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March 21, 2005

So This Is Atlantic City. Yuck.

Our company is having a sales meeting in Atlantic City today and tomorrow. I drove down yesterday with a couple of coworkers and I've spent much of the past 16 hours exploring the area around Bally's, where we're staying. As compared to Las Vegas, I find that three words sum up the A.C. experience:

  • Old - Aside from the Borgata, all of these hotels are far past their heyday. With the possible exception of the Taj Mahal, every place I've seen would have been blown up years ago if it were on the Vegas Strip.

  • Overpriced - This isn't Las Vegas, buy, boy, howdy do they charge like it is. Last night, we paid thirty bucks a head for dinner that was basically glorified Denny's. I've also had to learn to control my gag reflex with all the $10 minimum, double-odds craps you find around here. Even a crummy can of Pepsi (Pepsi owns this town, by the way) from the vending machine next to the ice machine is a buck twenty-five.

  • Dirty - While I freely admit that few vacation destinations in the world can match the spit-and-polish of Las Vegas, Atlantic City doesn't even really try. Everywhere you go here smells at least a little like an ash tray. The men's rooms are at best like what you'd find in an airport and at worst like what you'd find in a bus station. In an apparent cost-saving maneuver, Atlantic City substitutes schizophrenic homeless guys for the Hispanic kids who hand out strip club flyers on Vegas Boulevard.

    All in all, the motif of Atlantic City makes me imagine some marketing geniuses sitting in a room, brainstorming, when one of them says, "Hey, what if we made a place that's just like New York City, right down to the insufferable people, and built casinos there."

    And in case all of that isn't enough to make you say, "WTF", may I share with you a photograph I took out on the Boardwalk this morning:
    Acboardwalkwtf

    Posted by Dan at March 21, 2005 12:24 PM

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