Freakonomics: Touring Gangland

"..he'd like to see some early profits send a graffiti "tagger" to art school."

I'm into photographing abandoned buildings, and the graffiti inside them is often incredibly artistic. Too bad that there's no publicly-sanctioned space for these artists to show off their work. Perhaps the illicitness of the process is part of the allure, but I can't imagine working that hard on something that would be seen by few. What's also notable is that, at least to my as a middle-class white guy, most graffiti doesn't seem gang-related. Most of the low-quality stuff probably is, but the good stuff is often something incredible like an abstract city skyline.

I can't decide if the idea is demeaning or really demeaning. After reading in the linked article that the original plans called for the tourists to be "shot" by local kids with a water pistol and then sold a "I got shot in LA!" T-shirt, I'm not sure that the tour companies' hearts are in the right place... I'm leaning towards really demeaning.

Same thing in Belfast. Once it was realised that the 350years of civil war had all been just a silly misunderstanding they started running tours of the murals.

Some of them have to have preservation orders slapped on them to stop developers removing a 30foot high IRA painting to improve house prices. They may even have to start paying people to repaint them as they weather away.

In the sidebar, "Sik" means "cool", where cool has magically been promoted to a non-slang word. Or at least to the BBC writer's ears.