Atlantic City is a Dump

Ok well I need to start writing a little more often. I want to try to write ideas when they are as fresh as possible and now I am at least working on Idea’s 8 or 9 weeks old. I do mix new ones in from time to time, a major reason I think I get behind, but still there is a lot of things that have happened recently I wanted to write about. So this blog is about Atlantic City, New Jersey. I visited Atlantic City the same week that I visited Philadelphia. Unfortunately I had to go by myself since I wasn’t traveling with a team and so I didn’t really know anyone in town. But I wanted to see it anyway. It is about a ninety minute drive from Philly without traffic, with traffic you can add up to an hour. I got to add about ½ hour so I was lucky. I left right after classes and headed to the Atlantic City Expressway. Yes the city has its own hi-way. But to get there I had to spend an hour crossing from the west side of Philly to the East side of Philly. Then I had to pay a few tolls (it is funny but it costs ½ much to get to Atlantic City as it does to return – go figure) and after quite a while in my rental I was there.

I really had no clue where to go or what to do so I just turned into the first parking ramp I could find. It was prepay cash only and I didn’t have any cash (can’t skim credit card bills). But the attendant thought it was too much work to let me turn the car around so she just waved me through for free. The ramp was attached to Trump Casino and Hotel. I walked through the hotel, I wasn’t that impressed. It wasn’t like in Vegas where everything is themed and bigger than life, it was just a bunch of slot machines and card playing tables in big rooms with a ton of mirrors, brass, and chandeliers. Even the restaurants looked lame. The casino was built ok and it was clean, it just didn’t have any character. I went through a few of them and only Bally’s had anything going on. In Bally’s it was a wild west theme and it was a bit more amusing in a Gun Smoke kind of a way. There are a lot of casinos though all lined up on the coast boarded by the famous boardwalk.

The boardwalk was actually pretty nice, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it during the summer, though I don’t know what quality the beaches are. I was there at night and it was a bit stormy. In fact it was raining when I walked down the board walk but I couldn’t let that deter me. Most of the old shop fronts have been torn down but there are enough of the original ones to lend an old school feel to that part of the city. Most of the shops were closed but I did like looking at the old buildings from the 20-40s. A shock about midway down the board walk is a Korean War Memorial; the official national memorial. It is a nice memorial with videos on loop, some statues, the names of people that died in the war, and some other information about the war. What is weird is that it is smack dab in the middle of a cheese tourist trap. As interesting as the board walk is I really don’t think it was the place for a war memorial.

Another nice place I came across was a mall build on a pier that juts out into the ocean about a block and half. It is three or four floors, has a nice winding corridor that makes it feel more like a street walk than a mall, and several nice fountains and features. On the top floor there are a dozen very nice restraints, some clubs, and lounges. These were nicer than anything I saw in the casinos themselves. The best part of this mall was also on the top floor. The entire exterior wall was glass so you could see out into the ocean, see the beach, and get a bird’s eye view of the casinos. In a couple of areas they even hand indoor beach for this view. As it was rainy and nasty out I liked this a lot. There was actual sand with several beach chairs for lounging! Then of course the corridor eventually led back to a skyway that attached to another casino but it was still a nice area.

The biggest thing that is surprising is the fact that Atlantic City is actually incredibly trashy. Once you cross the street from the casinos you are basically in the slums. There are run down houses, adult clubs, pawn shops, and hotels that rent rooms by the hour. Down every third street you see cop cars with their rollers on. It is not a comfortable place to be. I was very nervous just being on the opposite side of the road from the casinos. On the boardwalk side of the casinos I had no worries, it seemed safe enough, once I walked through another casino, out the front door, and crossed the streets it felt like a bad gang land movie. Nothing was kept up and every other window was soliciting something inappropriate. So all in all if I was in the area in the summer and a group wanted to go back I probably would go along but I will certainly not make an effort to get back out there again that is for sure.