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The latest dispatch from Iceland, where my older daughter Columbine is an exchange student, contained some humor -- the supposed math test for graduating from high school in Los Angeles.
Its questions were along the line of If Robert's Uzi
can shoot 600 rounds per minute, and 9-mm bullets sell for
48 cents apiece, how long will it take him to empty a clip
and how many vials of crack will he have to sell to cover
the cost?
This gave me the idea that America has an image problem overseas. This was confirmed recently when the Japanese press sensationalized the shooting of two students in Los Angeles during a car-jacking.
All those lurid headlines might make Japanese tourists avoid America. Japan supplies about 3 million tourists annually, the bulk passing through Los Angeles, and each one is worth more than $2,000 in local receipts.
So some spin control was in order from the LA Tourist Bureau, just as Florida last year tried to assure Europeans that they could still enjoy their vacations in the Sunshine State even after the murders of German tourists.
No one seems to get excited about the other 23,000 murders in America each year. The killings that matter, the murders that bring out the bloodhounds and forensic teams, the promises and sympathies from mayors and governors and presidents, are those which might hurt tourism -- the largest industry in the world.
Face it, if a servant dies in a tourist town, you can always replace him with somebody else -- the creatures inside Mickey Mouse costumes or restaurant uniforms are, by design, rather fungible. But if a tourist dies, he quits spending money. Even worse, his friends and neighbors back home might quit bringing their money.
Thus it's easy to understand why it's more important to provide safe streets for visitors than for locals. Housing works the same way. Somebody important might check out if the hot water is slow in arriving to the gold-plated Jacuzzi fixture in the $500-a-night room, but there is no loss -- in fact, there are economic benefits -- if the subordinate classes live in tents or caves.
That's the system. It won't change. The challenge is to turn it to our benefit, and my state representative, Ken Chlouber of Leadville, may have hit upon a solution last week.
In order to increase funds for tourism promotion, Chlouber proposed taking $1 million from the $4 million youth crime prevention fund.
It was defeated, but suppose the money had gone to tourism. And then the tourists were encouraged to visit, not Aspen or Vail, but the Park Hill section of Denver, which has been complaining lately about inadequate police protection.
If thousands of well-heeled tourists, especially foreign tourists, were wandering around Park Hill, they'd certainly get protection. They're more important than the people who merely live in Park Hill, because if the tourists suffered from drive-bys, Colorado would get a reputation as wicked as that of Los Angeles or Miami.
Other crime-infested areas could follow suit, promoting themselves as tourist attractions, and safe streets should follow quite naturally.
That's just speculation, of course. The other possibility is that the crime rate wouldn't drop; it might even rise as street punks, like motel owners and T-shirt entrepreneurs, see tourists as easy pickings.
In which case, a new marketing strategy could preserve tourism. People are already attracted to expensive and dangerous pursuits -- climbing K2, snow-boarding out of bounds, running the Numbers in rafts, free-climbing at Red Rocks.
Park Hill could change its name to Boot Hill, and promote the frisson of dodging bullets as an experience to rival running Gore Canyon in an inner tube. Thrill-seekers and experience-collectors from around the world would respond, and money would flow in.
Either the community would be safer, or it would enjoy more money -- a win-win situation. Alas, our legislature was too short-sighted to give proper consideration to Chlouber's innovative proposal.
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Is there a historic connection between high crime and low tourism? The boomtown Leadville of 1880 was a major tourist attraction -- travel writers for national magazines marveled at it, and the guidebooks encouraged visits.
Tourism then was already a thriving industry, even though Leadville suffered from a murder rate of 340 per 100,000; by comparison, Washington in 1990 was only 78, Detroit 57, Miami 36 and Denver 14.
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