Atlantic City Circa 2011
That ditty was written when AC was a top tourist town, teeming with night clubs (Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis debuted here), luxurious ocean front hotels, seaside amusements for the entire family -
(including the Disneyland of the day - the 'World's Famous' Steel Pier - where for one low price you could see a national headliner or two, a kids talent show, a horse diving 20 or so feet into a large pool, springboard divers leaping 30 or so feet into the Atlantic & a couple of movies)
- & was the home of Miss America (when that contest - believe it or not - really seemed to matter).
Of course that was 'pre' the resort's 1950s-60s slide into seedy & 30 years before the introduction of legalized casino gambling.
Today, this poor man's Las Vegas hovers somewhere in limbo between seemingly wanting to become a glamorous worldwide tourist destination while really being the place where tri-state bus hoppers go for their gambling fixes, discounted buffets & are able to be back home all in a few hours.
The town does have its own unique touches.
At Caesars' indoor shopping Pier, there's an entertaining 5 minute 'dancing waters' show ever hour on the hour. Ok, it's not the Vegas Bellagio fountains, but on a smaller scale still has a 'wow' factor.
You can be 'pushed' along the boardwalk AC style via the town's version of a rickshaw.
Enjoy a large sized boardwalk game of Monopoly in the town the game board's based on.
Or 'remember' at the Korean War Memorial.
Yes, there are still top name acts headlining, but that seems to be more a weekend thing. On the Tuesday we were in town, there really wasn't much besides a version of 'Beatlemania' & a pseudo 'Cirq de Soleil' show advertising nude acrobats (where - hopefully - the trapeze artists are only caught by their hands).
Of course the casinos are as lavishly gaudy as any place in the world. And they're building more.
The futuristic 'Revel' will open sometime next year.
But even after 35 years of working on getting the gambling resort thing right, AC just can't seem to separate the sensational from the seedy. Go a few steps away from the Casinos & you are in places that you really might not want to walk late at night.
'Not so,' says my pal Stephan Caldwell who works backstage at AC shows. 'I always feel safe here.' And he's in town all hours of the day & night so he should know.
However - at the risk of being called an elitist profiler - after eye balling some of the local denizens, I think I'd stay only in the well lighted casinos after dusk.
There is one thing that could re-revitalize the non casino parts of this seaside town: shopping. No, not the shops on Caesars' pier - whose prices cause more eyes to pop & mouths to drop than its 'dancing water' show - but the new mega-block outdoor Tanger Outlet Stores area.
This non-mall throwback to mid 1950s downtown shopping is just west of the boardwalk & - like all TO centers - gives you a lot of name brand bang for your shopping buck.
We actually saved enough at the Columbia outlet to afford a couple of hours at the slots & left town - via the very well lit & 'attached to the main casino without stepping onto the dark street' Caesars garage - with $2.21 worth of winnings in our pockets. Yahoo!
The 'big winners' a couple of day-lit hours before pocketing the mega bucks.
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