An Olympic Preview in London's East End Andrew Testa for The New York Times Houseboats on the route of the Olympic walk, with Canary Wharf beyond. EVEN on uncharacteristically sunny days, it's a lonely walk from the closest tube stop to London's forthcoming 500-acre Olympic Park. But after reaching the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium - skeleton in place and awaiting its exterior sheeting - I found hundreds of other construction-site rubberneckers clogging the sidewalk. The tourist crush was seemingly what the Olympic bid committee had in mind when it proposed London's East End, about a dozen Underground stops northeast of fixtures like Big Ben, as the epicenter of the competition, which begins July 27. Though sailing races will be held in Weymouth and Portland, and soccer matches around the country, most of the games will take place in this industrial wasteland now poised for a turnaround. But long before the Olympics came to town, the East End played a leading if shadowy role in London's history. In past decades, few tourists may have felt compelled to visit an area known for abandoned warehouses, racial strife and Jack the Ripper's murder spree. Now two tours reframe the area, in the first case as a shining new home for the Olympics, and in the second as a collection of vivid neighborhoods that once absorbed the worst of the bombing in World War II, gave birth to the Salvation Army, inspired George Orwell and Jack London and now is home to a mix of striving immigrants and artists. "The bid was predicated on a part of London that was sorely in need of help," said Steven Back, a Blue Badge guide with Tour Guides, who led me and 12 other visitors on a two-hour Olympic Walk departing from the Bromley-by-Bow tube station. The East is the only direction in which London could grow. Standing before the restored 1776 House Mill, Mr. Back described the area during the years before the Industrial Revolution as "London's breadbasket," where agricultural fields banked the Lea River, and mills processed grain. Industrialization transformed the area, introducing soap factories, leather tanneries and chemical plants that polluted the air and water but remained downwind of posh districts to the west. Pockets of gentrification in East London predate Olympic efforts. Shouldering a tripod, a cameraman stopped to ask directions to nearby 3 Mills Studio, the largest sound-stage in London, used by the filmmakers of "Never Let Me Go" and "Sherlock Holmes II," and currently engaged in preparing for the Games" opening and closing ceremonies. Despite a few apartment buildings and funky houseboats lining the canals, the Olympic vicinity of East London felt empty, with construction cranes appearing to outnumber people. That sense of desertion changed as we ascended the Greenway, a 4.4-mile elevated footpath that follows the area's sewage system and skirts Olympic Park ("Sometimes we get a whiff, but it smells quite good today," our guide observed). Roughly one mile from our start, we joined other groups milling in front of the construction zone to survey the stadium, the distant stingray-shaped aquatics center designed by Zaha Hadid, and the Orbit Tower, a viewing platform designed by the sculptor Anish Kapoor. Strolling north, we glimpsed the white cube that will host basketball games and the elliptical, wood-clad velodrome by Hopkins Architects nicknamed the "Pringle." The tour ended at the View Tube, a neon green shipping-container-turned-community center. Its Container Cafe, posted with local artwork and populated by lingering coffee sippers, offers the tour's only glimpse of residents in the Olympic area, a mix of scruffy artists, quiet pensioners and working-class mothers shepherding their children to an adjacent playground. After the Games, plans include converting the stadium to a home for one of the area's professional soccer teams; the swim center to a community pool; and the athlete's village to affordable housing. But a tour of Olympic Park reveals little about local life in East London, which is considered Britain's gateway for immigrants, with large concentrations from Bangladesh, Africa and the Caribbean. For a more insiderly tour of the East End, I contacted the new London Greeters service. Founded last February, London Greeters offers free, resident-led, one-on-one tours that range from one to four hours. The organization's 22 volunteer guides cover the five East London boroughs, as well as Camden in Central London.