Atlantic City is a depressing place. There's few places in the world where you can see differences in class as clearly as in Atlantic City.
Atlantic City was founded around 1950, when someone thought that a beach hotel, just 40 miles from Philadelphia, and 120 from New York, could attract Summer tourism. The railroad company extended a track from Philadelphia to Atlantic City, and the city was born. During many years it was a prime Summer vacation spot, where people would go, by train, and spend extended periods of time in Summer, enjoying the sea breeze.
But in 1950, with the universalization of the automobile in American life, and the accessibility of plane traveling, people could choose a great variation of touristic destinations, and wasn't subject anymore to places accessible by train. This marked the doom of Atlantic City as a tourist attraction. By the 1960s there weren't many tourists in Atlantic City and the economy fell to miserable levels.
So someone thought that allowing casino gambling in Atlantic City would revitalize the economy. Obviously all those new tourists would make the economy surge, attracted by gambling and the vice attached to it. Thus, in 1976 the first casinos opened in Atlantic City.
So what happened? Economy went up, yes, for casino owners, and maybe for the government in taxes, but the regular habitant of Atlantic City didn't notice it in the wallet, adding the aggravation of having next-door casinos tempting him with lights and mirrors to go spend his hard-earned dollars at the gambling tables.
So, the most shocking feature of 2007 Atlantic City is the big contrasts. The proximity of the luxurious casinos with nearly derelict houses. Walking on the city, away from the Boardwalk (that is, away from the casinos) is really a saddening experience. Here's an example, where you can see two big hotels (the Atlantic Palace and the Bally's) next to these three brick houses, in much worse shape. People living here aren't precisely rich.
Do you think that if the city was going well economically, there would be these nice empty plots of land just half a block from the Boardwalk? I don't think so.
