Word: boardwalkers
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...often Atlantic City looks like a sneering caricature of untrammeled capitalism. (This may explain why terrorists threatening to retaliate against the U.S. on the third anniversary of the American bombing of Libya were rumored to have chosen Atlantic City as their target.) Along the Boardwalk stands a rank of casinos nudged so close against the water that they seem to teeter at its edge, their windows shut to the ocean air, their backs turned to the city. Behind them cowers the neighborhood known as the Inlet, where boxy row houses devolve into strange confections of brick, plywood and cardboard...
...incumbent, James Usry, and 13 other officials, including three council members, were charged with taking bribes. In a place where millions of dollars change hands every day, the mayor is accused of accepting a paltry $6,000 from an undercover agent to let electric passenger carts run along the Boardwalk. "This town is like an aging whore," says Carver. "Disrespect me, but give me something -- just give me something...
...should have seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days," says Lou, an aging errand boy for the Mob played by Burt Lancaster in Louis Malle's 1981 movie Atlantic City. Lou is strolling down the Boardwalk, recalling the city's hip-swiveling days when a political boss strolled on the Boardwalk in the company of Al Capone. "Now it's all so goddamn legal," he mumbles. "Tutti- frutti ice cream and craps...
...Atlantic City they do, which is why the Boardwalk reflects both a grandiloquence imported from Las Vegas and an insistence on bourgeois comfort. Parading past the statue of Caesar Augustus (finger aloft, as if hailing a cab), the Boardwalk crowd offers an unself-conscious mixture: round middles barely disguised by oversize T shirts or bulging above cinched-in belts; conical straw hats; white socks in white sandals; baseball caps on balding heads; male decolletage; painted eyebrows; sequins in the daytime; polyester stretch pants; factory-knit acrylic cardigans; lots of polka dots; colors usually found only at the extremities...
Gambling may have brought to Atlantic City a Pompeian profusion of statues, but the city's long-standing sense of carnival still flourishes. The casino boutiques may sell Gucci leather, but the Boardwalk is a bazaar of plastic beads, mugs shaped like women's breasts, and baby sand sharks in glass jars. When Las Vegas was nothing but a jukebox in the desert, Atlantic City had clam-eating tournaments and midget boxing matches; today one of the Boardwalk's main attractions is Celestine Tate, a disabled woman who lies on a stretcher like a beached mermaid and plays a Casio...