Close User Name Password
Login Register
Travel alerts straight to your inbox:
 

Tag: Travel Tours View All Tags

Tags: / / / / / /

Tour Harvey Milk's San Francisco

February 6, 2009 at 9:06 AM | by BS | 0 Comments

Slumdog Millionaire may be dominating the Oscar buzz, but it isn't the only Academy-nominated film catching tour planner's interest.

Best Picture nominee Milk made us want to hang out in San Francisco's Castro District circa 1978, and local walking tour organizers Crusin' the Castro have taken note—they're now offering a "Harvey Milk Tour." The comprehensive three-hour tour (Wednesdays only) takes you to the house where the pioneering politician lived, his campaign headquarters, through City Hall and to Milk's final resting place, along the way taking in the sights of the colorful Castro neighborhood, where much of the gay rights movement was born.

At $55, the price seems a little steep for a walking tour, although that includes admission to the GLBT Historical Society and its new exhibit about the Castro.

· Cruisin' the Castro [Official Site]
· "Milk" Reminds Us To Salute The Castro [Jaunted]
· 'Slumdog Millionaire' Tour: Effective or Exploitative? [Jaunted]

Photo: [magerleague]

Tags: / / /

'Slumdog Millionaire' Tour: Effective or Exploitative?

Where: Mumbai, India
January 23, 2009 at 1:41 PM | by egw | 0 Comments

First comes the critical accolades, next come the tourists: The same week "Slumdog Millionaire" got ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, a Mumbai company announced it would start offering the "Slumdog Experience," giving film lovers the chance to see the real-life neighborhoods in Danny Boyle's movie.

Reality Tours and Travel is no flash in the pan: The joint India-English owned company was founded two years ago to introduce visitors to the Dharavai slum outside of Mumbai. Cameras are not allowed and visitors travel on foot in order to be as inconspicuous as possible, with the guides speaking to local residents as they travel.

Of course anyone who has seen "Slumdog Millionaire," in which our hero works for a spell as a tour guide in Agra, knows the, er, perils of shady operators on the road. But we're liking the do-gooder aspect of pumping the profits from these tours (a 2.5-hour trip is $10) back into the surrounding communities, including into an associated NGO providing vocational training and English lessons. It seems like a better way to enact change than, say, trying to win a milli on a national game show.

Related Stories:
· Slum Tours [Reality Tours and Travel]
· Slumdog Millionaire: The Experience [Faded Youth Blog]
· Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism? [NYTimes article via Realitytoursandtravel.com]
· Movie Set Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Guardian.co.uk]