Hyberbole and Hype Mix With Reality in Tinseltown Tour

“On your left you will see . . .” Tour guide Theresa Abshier interrupts herself as she addresses her small group and pilots the bus. “Did I say left? I meant right, it’s on the right. “

Too late. By the time Abshier corrects her error, the slick glass building that she intended to point out slides beyond view. The tourists groan.

Abshier has trouble telling left from right. No matter, she says breezily. “I’m only human.”

It was not easy hosting tourists in the huge sprawl of Los Angeles last spring. The riots scared many away. Then came the recession. And now, in the days sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the usual tourism slump seems worse than ever.

But Abshier is determined to help those few who brave the odds to see this mythical city, the place that plays so prominently in the television shows and movies that drive popular culture.

“I can’t take people to downtown L.A. and say: ‘Here are the tall high-rises’ and drive on by,” Abshier said. “With me, they get a view of what L.A. is really like.”

In the days that followed the riots, tour operators made unscheduled runs past burned-out and looted buildings at the request of the hapless tourists who unwittingly ended up in Los Angeles as the Rodney G. King beating case reached its crescendo. Six months later, tourists’ appetite for the riot aftermath--much like motorists’ fascination with wreckage on a freeway--has all but disappeared.

Tour companies say no one asks to visit Los Angeles’ riot-scarred neighborhoods anymore and the tours have resumed their customary routes--through Hollywood, Beverly Hills and to the usual gamut of civic landmarks. And the riots no longer seem to keep visitors away.

Cris Tinley, who signed up recently for a Gray Line tour of the city, scoffs at the notion that the riots would deter any potential visitors to Los Angeles.

“The riots only made me feel I’d be right at home,” said Tinley, a South African who is sightseeing with his 19-year-old son, Christopher.

Arriving in the United States after visiting the Amazon, the Tinleys planned a 2 1/2-week itinerary that includes Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Pa., Toronto, New York and Warsaw.

In some cities, such as Seattle, they will spend a scant 14 hours, arriving at midnight and departing at 2 p.m. the next day. Los Angeles, however, merited 2 1/2 days--unfortunately, not quite enough time to take in Disneyland.

It is Christopher Tinley’s first big trip. The father and son want to make the most of it so they are equipped with six-hours worth of videotape and 10 rolls of 36-print film.

At the Mann Chinese Theatre, the Tinleys dive into the swarm of tourists exclaiming over the celebrity footprints, celebrity handprints and celebrity stars embedded in the sidewalk. Yet another sight--a homeless woman--seems to mesmerize Christopher Tinley. It’s Dorothy, the bag lady whose hat is covered with pins and buttons. She stands solemnly, neither smiling nor moving, a totem pole on the sidewalk where tourists and cameras jockey into position.

“Why does she just stand there?” Christopher Tinley asks Abshier.

“She has nothing else to do,” the tour guide replies.

Gray Line’s Grand Tour of Los Angeles, aboard Bus No. 68, is a five-hour expedition into the world of hyperbole and hype.

“Rodeo Drive is the most expensive shopping street in the world,” Abshier tells the Tinleys and seven other foreigners clustered at the front of the huge bus. (In fact, it’s sixth, falling behind streets in Tokyo, Hong Kong and New York City, among others.)

Abshier points out Chasen’s restaurant in West Hollywood, saying it is former President Ronald Reagan’s favorite spot for chili. To get in, you either need to be a celebrity or have a reservation six months in advance, she says proudly. And even if you do get inside, it is awfully expensive--a mere bowl of chili will set you back $28, she adds. (In fact, for weekend nights, the restaurant suggests making reservations three days before. And a bowl of chili costs $10.)

Indeed, talk of the city’s restaurants leads naturally to Abshier’s favorite subject: celebrities.

“ They are everywhere,” she says, with the enthusiasm of a wild game aficionado on safari. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

But it’s the homeless, not the rich and famous, that catch the eye of Abshier’s group. As the bus lumbers through downtown’s Skid Row, passing the Midnight Mission, Kathy and Hank Vander Velde are agog. Men are sprawled in doorways, makeshift cardboard shelters dot the sidewalk.

“There’s another one,” Vander Velde whispers to her husband, after spotting a man cloaked in a blanket with one foot bare and the other in only a sock.

By the time the Ottawa couple reach the Griffith Observatory, the other sights they have seen--Olvera Street, the Farmer’s Market, the Hollywood Bowl and Beverly Hills--are like fading photographs next to the searing image they hold of the city’s homeless.

“I’m a little disappointed,” Kathy Vander Velde says. “I thought L.A. would be more glittery, more posh.”

But her husband is enthusiastic, as though the couple had just stumbled across a fascinating museum.

“I’m sure,” he says, “we will be telling our friends to go to L.A. and see the people lying in the streets and sidewalks.”