After outrage and protest from Bronx residents, a company that led "ghetto tours" has stopped the tours. The company lead bus rides for tourists through the Bronx "at a safe distance". Because that's not problematic at all.

In the "ghetto tour", tourists were packed onto buses at $45 a head to gawk at housing projects, lines outside food pantries, a park described as a pickpocket hangout, and men standing on corners reportedly notorious for pickpocketing and drugs.

The tourists, mostly European, were whisked-- behind glass-- from Manhattan to the South Bronx to revisit a period, particularly during the 70s and 80s, when, as they say, "this borough was notorious for drugs, gangs, crime and murders."

There was, of course, no possible way they understood the nuance of what gave the Bronx the problems it had, and to some extent does: explicitly racist redlining real estate policies; white flight; the crack epidemic that the CIA helped create; the hundreds of buildings lost and people displaced due to fires intentionally set by landlords in order to collect insurance money; looting; riots; and so on. These, and numerous other factors, contributed to the urban blight and cycle of poverty that ransacked the Bronx.

But the company, Real Bronx Tours, distilled the message to "welfare" and "The Bronx Is Burning", residents protest.

And, they say, their community has changed.

Residents point out that the Bronx is also home to jazz, hip-hop, the Yankees, Art Deco architecture, salsa, and Afro-Cuban music.

"Those days are over, the Bronx is being rebuilt, it's rising again," said Bronx resident and Grammy-nominated musician Bobby Sanabria. A collective of Bronx residents is staring an action called Bronx Rising to protest against the closing.

On Monday, Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito protested in an open letter. They said that they were "sickened by the despicable way" the tour was "mocking" and "misrepresenting" the borough.

Real Bronx Tours has been removed form the New York City tourism bureau's membership board, and their website is down. They have not responded to requests for comment.