“You may not like hookers, but when they go—man, that means you’ve passed away.” I quote, with my own permission, from a rather unprophetic Gimlet Eye. That was NR, February 6, 1976 b.g. (Before Gambling), and Atlantic City looked to me like the protagonist of some sodden funeral. Back then bandits were young and had more than one arm. Crime, unemployment, ultra-drab: in 1976 when you built your house on Ventnor Avenue, Parker Bros, should’ve given out a little green wooden German shepherd to guard it. Even the ocean seemed unseaworthy: waves didn’t break, they fell apart. “AC is a relic,” 1 wrote, “an urban resort, probably our last.” But AC beat the long point-spread. Now a local paper is running this scarehead: sex and the casinos. Inside, afraid that Mafiosi might Monopolize another small business, an editorial will pimp for legalized prostitution. Yass’m, the whores are back in AC. Enticed by that most sensual soft part of a man: his Louis Vuitton billfold.
AC hasn’t changed: it’s been capped. 1 wrote in 1976: “Tourists just pass through, men and women momentarily released from time. The indigenous peoples are teased by an air of freedom. . . . It’s a party the town will never crash.” That, I suspect, might still hold. Sure: seven casinos have advanced to Boardwalk, but behind them you see the same grim clapboard jungle: each house dreary as an ironing-board cover. The desolate Million Dollar Pier seems to have been brought in way under budget. Disrepair is convening at Convention Hall: someday Miss America will get crowned by a fallen roof tile. And there are few children: children can’t cover a decent bet. AC isn’t family. Yet Governor Byrne, whose mind has all the scenic overlook of an Exxon tank farm, will remain serene: yes, crime isupinAC, “but five years ago there was nothing to steal.”
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