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Atlantic City, New Jersey
Everything dies baby that’s a fact, maybe everything that dies some day comes back
Atlantic City isn’t all that far away from me. I could be there in (probably) two hours, depending on traffic. Still, in the same amount of time where I have gone to Maine at least 25 times, I have been to Atlantic City once. So when an actual event made me go to Atlantic City on two weekdays in October, I was both looking forward and not looking forward to going.
The first thing that you notice is that there aren’t that many people there. They’re not in the casinos or on the boardwalk, even though the event I attended (at the other convention by the train station) was packed. There’s also really not that much to do there, especially if you take away the gambling and the beach. On the bright side, there are some pretty good restaurants. The buffet at the Borgata was good enough to be competitive in Las Vegas (although nothing beats the one at the Wynn), we had a damn good breakfast at Gilchrist, a damn good old school dinner at the Knife and Fork Inn, and the casino restaurants were generally pretty solid. And the hotel (Ballys) was nicer than expected, recently renovated and really pretty cheap. But after that there really wasn’t much top do, other than watching abandoned, bankrupt Trump casinos slowly fall apart.
There are at least a few things to do on a chilly, breezy October day, especially if you get yourself off the boardwalk. First up is a quick stopover at nearby Cape May, where the pretty Victorian houses still line the streets waiting to be appreciated.
And just south of Atlantic City is Margate, where the real highlight of the trip was a visit to Lucy the Elephant. Lucy is from 1881, when elephants were made of wood and most people had never seen an actual elephant. Which explains the size. Lucy is pretty big, big enough to climb inside and on top of, unlike most real elephants, even way back then.
There are plenty of fun details waiting for you, from Lucy’s dead eyes to the window out her butt. Luckily there are guides present to tell you about her history, her relocation in 1970 (she was originally built a few blocks away) and her constant renovations, before unlocking a door in her leg and taking you all up and inside the mighty beast.
The inside of the elephant is a little bit of a letdown, only because it feels more like a room than the inside of an elephant. Although it is fun to gaze out of here eye to see the sea beyond.
Our in depth tour of Lucy the Elephant ends with a constructed panorama view from the top of her back, as Margate and the super flat horizon of southern New Jersey extends out, past the Parkway and the Pine Barrens and into infinity.
At night (which starts pretty early in October), some of the lights come on and the empty city feels just a little emptier. So after visiting Monterey, Apple Park, the SAP Center, standing behind the grilles in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, enjoying the air condition in the artificial playa at the Renwick, waiting for popovers at the Jordan Pond House and carefully examining the inside and outside of a giant friendly beast, we find ourselves at the end on another weekend trip adventure, wondering about what random places we’ll end up visiting in 2019, 2020 and beyond.
