What Casinos Did to a Seaside Playground

To say the least, the Atlantic City of today hardly resembles the Atlantic City of thirty years ago. In recent years, the "City By the Sea" has undergone a profound, gutwrenching change, perhaps more than any other area in America.

In its heyday, Atlantic City was a teeming pot of summer life--a town woven with saltwater taffy, wide, white sand beaches, seaside pie-eating contests and lollipop-striped bathing suits.

But today the City By the Sea offers the worst of urban America. Visually, it's a ghost town whose rotting buildings are mere remnants of its glorious past. Driving up Pacific Avenue and into the Inlet, it's obvious that time has passed this town by. Most of the collapsing store names that hang above the small businesses which line both sides of Atlantic Avenue don't even match the products being sold below. No one has ever bothered to replace the signs.

Most conspicuous in this town are the empty, weed-splotched lots where bright, middle-class summer houses used to stand. In a city of low wooden tenements, these lots just make the casinos stand out even more.

Simply stated, the entire economy of Atlantic City is contained within these eleven--and soon to be twelve--monstrosities. When driving to Atlantic City at night, the first sight is that of bright, gigantic neon signs adorning the tops of these buildings and blaring out now-commonplace words like TRUMP and BALLY'S GRAND.

Frankly, Atlantic City in the spring is not a whole lot different from Atlantic City in any other season. The casinos are still packed with visitors, the vast majority of whom spend their entire stay inside one of these lavish tributes to beveled glass, muzak, and blinding gold chains.

The actual gaming area of a casino is on the first floor. The rest of the building has been cleverly designed so as to discourage its visitors from leaving. For one, there are no clocks in the gambling areas; it is easy to start gambling at 9 a.m. and leave 12 hours later, still thinking it's morning.

Restaurants with glamourous names, boutiques called "High Roller," and sickly sweet employees make these places completely self-sufficient isles of economic activity (which is one reason the rest of the city has not prospered from the influx of visitors).

So why do more people visit this town than any other American City? Almost all of them are casino-goers: helpless dreamers hoping for a more exciting life, or simply weekend visitors escaping the dreariness of nearby New York City and Philadelphia.

Should you go? If you are over 21 and a casual gambler (an acceptable vice if kept under control), give it a try. It's cheap to reach and inexpensive to stay in (motels line the Blackhorse Turnpike, the road which leads into the city.)

But don't go to Atlantic City expecting a piece of nostalgia. Once lined with tidy shops, the Boardwalk is now dominated by these skyscraping casinos. Sitting on the edge of that famous wooden thouroughfare and staring out past the empty, seaweed-strewn beaches and into the ocean serves little purpose but to remind one of what was once a great town.

Although it still has a beautifully raw natural setting, the Atlantic City which 30 years ago would have spent the spring sweeping its Boardwalk and polishing its wares is now a forgotten town whose only visible outdoor activity is that of window washers cleaning the tinted glass of TRUMP PALACE.