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on the backs of the exploited working class
So, Atlantic City in one word: Unimpressive. The boardwalk is shorter, less interesting, and less friendly than Ocean City's. (OC, Maryland. The other ones don't count.) There are almost none of the family-run specialty shops and quirky little galleries that are still hanging on in OC, the hawkers are far more agressive and desperate-sounding, and far fewer of them are locals. Almost none have very good English, in fact. There *were* a lot more fortunetellers, but I had no desire to patronize them; they reminded me more than anything of Pop-pop's "Good Time Girls of the Gold Rush" video, tired, sad-looking women in little curtained cubicles with their names over the entrance and placards outside giving the scaled prices for different acts: $5 for handwriting analysis up to $30 for tarot readings. If I'm going to visit one of them I at least want it to be someone who likes what she's doing.
The beach may actually be better than OC's. If so, it's probably because nobody uses it, although we didn't get in till evening so we didn't see much of it. And I'm not sure exactly what a beach bar entails, but it's probably not something that improves the general atmosphere. The town itself is similar-- to wildly paraphrase the book I'm currently reading, in Atlantic City they mine their history, cut it and sell it, and it eventually winds up in a pawn shop on Baltic Avenue. In Ocean City, they dredge it up and build more hotels out of it. (ETA Saturday: In Cape May, they sterilize it and put it on display in the garden of a B&B, and in Wildwood they order it from Mexico, paint it bright red and sell it in a souvenir shop.)
Of course, people don't go to Atlantic City for the town or the beach or the boardwalk, they go for the casinos. So do my aunt and uncle. They told Mom and I we had to play the slots at least once, so we did. I thought nothing could possibly be more depressing than sitting alone in my dorm room, playing endless games of spider solitaire and watching my tuition money go down the drain, but sitting in the casino playing video poker beats that. At least playing solitaire I'm the only person feeling miserable. In the casino-- as far as I could tell-- everyone was miserable. A bunch of sour-faced old ladies and middle-aged men, looking out-of-place and grimly determined among the noise and smoke and neon lights. Even the people who were winning were just annoyed that it took too long to get their winnings and get back to playing. In fact, nobody in Atlantic City looked like they were having fun. Either they were in the casino not-having-fun, or they were hanging around somewhere else killing time because they weren't in a casino.
The most enjoyable thing to do is Atlantic City is Monopoly scavenger hunt. And no, I'm not kidding. If this is what slots would do to Maryland, I not only don't want them, I'm going to leave if they get legalized.
Just south from there in Ventnor and Margate, it starts looking like the Jersey shore again, with lots of lovely big old beach houses and green, green Garden State everywhere and people wandering around looking relaxed and happy and at home and the long white beach lined with newly-planted dunes and gray boardwalk. (In New Jersey, most public beaches require buying a beach pass-- but most of the beaches are public, which is certainly better than the situation in Maryland, where most of the beaches are behind barbed wire.)
We stopped to see Lucy the Margate Elephant this morning. Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Larry had never been, which was just tragic. We got there half-an-hour before she opened and were adopted by a friendly local, a very talkative and opinionated old man with a thick Italian-Jersey accent. I can't imagine getting more stereotypical Jersey Coast than sitting in the sea breeze with my toes in the sand, eating water ice and listing to a perfect stranger telling me that "kidsa today, theya got no respect."
We're heading down to Wildwood today. Our hosts really like it. I'm not optimistic, going just by the name. Plus, they have amusement piers that don't even go near the water, and I'm not sure what *that's* about.
Today I learned: That cicada-stricken trees are actually quite pretty. Just the last six inches of the branch turns color and breaks, so in heavily-hit areas like around the airport, the trees look from a distance like they're covered with dangling orange-brown blooms.
Current reading: Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson
The beach may actually be better than OC's. If so, it's probably because nobody uses it, although we didn't get in till evening so we didn't see much of it. And I'm not sure exactly what a beach bar entails, but it's probably not something that improves the general atmosphere. The town itself is similar-- to wildly paraphrase the book I'm currently reading, in Atlantic City they mine their history, cut it and sell it, and it eventually winds up in a pawn shop on Baltic Avenue. In Ocean City, they dredge it up and build more hotels out of it. (ETA Saturday: In Cape May, they sterilize it and put it on display in the garden of a B&B, and in Wildwood they order it from Mexico, paint it bright red and sell it in a souvenir shop.)
Of course, people don't go to Atlantic City for the town or the beach or the boardwalk, they go for the casinos. So do my aunt and uncle. They told Mom and I we had to play the slots at least once, so we did. I thought nothing could possibly be more depressing than sitting alone in my dorm room, playing endless games of spider solitaire and watching my tuition money go down the drain, but sitting in the casino playing video poker beats that. At least playing solitaire I'm the only person feeling miserable. In the casino-- as far as I could tell-- everyone was miserable. A bunch of sour-faced old ladies and middle-aged men, looking out-of-place and grimly determined among the noise and smoke and neon lights. Even the people who were winning were just annoyed that it took too long to get their winnings and get back to playing. In fact, nobody in Atlantic City looked like they were having fun. Either they were in the casino not-having-fun, or they were hanging around somewhere else killing time because they weren't in a casino.
The most enjoyable thing to do is Atlantic City is Monopoly scavenger hunt. And no, I'm not kidding. If this is what slots would do to Maryland, I not only don't want them, I'm going to leave if they get legalized.
Just south from there in Ventnor and Margate, it starts looking like the Jersey shore again, with lots of lovely big old beach houses and green, green Garden State everywhere and people wandering around looking relaxed and happy and at home and the long white beach lined with newly-planted dunes and gray boardwalk. (In New Jersey, most public beaches require buying a beach pass-- but most of the beaches are public, which is certainly better than the situation in Maryland, where most of the beaches are behind barbed wire.)
We stopped to see Lucy the Margate Elephant this morning. Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Larry had never been, which was just tragic. We got there half-an-hour before she opened and were adopted by a friendly local, a very talkative and opinionated old man with a thick Italian-Jersey accent. I can't imagine getting more stereotypical Jersey Coast than sitting in the sea breeze with my toes in the sand, eating water ice and listing to a perfect stranger telling me that "kidsa today, theya got no respect."
We're heading down to Wildwood today. Our hosts really like it. I'm not optimistic, going just by the name. Plus, they have amusement piers that don't even go near the water, and I'm not sure what *that's* about.
Today I learned: That cicada-stricken trees are actually quite pretty. Just the last six inches of the branch turns color and breaks, so in heavily-hit areas like around the airport, the trees look from a distance like they're covered with dangling orange-brown blooms.
Current reading: Mona Lisa Overdrive, William Gibson