Turning George into Lincoln – No Beginners’ Luck in the Wild West of Atlantic City

Sunday 22nd June 2014

Midday

I’m going to have to do a separate blog post for all the AC photos. It’ll be like the movie adaption of this weekend…

In the car on the way back to Virginia. We had a bit of a farce trying to check out as all the lifts in the hotel seemed to have also gone on vacay, but are now speeding our way to the land of rolling fields and country road(kill)s. Also turned out that they charged us way less than we anticipated, which can only be a plus. I got all excited when the cash machine gave me $50 bills: ballin’.

On Friday evening we headed out down the boardwalk to have dinner in a place called Margaritaville, which funnily enough is in the same franchise as the crappy restaurant ShortButSweet used to work in til they shut down. We then explored the boardwalk and the fair a bit, before heading to a casino. There are a ton of them on the boardwalk, mostly within hotels – and a lot of the hotels are somehow all connected so you can just walk from casino to casino through big carpeted airport-style walkways.

So stepped I for the first time into a casino. It was just… Bizarre. Absolutely mahoosive rooms filled with tables and slot machines and bright lights and signs and cashier desks and security guards and waitresses. They had rooms specifically for high-value bets where I guess you’d go if you were a special breed of doofus. It was just crazy.

Another thing I can’t get my head around is how they get away with having smoking sections in casinos here. Similar to Vienna and Bratislava where I visited last year, there is law in place so you can’t smoke inside… Like Europe-wide law… But somehow you also totally can. It would be classic Murrica to have some kind of by-law to give you the ‘right to shove a smoke in your gub whilst slot-machining’ – freedom and liberty and all that…

Anyway, we played some of the 1 cent slot machines – ShortButSweet managed to make $5 but LittleBitFierce and I had zero luck. The whole thing was totally arbitrary – pretty colours and flashing lights but absolutely no skill involved whatsoever. It was a novelty but I don’t think I could ever get addicted to it (they do say lawyers are risk-averse, but I think it’s probably just because I have minimal moolah…). I reckon if you had cash and could play the card games well you’d probably get a lot more out of it. Plus I like the word ‘croupier’. There were a lot of sketchy folk there too – lots of ‘Jersey’ women, all older with the massive hair and fake nails and tan; a lot of bachelor and bachelorette parties; and just dodge old dudes lurking about.

We went down the other end of the boardwalk after that, which is more cutesy and in better nick, and there was a band and a light show on the side of one of the buildings with music and all. It was cool that the boardwalk was buzzing at all hours, and the whole set-up still managed to be beach-holiday family-friendly despite all the gambling, and sketchy folk dandering about.

Then on Saturday we went to Starbucks again for breakfast and then did a bit of shopping for clothes. LittleBitFierce got four pairs of shoes for $130, so if tax-free shopping isn’t the American Dream I don’t know what is. We decided to play mini golf on the boardwalk, which was great fun. The overcast and cloudy sky broke into sunshine and we putted our way around the cute little course before grabbing some lunch and then hitting up a beer garden in the warmth.

After getting back to the hotel we went to the pool and then got ready to head out for our last evening in AC: Atlantic City or Bust. It started in strange fashion by being approached by these two kids as we walked down the boardwalk for dinner, who were all ‘we’re doing a survey for college, can we ask you some questions?’ We wanted somebody to take out photo so we traded 10 minutes in for a group shot. They were friendly but it turned out they were Christians sent to do Christian things and so the questions were all intense things like ‘what is your idea of what Heaven looks like?’, and ‘on a scale of 1 to 10 how much does God want to get to know you?’ Mannn. They may have chosen some nice, wholesome-looking white girls to survey but we were still in Sin City.

The others wanted to relive a chunk of childhood so we had dinner in a places called the Rainforest Café, which they put a big effort into making all themed with moving animals and waterfalls and fish and whatnot. They had a ‘tropical thunderstorm’ that happened every 30 minutes. It was actually pretty fun – feeling like a kid but drinking cocktails. And telling the time by how many rainstorms there had been was pretty novel.

Feeling, I suppose, still full of the spirit of themed entertainment, we headed to a Wild West casino-bar. There was a great party atmosphere, as the place had a band, tons of bachelor[ette] parties and pretty cheap beer… But the downsides were that it was hellaloud and we got stuck for a while with some doofus guys whose chat-up line was trying to guess what our jobs were (unimpressed face), and could not be doing with the bad chat; and they also had girls in skimps cowgirl outfits dancing on the bar as well, which was not toooo seedy but mega tacky. We did the classic text-under-the-table and high-tailed it to the restrooms another casino…

We moved on to Caesar’s, which was way bigger and more upmarket. We did a few more slot machines (I suck at it but ShortButSweet managed to swap presidents – turning a dollar bill into five) and then went to the bar. It was quieter, so we could chat, but there was a very surreal and mildly disconcerting atmosphere created by dudes smoking cigars, and more bar dancers but this was pretty seedy. At least the ‘Wild West Vixens’ had routines to suggestive songs about riding and lassoing – these girls were just wearing very little and being all strip-club-y. They swapped every half hour and it was now a case of working out the time by when the table-dancing girls changed shifts instead of that magical rainforest monsoon of a few hours before (want some chalk with your cheese?). There are no clocks in casinos, ya see.

We ended the night back in the hotel bar and reprimanded the bartender for the state we ended up in on Thursday night. He said “the Giggle Girls have come back”. What a legacy to leave behind in Atlantic City, the Vegas of the East Coast. Well, the really tiny, time-stuck Vegas.

I Went to the Picture Show: Photos from Atlantic City

Just for extra authenticity to the kind-of-sort-of twenties theme of the Boardwalk, all the pictures are black and white! The magic of modern technology..

Thursday evening

Saturday evening

Mini-golfing on Saturday

.

Sand Sculpting – I don’t tell a lie…

Pier

Hella vino

Cocktail time

On our way

Boardwalkin’

Boardwalkin’ some more

Beach

Night-time

Making it rain

ShortButSweet’s patented mini-golf technique

Saturday night – this was the photo we asked those Christians to take in exchange for their survey…

Unimpressed

More cocktails

 

Do They Clean Your Room in a Hotel? Adventures in Atlantic City

Thursday 19th July 2014

13.55

Due to my ham-fistedness with using phone apps, unfortunately I’m going to have to post the photos separately…

On the road to Atlantic City, in full Road Trip mode: radio, Dunkin’ Donuts, using all our loose change up for road tolls.

We (myself, ShortButSweet and her friend LittleBitFierce, who is all-American and super nice) are already in New Jersey, so should arrive before too long. All my expectations of what AC is going to be like come from Boardwalk Empire, which at least puts me further ahead than last weekend travelling to Yo-hio.

I watch Boardwalk Empire with my friend SteamBoat at home, as a bridge between Game of Thrones. I suck a bit at watching it though and am always asking him what’s supposed to be happening: I’m far too caught up in the 20s set-up and fail to see the conflicts the gangsters all seem to be in because Prohibition seemed not to bother anybody. But the exciting thing is that according to the sign in the lobby, Nucky Thompson did actually stay here.

Friday 20th June 2014

14.45

On the beach with ShortButSweet and LittleBitFierce. It’s braw. Flirting with 30 degrees and no humidity. Have random pieces of sunburn but nothing terrible. ShortButSweet is finding out from Handsome Sven that he is currently deep in a forest in Sweden with his friends drinking and singing songs to celebrate Midsummer or something like that, conforming to just about every glorious Scandinavian stereotype ever.

We arrived in Atlantic City yesterday afternoon. Driving in, you’re met with a huge wedge of skyscraper hotels and billboards and big wide American roads. Atlantic City looks like it has been frozen in time – or maybe a selection of different times – with massive concrete hotels and casinos straight from the 70s, and the rickety boardwalk creaking back to the 20s but chocked with food stands and souvenir shops and bars and seagulls. Everything looks like it should either be magicked back or forward in time to revive it. It was Twenties without the Roar.

So our hotel was much better than we expected. It has a big lobby and a ton of floors, and our room is fine (and clean, which is always a plus). The place has a definite Grand Budapest Hotel feel – you could tell it used to be the swankiest hotel in town and now it’s very self-consciously faded but keeps a bit of old-school charm. And we managed to scam free parking too. We dumped our bags and set off exploring down the boardwalk and the beach. It was a little overcast bit still warm. Like I said, it’s a bizarre place here. I can’t really get my head around the ‘wholesome, tacky, All-American seaside family fun’ thing mixed with the ‘oh by the way, don’t forget that you’re all here to drink and gamble’ bit.

But, lest I forget, we did of course head to the World Cup in Sand Sculpting, hosted in Atlantic City for the second year in a row! We checked that out, which was just strange. Everyone was maybe a couple of hours into it and so it was all spooky walking around in this overcast cloudy scene with all these dudes sweeping and stamping massive mounds of sand. Afterwards we went to a bar to grab some appetisers and our first cocktail of the vacay.

We decided that we’d go to the hotel bar for a few drinks as we’d been given coupons, and then head out.
As I was saying, the hotel exceeded our (low) expectations – but when we were trying to find the bar we were wandering around all these floors with nobody there and things half-way refurbished and sometimes distant music, and it started to get a lot less Grand Budapest and a lot more The Shining. It was hilariously deserted and unclear where you were meant to go.

Eventually we got to the bar – a room with a ‘band’ at the front who were performing in front of this big sparkly drape, and like four people watching them. It was so strange. We sat down at the bar and, essentially, got glamorously trashed. It was a definite tick in the box of a girls weekend away. Our coupons were 2-for-1 but the cocktails were mahoosively alcoholic and my wine was at least two large glasses in one. Our bartender was fed up at work and so didn’t give a care about measurements and such. We had great chat over the evening and a really fun time, even though the whole set-up was so unglamorous. After a few hours we still had a tiny bar tab yet our plans to go out into the nightlife were curtailed by not really being able to walk too well, so we were in bed by 11pm.

And now at the beach we’re relaxing off any general malaise. And our attempt at going out tonight will hopefully be more successful.

19.00

Forget what I said about not being sunburned… Whaaaa…