My late mom liked Laughlin in the '90s. She said it was like Vegas in the '50s. My dad won $100,000 there in the mid-'90s.
LAS (or KLAS, if you prefer) was McCarran International Airport. In 2021 it was renamed to Harry Reid International Airport. John Wayne International Airport (SNA/KSNA) is in Orange County, CA.
My mother was born and raised in Margate City, the ritzier suburb just to the south of AC (and home of Lucy the Elephant). I spent a lot or time on the beach there and on the Atlantic City boardwalk as a child in the late 70s and 80s. My grandparents had moved there in the early 1930s during one of its boom periods, and my grandfather made a killing in real estate, retiring just before gambling came in. They moved to south Florida in 1987.
I have very good memories of the area, including of Atlantic City itself, although in retrospect, I never saw much of the city beyond a block or two from the sea.
That sums up AC pretty well, 3 blocks from the Ocean is kind of bleak. The Casinos were suppose to fix that, but they didn’t.
I had an evening free in Davenport, Iowa and the Quad Cities River Bandits weren’t playing that night. I wandered into the casino, got $20 worth of quarters, and plugged them one after the other into the slots, letting every payout ride. When I had fed in the last quarter, I cashed out. Got $19.75 back and considered it 5 minutes well spent.
I used to go down to Atlantic City on special trips as a kid. We didn’t go often, because it was pretty far down the coast, and there were plenty of other shore resorts much closer to where I lived in central Jersey, like Asbury Park and Point Pleasant and Seaside Heights.
But AC was different, even in the pre-casino days. There was the Steel Pier, which was an awesome attraction. You paid one price and got to see all the stuff on the Pier, which included a live stage show (I saw the Supremes there, and the Cowsills and Herman’s Hermits in their heyday). There were also two movies, the car show, and the Circus at the end of the Pier, with its famous Diving Horse. There was also the Diving Bell, in which you could go about 50 feet down into the waters of the Atlantic. That was actually not that impressive, because the water’s so turbid you can’t see a thing. But it was cool just to go down.
Here it is when it was in operation.
Today it’s on display somewhere (not near the remains of the Pier)
There was a Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum (not the one that’s now on the Boardwalk) and a variety of shops and game stands on the Pier.
Across from the pier was the Planter’s Peanut store, with some poor dude dressed up as Mr. Peanut walking around
The Steel Pier burned several times, but managed to survive. The first casino in AC was the Resorts International, which was put directly opposite the Steel Pier (they knew what the popular location was). It was a pretty rinky-dink casino, but in those days they had a virtual monopoly on East Coast gambling sites, so they didn’t need much. They tore down the Planters Peanut shop, of course. Several years later they tore down the Steel Pier, too. There’s still a “Steel Pier” there, but to say it’s not the same is too weak a phrase. It’s a mere fraction of the length of the original and has nothing of the original remaining. It’s just a modern mini-thing with nothing in common with the original but a tacked-on name.
The next pier down, to the south, was George Tilyou’s Steeplechase Pier. , established by the same guy who founded Steeplechase Park in Coney Island 9one of the Big Three amusement places in turn of the century New York). it had a variety of shops and rides, including, in 1970, a Gino’s hamburger and KFC franchise, a short at which was responsible for setting fire to the pier. it’s gone now, too.
There was a bookstore on the Boardwalk, which was a novelty then, and would be today if it still existed. Boardwaln bookstores have been rare over the past sixty years, and this was the only non-used one I know of.
There was Louis Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Louis apparently really was related to the Madame Tussaud whose wax museum was world famous. The highlight of Louis’ museum was the Chamber of Horrors, with its torture scenes, including the guy impaled through the stomach by The Turkish Hook.
There was another Pier with a small aquarium and a very tall tower with a circular car that could take you up for a spectacular view of the beach.
and, of course, there was the Convention Hall, where the Miss America pageant was held until the 1960s. And there were lots of stores and stands, including a huge Woolworth’s right on the Boardwalk. And hotels, and those hand-pushed carts for tourists.
If you got a block off the Boardwalk, it was pretty depressing – run down and poverty stricken
Legalized Gambling was supposed to change all that. It did bring in money, but it seemed to all stay on the Boardwalk. One block off the Boardwalk was still pretty damned depressing. Time magazine sometime in the 1980s ran an issue with a cover photo of some homeless guy squatting on the beach. The prosperous zone has started to extend a bit, but Atlantic City still suffers from extreme wealth division and broad underprivileged areas.
The Boardwalk has transformed completely since 1976. Nothing of the old days remains, except for some legacy buildings. The stores are completely different, and the bookstore and Louis Tussaud’s are gone.
Lucy the Elephant, by the way, isn’t in Atlantic City, but in Margate, a completely different community some distance away along the beach. This isn’t a pedantic distinction – if you set out walking to Lucy from the AC casinos you’ll find it a long hike. I had been going to AC for years, but I first saw Lucy only about ten years ago when we made a deliberate trip to see her
That’s what I said. My mom was from Margate, and I visited Lucy every time I went to see my grandparents.
Atamasama,
That is interesting about the smoking. Did you stay at an older casino. I remember years ago I went to the Wynn, Bellagio and the Cosmapolitan and i don’t remember dealing with smoking smells or any problems. Currently the new National harbor casino at the waterfront in Maryland - like all 6 Maryland casinos - is smoke free and they have been that way since the beginning. I rarely go but the times I have been smoking is not an issue at all.
Sorry – Just wanted to point out what may not have been clear – that Margate is a pretty fair hike down from AC. It’s not the next town over (that’s Ventnor City), and it’s 4-5 miles from the AC casinos (depending on where you select your starting point)
Last time I checked, there was one smoke free casino in Las Vegas.
I’ve lived “down the shore” for all of my adult life. I worked in AC for a couple of years in the early 80s as a security guard in two casinos. I then got into law enforcement first as a marine police officer and then as a detective for the county prosecutor in Atlantic County. As a detective I worked narcotics, violent crimes and homicide. The vast majority of my time was spent working in Atlantic City so I probably have a biased view.
The casinos were crazy in the early days. The was little competition with only 3 or 4 houses open. Crowds were huge in the summer and it was busy with bus people the rest of the time. IMHO, the strategy was to keep people in the building and spending money. Little was done to clean up the city. Safety was and is an issue more than a couple of blocks from the beach. The boardwalk is, for the most part, t-shirt shops and pizza places. There are homeless people like every city but its not out of control. After the boom came the bust with several casinos closing. The original Golden Nugget is an empty hulk, slowly disintegrating. Playboy is long gone. The former Sands and Trump Plaza are empty oceanfront lots.
The is a renaissance of sorts trying to happen in certain areas but I don’t think much will come of it. From October into May, Atlantic City is a cold windy and place and I can think of no reason to visit except, maybe, for a show. The streets are horrible. Prices are high. ($16 for a 16 oz microbrew draft on the rooftop bar of the Claridge) Crime is still a concern if you wander too far. Oh, politicians are crooked (and get caught). The city owns waterfront property with a marina that isn’t maintained very well. I’m rarely inside a casino but am always struck at how empty they are. They are non-smoking for the most part with designated smoking “rooms”.
All in all, I’d give AC a 3 or 4 and would never recommend it as a destination for anyone other than a hardcore gambler. That said, we do ride our bikes the length boardwalk in the spring and fall when its not crowded. It is a pleasant ride.
Also, I live in Margate and can walk to Lucy. I don’t know when she will be open again but people seem to love going there. The eye (as it were) of Superstorm Sandy made landfall here, but no one ever says so. Its always “5 miles south of Atlantic City”. That’s our other “claim to fame”. We got more than a foot of water in our house but most of the serious damage was north of us.