Slum tourism (Poorism) evolves

By most accounts, slum tourism began in Brazil 16 years ago, when a young man named Marcelo Armstrong took a few tourists into Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, or shantytown. His company, Favela Tour grew and spawned half a dozen imitators. Slum tourism, or “poorism,” as many now call it, has really taken root. From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the townships of Johannesburg, to the garbage dumps of Mexico and slums of Mumbai have become destinations in their own right for the more adventurous tourist. 

And the concept has arrived to our shores as well. Following a model similar to the Tenement Museum in New York, which offers tours of a long-unused Lower East Side apartment building, civic leaders in San Francisco are encouraging visitors to stop by another unlikely area – The Tenderloin – a down and out neighborhood in the city. The New York Times reported that their approach plans to target niche interests: i.e. baby boomer music fans — and particularly baby boomer Deadheads, a core demographic for the Tenderloin. Jerry Garcia lived there, and he and the Grateful Dead recorded several albums in the area, as did other big Bay Area bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jefferson Airplane.  Then there’s the Hotel Drake for movie/history buffs, where Frank Capra lived as a starving young director in the early 1920s, or the Cadillac Hotel, built a year after the great 1906 earthquake and fire, and where Muhammad Ali later trained.

Slum tourism isn’t for everyone. Critics declare that ogling the poorest of the poor isn’t tourism at all – it’s voyeurism that’s more exploitative than supportive. Proponents of slum tourism argue that ignoring poverty won’t make it go away and its one of the few ways that tourists are ever going to understand what true poverty means – a reality check of sorts.