I recently had the opportunity to visit Atlantic City, NJ. I went with the folks who, through a family friend, were able to get two rooms and a free meal. How? Let's just say it pays to be a friend of Chinese people.
Like New Yorker's who've never been to the Empire State building, or a Texan who's never toured the Alamo, I've lived in New Jersey my entire life, and just never had the opportunity or drive to see Atlantic City.
All my life Atlantic City's been there as it is now. A gaudy monument to the marriage of State politics and corporate capitalism. A decrepit shore town once only populated by the very old and the very poor that demolished its vacant, moldering, rat-infested hotels for billion-dollar casinos in order to survive. A boardwalk where millionaires, fat suburban tourists, and the down-and-out shuffle in search of salt water taffy and sea air. Little New Jersey's little Las Vegas. Donald Trump Town.
I stayed at Trump Taj Mahal. Ironically no longer owned by Trump, who licenses his name to the Casino for a fee. Built in the late 1980's, "The Taj" is a gaudy mix of a Raja's sultry palace, an Italian housewife's furniture, and a set for a Busby Berkeley number. It's a jumbled mess of a floor design crisscrossed by escalators, and festooned in chandeliers all designed to suffocate you with recycled air and guide you right to the casino floor.
The casino floor at Trump Taj Mahal is like any other casino floor. It's the first casino floor I've ever been on. I did not gamble. I'm too frugal to find THAT fun. It was a wholly demoralizing place. The table games were mostly empty, the swagger and fun of a Telly Savalas commercial for Player's Club might still hang in the air, but not that night. A Saturday night, no less. You would expect that place to be more hopping on a weekend, but just then, No Dice. No dice, no blackjack, no baccarat, no poker. Just row-after-row of slot jockeys, tediously dropping money in blinking machines, their emotionless gazes aglow in blue light. Circuit board goblins with monitor faces, and random number generators for brains.
I spent a little time outside -- I preferred it to the casino -- on the famous boardwalk, smoking Pall Mall's and milling around the mostly deserted boards. I wandered past The Showboat and The Revel, both shuttered and dismal and silent but for the sound of lapping waves.
The Revel was by far the most expensive resort built in AC, and if it had been built 15 or 20 years ago it might have amounted something, but as things are now, its look more destined for corporate speculation and the wrecking ball... or maybe liquidation by small explosives. So it goes.
The Showboat WAS actually profitable when Caesars Entertainment shut it down to stabilize their other floundering properties in Atlantic City, a move that put about 1600 people out of work. So it goes.
My meal at The Taj was good... really good; an exquisite roast duck with won-ton soup and a side of fried rice, all washed-down with Tsingtao, my favorite Oriental beer. If ever you go to Trump Taj Mahal, I highly recommend The Rim noodle bar.
My room was good. Not much in the way of amenities -- it didn't even have those soaps that everyone steals. It did have one of those bibles in the nightstand. What casino guestroom would be complete without one. The room was comfortable, clean, and tasteful, and it had a nice view of the town.
I woke-up early and watched to sun rise on Atlantic City's scramble of casinos, parking lots, and row-upon-row of sorry narrow, little houses. The thousand technicolor lights at night give way to a slummy spread of grey and brown criss-crossed by drunk drivers and resort staff shuffling-out into fresh air, cigarettes dangling from their mouths and spent looks on their faces. Putting-in your hours for a dying beast is hard work, after all. Few sights are so sublime. Few sights are so beautiful. And few sights are so worth writing about.
I could hear the ambient noise of CNN coming from my room TV. I could hear Donald Trump doing what he does best, selling himself. He's a rich kid from Queens... a commercial for Ronco's Great Looking Hair... an icon... and most importantly, a real estate developer. We hear a lot a ra-ra from people who take him seriously and as a result either love him or hate him. But let's never forget that Donald Trump was born and bred in the world of real estate, where bullshit is expected, needed, and rewarded. It's not real, it's just the deal.
The Donald embodies that ideal. He's part hustler, part huckster, part exhibitionist, all promises, and no substance. Much like Atlantic City, a town built and rebuilt by all of those qualities. And perhaps that's what lured Trump there in the 80's, when AC was still a decaying city-by-the-sea in need of a new hustle, a new huckster, a new show, and a new promise. But it always is, the hustle stutters-out, the hucksters leave town, and show gets old, and the promises don't get paid for.
Watching the sun rise from my window in that wildly gaudy skyscraper that Trump built then left behind, and hearing his newest pitch on CNN, I could see that what Trump and guys like him sold Atlantic City way back when, was ultimately a dud. So it goes.
