking after dark in the Tenderloin District of the same city can also be a breathtaking experience – literally. Or what a difference the Haight-Ashbury looks like at noon with all those “wonderful” flower children freely roaming the historic area, but witness the same corner at midnight when more drug deals are going on than pharmaceutical trades on Wall Street.

With the boon in reality shows that portray everything from people getting tattooed on their (not so) private parts to spending 30 minutes watching Kim Kardashian’s ass fill the screen (longer than 30 minutes if you record it) there seems to be no subject that’s not represented by some kind of 30-60 minute show. Why not develop bus tours that take visitors to the absolute seediest parts of major American cities and disclose these perceived beautiful places to visit on vacation?

Take Detroit, for instance (as if anybody really would). Any tour can show you how relatively pretty the city’s three casinos look like when they’re all lit up on a clear evening. Or even seeing the most commanding view of the city of Detroit – from the Windsor (Canada) side. People who come in for a convention or business conference and go directly to the casino hotel and stay there for a day or three are totally cloistered in the best Detroit has to offer. Great accommodations, fun surroundings and some of the best restaurants in the nation.

However, take a “Kicked in the Balls” tour on one of the city’s travel company buses at noon and you’ll have an entirely different – and probably vomitous impression of the same city you came to the night before. Pick a street…any street…and look at all the boarded up buildings.

Go to any neighborhood and see the homeless lounging around with their colleagues. Most are talking about what they’d do if they had the chance to be in charge. Sometimes it’s like listening to a potty-mouthed diatribe from Cliff Clavin.

Or go to the rail yards and witness demonstrations of culinary art practiced by some homegrown hoboes. A city like Detroit is the antithesis of the old saying about cockroaches: When the lights come on the cockroaches disappear. In Detroit’s case, the darker the sky gets the prettier the city looks.

Do you think any school groups would be allowed to travel to our nation’s capital if they had any clue as to how dangerous that city is (and I’m not just talking about when Congress is in session)? I wouldn’t let my kids within 500 miles of that place – especially at night. I don’t care how many chain guns a tour bus has. More than one law maker has been beaten and/or killed within walking distance of the Capitol Building and their homes. But the Fifth Grade class from Flint Lake Grade School in Valparaiso, Indiana, will never see those parts of the capital that constitute the real city. No, they’ll see Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, the Air & Space Smithsonian Museum, the National Art Gallery, the Kennedy Center, drive by the Watergate, see the buildings on K Street where most of the lobbyists work out of and maybe they’ll stop for a sumptuous lunch at the Roy Rogers in Crystal City, VA.  But they won’t drive around after dark and see all the whores prowling the street…or their pimp daddies hanging around the various “gentleman’s clubs” waiting for collection time.

 With all the stimulus money that hasn’t been spent I have a great idea for a travel business. At some point it’s inevitable that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will wind down and when they do there’s going to be a lot of heavily-armored vehicles wending their way back to the homeland. Some enterprising businessman could buy a huge fleet of these things, gut them, install bullet-proof windows and start giving late-night urban tours for those adventurous enough to want to see the real underbelly of America’s cities. A host of tours like these in cities like Detroit, New York, East Los Angeles, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta and Chicago would finally shut the pie holes of all those who tout Amsterdam as the world’s standard for “Sin Tours.” The first person to build up this kind of tourism would really put the P.T. in P.T. Barnum.

Al has toured more cities through a bomb scope than most people have visited — and he’s probably had his sites on your home at one time or another… and there were bombs in the bay. Think about it.

Tags: children, hipster, Nonplussed traveler, travel, Washington D.C.