ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.-
Even the casinos can't ruin the Boardwalk.
I know there are millions, if not tens of millions, of gamblers out there who are rightly offended by those sentiments. And just for the record, I do understand the argument that the money gamblers spend is comparable to the dollars we non-believers shell out in pursuit of our chosen pastimes–like Broadway plays and shopping at Whole Foods.
Still, I hate the hotel casinos and everything about them: the cheesy fantasy realms they try to conjure, the fume-spewing buses that bring their willing marks from all over the East, the rows of gaudy-colored slot machines that whir and jangle all hours of the day and night–and the exemption casinos get from the statewide smoking ban, meaning it's not unusual to see poor souls with oxygen tanks shuffling through smoke-filled casinos.
Yet, despite what to me was a relentlessly depressing panorama of poor, sick and elderly people spending money they probably couldn't afford to spend, I had a ball on a recent trip to Atlantic City.
The reason for going was part business, part pleasure: My husband had work to do there, and I wanted to visit relatives who live two towns to the south on Absecon Island, a barrier island that stretches along the coastline of southern New Jersey.
Atlantic City is an impoverished little city that officials were hoping to revitalize when, in 1976, they legalized gambling. Clearly lots of money has changed hands since then, but you'd be hard-pressed to find much evidence in the blighted blocks of abandoned buildings and trash-strewn lots a stone's throw from the casinos.
Most of the hotel casinos are clustered along the Boardwalk, with ugly and unadorned parking garages sealing them off from the rest of the city. Easy-listening pop tunes and the disembodied voices of casino hucksters waft at all hours from the gambling halls over the Boardwalk, which still draws a stream of locals, tourists, joggers and the down-and-out, though many fewer visitors than in its heyday in the first half of the 20th century.
It takes about five minutes to understand the continuing, though diminished, allure. Hotels and casinos, shopping malls and arcades, amusement piers and pageants– those things come and go. But the sea itself, its pounding surf and vast stretches of white sand–that lasts forever, untainted by tackiness and sleaze.
That weekend, I walked for miles along the wide, wooden planks so elegantly laid out in herringbone pattern, well beyond the last casino, T-shirt vendor, salt water taffy stand and massage parlor. I admired the Absecon Lighthouse, built in 1857 and still a stirring sight, and popped into the Atlantic City Historical Museum, which has done a fine job of preserving the 150-year history of the seaside resort, from its once-grand hotels to its various attractions over the years: the carnival rides, freak shows, Miss America Pageant and diving horses that plunged from a tower on the Steel Pier into a pool of water. One of my favorite oddities was the world's largest typewriter.
The Atlantic was too cold to go swimming in early spring, so I wasn't able to take advantage of the fabled healing powers of salt water. But I drank in the sunshine and was lulled to sleep by the waves. I left Atlantic City feeling as if I'd been to a much more pristine and faraway place.
