Word: casino
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...especially for high rollers like Lisa Wishnick, a vivacious platinum blond from New York City who recently persuaded her oil-executive husband to celebrate their 13th anniversary with a weekend in Atlantic City. The people who track the betting at Merv Griffin's Resorts Hotel and Casino estimate that the Wishnicks have access to a $50,000 line of credit, so everything but the gambling is complimentary: the 48-minute helicopter ride, the mauve suite, even the caviar. Never mind that just about everyone else in the casino is dressed for mowing the lawn, Wishnick slinks into an azure silk...
...spell is sustained by the tacit bargain between casinos and gamblers -- limitless consolation in the form of drinks and obsequiousness for money lost. "You don't see Rockefellers gambling down here," says Brown. "They have to feel like a big shot. When they walk in, we know their name, and that's the biggest thing we do for them." For most players, however, gambling is simply a thrilling adventure on the edge of willpower -- risk taking at its safest, with fantasy and freebies thrown in. "Atlantic City is a better break than Wall Street, and you can put the money...
...Bally's Park Place on a recent Wednesday is a welcome -- and cheap -- respite from arthritis, television and the addicts and prostitutes on her midtown Manhattan block. "I even forget my name," she says. The trip actually costs nothing: in exchange for her $18 Gray Line ticket, the casino refunds $15 in coins plus a $5 coupon off on the next trip...
Many of the travelers are old enough and isolated enough to need the trip as a passage out of lonely routines and back into society. Driver Michael Torrey pulls up to the casino around 11:30 a.m. and waits as his passengers move inside to swap their coupons for coins. "You'd think she'd need a walker," he says, pointing at an elderly tourist painfully climbing a ramp to the Boardwalk. "But she's in Atlantic City. Look at the willpower...