Hotel

    Drove into Atlantic City Saturday morning. It was Dean, Dan, Al, and Sean. And me.

    We stayed a non-casino hotel – a somewhat bland looking tower of eggshell-colored concrete situated directly between the train station and the Atlantic City convention center. Our rooms, the sort of clean and emotionally inert holding pens for the American traveling businessman that can be found in any mid- to large-sized American city, overlooked the convention center. The outside of the convention center is dotted with large, two-story tall, blue and white banners informing passersby of the many cultural events it will be playing host to. Trying to find the common thread among the many acts playing the center is entertaining. The AC Center is hosting both the pro-rock neo-metal sounds of Tool as well as the cutting-edge comedy of Sinbad. Speculation about what this says about their respective carriers I leave to others.

    The hotel we stayed contained a small museum dedicated to the Miss America beauty pageant, Atlantic City's most significant and long-lasting contribution to American culture. Outside the hotel was a small bronze statue of Bert Parks holding out a bronze tiara. If, like myself, you have ever dreamed of ever being crowned Miss America by the ur-emcee of the pageant, you can stand in front of the statue and slip your head into the crown.
    The statue has two stigmata-like holes, one in each palm. Not to long ago, these housed light sensors. The sensors were tripped when somebody put their head in the crown and, from speakers housed in two fake rocks positioned at Mr. Parks's left and right flanks, came Parks's legendary rendition of "Here She Is, Miss America." To my great dismay, the sound system was out of order.

    In the lobby of the hotel were several cases containing the gowns of various Miss America winners. For my money, the most interesting outfit belonged to Margaret Gorman, the winner of the Second Annual Atlantic City Pageant, the pre-historic ancestor of the modern affair. Gorman, the short, cubby-cheeked, curly-haired "Miss Washington D.C." of 1921, was a "triple threat." Aside from the grand prize (then a 3 foot long Golden Mermaid trophy), this charmer snagged the "Inter-City Beauty, Amateur" trophy and was crowned "The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America." She officially became the first Miss America when it was learned that another contest claimed the rights to "Miss Washington D.C." Calling Gorman "Miss Inter-City Beauty, Amateur, and Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America" was deemed awkward, so judges settled for the easy, definitive "Miss America."
    The year Gorman won, she was wearing a wonderful outfit modeled loosely on the Statue of liberty. In photos taken at the time, she's wearing a shiny, drop-waist dress, part toga, part flapper dress. Draped over her shoulder is a cape made out of the American flag. She holds the cape up, in a gesture which reminds me of Batman. On the top of her head is a handmade headdress meant to simulate the spiked headdress of Lady Liberty. Gorman's hat, however, is completely out of scale and the spikes are absurdly long. Some are slightly bent and appear to be flopping around. It looks like a lovingly, but somewhat inexpertly, assembled party costume – a child's toy next to the high fashion creations in the other cases. Though clearly out-classed, Gorman's dress is far more likable. The other dresses, and their wearers, seem made to be worshipped. Gorman and her home-brewed horror seems like she was there to be loved.
    After that first pageant, Gorman never won again, though, a plaque next to her dress informed us, that she remained a crowd favorite.

    We wondered whether or not there might be some darkened room of the main display dedicated to those Miss Americas who disgraced the crown. After an admittedly cursory search, we couldn't find one.

Downtown: Shops

    For a long time, Atlantic City was basically a strip of hyper-priced casino land on the surf, immediately hemmed in slums. I suspect any gentrification efforts were met by casino owners with skepticism who most likely didn't see the percentage in making any part of the city besides their casinos worth walking to. Why confuse people libraries and museums and shit? They've come for the booze, broads, and blackjack – what's the point of getting all off message? But the high-cost of developing on the boardwalk pushed many developers away from the strip. The hoteliers didn't need their customers walking through a DMZ just to get to the slots. Besides, what good is a sucker if some mugger is going to relive him of his bank? Who needs that competition? Also, as unlikely as it seems, sucker started bringing Mrs. Sucker and he suckerlings along. Entertainment must be provided for the whole family. Atlantic City did what any smart, civic-minded town would do: turned their downtown into a giant outlet strip mall. There are your old standbys: the Gap, a Niketown, and all the other block-long retail-o-perience adventures that you can comfortably find in any mall in America. These stores represent the closest thing we still have to a shared community. More than our participation in the electoral process, more than our faiths or our literature or our arts, more than a collective sense of America as shining beacon on a hill, what holds us together is shopping at what amounts to the same twenty or so shops. The lingua franca of America relies heavily on phrases like, "Get ready! Summer is Here!"

    There were some interesting non-canonical shops. Vitamin World, for example, was there for all your bulk health needs. Yankee Candles is happy to sell you last year's hottest candle designs are reasonable priced discounts. And, should you need to propose en masse, Ultra Diamonds will cater to you every jewel batch purchase need.

    Weirdly, on the main shop drag, between our hotel and the strip, you can find an H & M outlet – basically an outlet of an outlet. What could possibly be sold in an H & M outlet boggles the mind. I envision squares of un-dyed fabric with, perhaps, stray buttons stitched on in random places.

Downtown: Hospital

    The downtown hospital in Atlantic City is currently undergoing a major expansion. It is, one must assume, a major source of civic pride. Driving into town, one passes several billboards announcing the construction of what is referred to as the new "Patient Tower." I was especially taken the booster-ish quality of the signs. They read: "The New Patient Tower!" Pictured on the signs is a veritable UN of medical health professionals, all giving the same Babbitt-meets-Arrowsmith smile. "Opening in October!" I half expect them to include: "Be There!" or "If You're Thinking of Getting Sick in September, Hold It!"

    Even incomplete, the new tower looks quite nice. You can look over the construction site as you pass it on your way to the casinos. It rises several stories above the hospital's "Frank Sinatra Wing," to which it is attached.

Casino: Historic Themes

    Following the well-known Biblical injunction, the first casino we entered was Caesar's. There are two "historically" themed casinos in Atlantic City: Bally's Wild West and Caesar's. Of the two, Bally's is clearly more into its shtick. They duded-up their place in a cowboy motif that is less Jesse James and Wounded Knee and more Yosemite Sam and Thunder Mountain Railroad. Caesar's, on the other hand, is "set" in some generic Greco-Roman/Renaissance space. So long as it looks old and Euro, it can comfortably fit in Caesar's Palace.

Casino: Slots

    When you first enter a floor casino, you hear this odd, warbling note that quickly builds as you approach the floor and is then sustained the entire time you're near the action. It isn't very loud, but it is distinct. It sounds like the choral effect movies use to indicate revelation. Dan, who is a musician, was the first in the group to point it out. The theory was floated that the sound was, perhaps, being piped in. Casinos are so bizarrely over-designed places that it did not seem wholly impossible that some researcher had determined that this particular sound stimulated spending behaviors and, therefore, every casino in America now plays it as a constant, money-lubricating background hum.
    After some poking around, we found that the background hum is not a single note at all: it is the collective sound of the tumblers from the slot machines. American casinos have so many slot machines, with so many players working away at them at any given moment, that the sound of their tumblers going creates a single humming note.

    Trump's, which we hit later that night, was advertising a "Mother's Day Slot Tournament." I'm not sure just how a tournament is built around the slots as, near as I can figure, the machines are basically skill-levelers and the process of winning or losing is programmed in. Still, there it was.

    Based on nothing but anecdotal evidence and random observations, I'd say that slot machine designers target the "just retired" demographic. This means the current target is the Boomers. The cultural references on the machines tend to focus on the popular culture of the '50s, 60s, and early '70s. Classic television is big. Slot players can choose whether they'd rather lose money to I Love Lucy or I Spy. There's even a wonderful Star Wars slot that involves a giant, spinning Death Star made of tumblers. The overall feel and look of the machines is, I think, meant to remind players of pinball machines, the more innocent coin guzzlers of their collective youth. I saw particularly nice Creature of the Black Lagoon machines (two variants on the same design) and a Munsters machine. Presumably, as the Gen X-ers approach retirement, the casinos will fill with X-Files and Friends slots, and their designs will mimic stand-up arcade games or, perhaps, classic home video game units. Sixty years from now, our children will be using their wrinkled hands to dump coins in Yu-Gi-Oh machines.

Next: Why I gamble, dinner with the Buddha, and more Atlantic City