Note: This picture doesn't even come close, but it's the best I could find.
Two weeks ago, roommate Lyndsay's company sent her to AC (as it is known to locals, aka hardcore gamblers and people on vacation from Cleveland), and they kindly allowed her to bring friends, so Virge came up from GA, and we all headed to the Shore. As we didn't arrive until 10:30, we felt it necessary to start drinking the minute we got to the hotel. I might mention that we were staying at Caesar's. No, we didn't ask if that's where the real Caesar lived, because we're not 14 year old boys, and I'm sure that joke's been done to death. Stop it. After dressing in our sparkliest attire and consuming a large bottle of wine between the three of us (after having not eaten dinner, a detail that will be important to remember later), we were ready to hit the slots. Since we are not hardcore gamblers, we felt that slot machines would be the best bet (no pun intended, but definitely enjoyed), because the minimum is only a dollar. Little did we know that slots take extreme strategy. There are at least 6 buttons on every machine, which was disappointing for several reasons:
1) You don't get to pull the lever, which is kind of one of the most fun parts of the slots.
2) The only directions (if there are any) use weirdo gambling jargon that you would only understand if you spent many days of your life in a casino.
3) They make you bet at least 30 cents on each spin, meaning that dollars don't go as far as they should.
Basically slots are awful but were the only type of gambling we felt comfortable around. Also, when you're gambling, the casino has lovely cocktail waitresses bringing you free drinks of which we had several. By the way, "lovely" here means "old and haggard and wearing white dresses that appear to be from Bebe ." Virge and I quickly lost $10 a piece and decided to give up. Lyndsay, on the other hand, only spent $3 and won. She won A HUNDRED FREAKING DOLLARS. What a bitch. Well, then Virge and Lyndsay went and cashed out and the cashier looked at them like they were idiots for being so excited over $100. Clearly, she wasn't aware that we're not hardcore gamblers. Have I said that enough times? Good. I'll move on.
Though we briefly thought about going to the "club" on the premises, we opted for the very elegant bar, Toga (Caesar's has a bar called Toga, get it? sOoO fUnNy oMg). Obviously, we forced Lyndsay to put up the dollars for drinks. For some reason, our drink of choice that night was vodka and Diet Coke. Why? Because we're great. Anyway, Virge insisted on light ice in these drinks. If you haven't been paying attention, we've had many drinks at this point. How many? I have no idea. The point is, there was no reason to put less diluting substances in our drinks. But you're only in Atlantic City once. If you're lucky. For some reason, none of us realized that by not going out until midnight, it was automatically about two hours later than we assumed it was. That and the fact that casinos never fucking close and don't have clocks anywhere, so we had no idea what time it was. After a few more vodka DCs, we met some lovely gentlemen, who we chatted up until they bought us more drinks, including some Jager bombs that were the same size as regular drinks. Woof. Clearly, the rest of the night got interesting. I won't go into details because this is the internet and I may want someone to give me a job one day. Needless to say, we made bad decisions and one of us may have vomited into a toilet while sitting on said toilet.
Also needless to say, we weren't feeling too snappy the next day. Poor Lyndsay had to get up and go do work things, but the only reason Virge and I got out of bed at all was to walk to the Mickey Don Dons. Seriously, that was the only reason either of us got out of bed until 6 o'clock that evening, going to McDonald's. It would have been a lot sadder if it didn't seem that every other person in Atlantic City was doing the same thing. It's possibly because there are no real restaurants in AC; it's like the entirety of the Mid West was transported to the New Jersey shore. The nicest restaurants appeared to be Applebee's and Longhorn, but there was also a delightful "gourmet" establishment right on the boardwalk in Trump Plaza where we dined Saturday evening. They had a prix fixe menu (probably pronounced as it's spelled by most customers) for $19, if that gives you any idea of the level of cuisine we faced here. I order what was called a pork tender on the menu, and ended up being two huge pork medallions stuffed with ham and cheese and covered in some sort of sauce. It was delightful. I also have type 2 diabetes now. We played the slots for a while, but Lyndsay wasn't on fire that night, so after spotting a very large woman in a pink, leopard-print, spandex unitard, we decided to call it quits (I tried to find a picture of this, but, luckily for your retinas, I couldn't). After Friday night, Saturday was slightly more low key; especially after we tried to go to Dusk (the club), and found out there was a $25 cover. I'm sure you're surprised to know that none of us wanted to pay to hang out in a darkened club with the types of people who go to clubs in Atlantic City (think Jersey Shore cast if they were from Nebraska) and listen to house music, so we went to the "beer garden" on the boardwalk. I put "beer garden" in quotes here, because it was really just a bar. They had about 8 beers on the menu, all of which were bottled, 4 of which were Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors and Coors Light. I'm not sure what they think a beer garden is, but it's not that.
On Sunday, we couldn't spend the entire day in bed again because we had to check out at noon, which was sad, so we spent the day on the boardwalk and in the mall. Both were about as depressing as you would imagine, with the high points being the souvenir stands at which you could buy shirts that said things like "A Special Lady" with a picture of kittens (or other adorable baby animals) and The Show. The Show was every hour on the hour in the mall. It was amazing. It was hilarious. It was a fountain with lights that synchronize sprayed to a variety of awful music. After The Show we had a delightful seafood lunch in the mall. Yes, I ate seafood in a mall. Fortunately, we were in Jersey, so that's pretty average. Sadly, it was probably the best non-McDonald's meal we had all weekend. That night after the premiere of Boardwalk Empire (the entire reason we were in AC, because Lyndsay's company does marketing for the show), we were driven back to the city in a really fly SUV with a tv and watched a movie called Flight of the Phoenix starring Dennis Quaid. I have no idea what happened in the movie, but old Dennis looked pretty good.
Virge said it best, "I feel like everyone here is on their bucket list." There is seriously no other reason that any person should ever go to Atlantic City, but every person should go at least once. It's dirty and old (in a sad, post-nuclear meltdown Chernobyl kind of way) and filled with people who seem at once depressed and too stupid to realize they're depressed, also very old people; of course, being very old gives you the excuse to do anything and be neither pathetic nor stupid. Old people don't give a fuck.
Here is a list of things I learned in Atlantic City:
1) Casinos are filled with broken dreams and elastic waist pants, and therefore hilarious if you have no soul (like me).
2) If faced with restaurant choices that include Applebee's, McDonald's, Melting Pot, and Longhorn, I will have no problem with going to McDonald's twice in two days.
3) Though I will never ride in one, whoever invented the "adult strollers" as we called them (basically pedi-cabs without the bicycle that are pushed from behind) was a fucking genius. If there's one thing that the type of people who go to AC hate, it's exercise of any kind, and so love any way to get from buffet to buffet while moving as little as possible.
4) Wearing a tiara and/or boa and/or veil to your Atlantic City bachelorette party is even more embarrassing/depressing than doing that at your bachelorette party in any other city.
5) I will never tire of judging people based on their outfits and life choices.
6) Even though I smoke occasionally, smoking indoors is just really really gross.
7) Giving your number to a guy is a really terrible, awful idea. I'm a fucking moron.
8) Atlantic City is the worst place in the world, and therefore, kind of the best.
And here's the song that was stuck in my head all weekend. If you can't guess what it is just by virtue of the fact that this is a post about Atlantic City, just stop being dumb.
No comments:
Post a Comment