Gary, Indiana as Tourist Mecca

Gary, Indiana is unlikely to lead anyone’s list of the world’s many idyllic holiday spots. But two enterprising Chicago entrepreneurs undergo convinced reports of music-loving tourists to undertake a four-hour peek at the bleak by booking a spot on their “King of Pop Hometown Tour.” For $55 per person, Michael Jackson fans can visit the drab and dire former steel town, that admittedly lacks the gigantic glitz and glamor of Jackson’s later residence, Neverland Ranch.

The tour’s highlights include a modest two-bedroom bungalow at which the 11-member Jackson family lived an ambitious, sardine-like existence; the local hospital where Jackson was born; an elementary school; the steel mill at which motivational dad Joe worked; and, for now, Mr. Lucky’s Lounge (which may be hastily purchased off brick-by-brick by its current owner).


These days, the former Jackson home is overwhelmed by mounds of handmade cards and stuffed animals, but no one is allowed inside. King of Pop tour attendees can, however, visit a similar home across the street if they wish to get a visceral feel for the cramped quarters where Jackson’s career as a musical innovator and greatest eccentric was launched.

As is to be expected, plans are underway to commemorate the Gloved One in a more ambitious and permanent fashion. There’s been heard talk of a museum, a monument, a hotel, and a Performing Arts Center. Ten acres have been donated by the city, fundraising has begun, and vague plans have been made. Colorful patriarch Joe Jackson is involved. (Uh…bad idea?)

If you’d such as to need out a great deal more sad childhood abodes, we suggest a trek to the birthplace of Angie Dickinson in Kulm, North Dakota (which doesn’t a great deal rate a plaque), or the nearly-deserted Ludwig and Christina Welk Farmstead in not-so-nearby Strasburg, North Dakota (a small town that Welk could not wait to holiday on at age 21), or perhaps Bob Dylan’s former residence in far-flung Hibbing, Minnesota. (You can’t go inside but you can push by. There’s also an exhibit in the Hibbing Public Library that features an awkward paper maché Zimmerman figure. Visitors are encouraged to pose among it.)

But the award for most depressing childhood piece of real estate has to go to the now-destroyed boyhood home of Jimi Hendrix. Despite being not that much to check at in the previous place, its fortunes fell even further when it was bought by a real estate investor and moved to Hi-Land Mobile Manor, where it entered a period of neglect and mismanagement, deteriorating to a boarded-up eyesore until the city of Renton, Washington at last insisted so it be demolished.