Pop Quiz: When you realize on a Thursday that you've got nothing going on for the weekend, what do you do? Well last weekend I hopped in the car and went to Atlantic City, New Jersey. I know. Right.
George wanted to get his poker craving fulfilled, so we jumped in the car at 8:30 AM on Saturday morning and hit the tunnel. Then the Turnpike. Then the Parkway. I kind of felt like we were on our way to ditch a body, like in the Sopranos, as we drove past the giant tanks of oil that say "Drive Safely". Once we merged onto the Parkway, traffic hell began. We stopped for breakfast at a service area, skipped the long line at Starbucks and got Burger King instead. About half of the people in the service area were dressed in some sort of swimwear, because everyone goes to the beach on Saturdays. Everyone within 500 miles apparently, because we sat in traffic. Then we tried to outsmart the traffic (because in some universe that's possible) by taking Highway 9. Bad Idea.
Eventually, we made it to Atlantic City... at 12:30. Our hotel was hosting some Irish Dance competition, and all the little leprechauns were prancing and leaping and practicing how to move their little lower bodies without any arm movement. Oh, and pulling fire alarms. they liked practicing that too, much to the chagrin of the hotel staff and many parents. We quickly made our escape to eat lunch at the famous White House Sub Shop. They have so many photos of famous people on the walls there, they are mounted atop one another. The line stretches outside the tiny restaurant with people waiting for a booth. Once you get in, the subs come very quickly, and it's pretty cheap. And Delicious. If you go to Atlantic City, I highly recommend it. There's even a seating-Nazi lady in a house dress who will totally break your fingers if you try to sit at a table before she's cleaned it off. NEXT!
We returned to the hotel to digest and decompress from the drive. Traffic is so exhausting. Then about 2:30-ish we headed for the boardwalk in the oppressive heat. It was so hot and humid out the sky wasn't even blue. It was white. It was gross, even with the nice breeze coming off the Atlantic Ocean. We ventured north on the boardwalk, trying not to get run over by the push-carts (the boardwalks implementation of bike-taxis, sans the bike... almost a rickshaw) and strolled into Bally's. A wild west theme permeated the decor, complete with a robotic pan-handler in the fountain where people throw in coins... and dollar bills. Does anyone else find that bizzare, to toss bills into the fountain?
We people-watched our way up the boardwalk to the Trump Taj Mahal which has the best poker room in town. Allegedly. We roll up on the poker room and get on the waiting list to play, which at this time of day is only a few minutes long. I admit it right away, that I'm intimidated and feel very out of place, but there's always a first time for everything so I suck it up and go for it.
My bankroll is a whopping $80, and I head over to a $2/$4 table of Texas Hold'em and sit down with a load of characters. It must say something about me that I imagine them all with little TV captions underneath their headshots. Ethel: crazy lady. Bob and Cindy: gambling addicts bored with their marriage. Doug: barely old enough to gamble. Anna: almost Eurotrash/model wannabe.
I end up playing for about an hour. I win one hand and am up about $20, but even that doesn't really cause all the endorphins to rush. At one point crazy Ethel demands that she wins with a straight that exists only in her imagination. She's also accusing the other players of conspiring to help the ditzy model wannabe Anna, who has no clue what betting limits are. The next hand I get dealt King Queen, and I play. Then crazy Ethel starts betting wildly and if I was thinking straight I would have totally whopped her and taken her money, but I got freaked out chasing a 9 when I didn't realize an Ace was already on the table and I totally should have won but bailed. So I suck at poker, but at least I only ended up losing $20 before I got out of the game. Truthfully, it was way too stressful to play in a casino. Give me a home game anytime.
I escaped to a rooftop bar at the Taj where a local band was playing cover tunes. It was 8 guys: 2 trumpets, tenor and bari sax, keyboards, drums, singer, and bass player. They were very fun, and even had some dance moves. Eventually George found me and we drowned our sorrows (just a little) as he fared worse than I did. Then we headed to the Tropicana for dinner at an Irish Pub. The Boddingtons on tap helped the wait for a table and eventually found ourselves playing slots. Did you know they have penny slots in Atlantic City? Vegas doesn't have that.
Later on, we decide to check out the Borgata, the newest and hottest of the casinos. It's separated from all the others, and rightfully so, because it's beautiful. I felt like I was walking into the Bellagio or some other awesome Vegas strip hotel. Really really nice and made the other places look dated and gross. Apparently the Borgata realized this because table game minimums were $25. OUCH! They even had high-roller slots, for $100 a pull. That seems like such a waste. George slowly won most of his money back at the slots, lucky bastard.
The hottest restaurants and clubs were located in the Borgata also. And all the Jersey Shore kids knew it. The guidos were out in force. I saw more guidos and guido-ettes than I could shake a finger or roll my eyes at. Kinda like clone wars meets MTV's "Real Life: I'm a Jersey Shore girl". All the girls had that same purse, the one with the oversized shiny dangling sequins in various colors. Y'all know that purse right?
We escaped after midnight to get some sleep. Sunday we opted to head out of town instead of partaking in the breakfast buffet with the hoards of other gamblers. We stumbled into a nice little hole-in-the-wall diner. I could have sworn we stepped into a basement from 1972, complete with cheap wood panelling everywhere. The food was awesome. I love places like that. We opted for local roads most of the way back, checking out the fun beach towns that all kind of look the same.
Back to NY, I have awesome parking karma twice, but not such great bar karma. What can I do? I finally left about 6:30 to brave traffic on the way home and drove through a violent downpour of biblical proportions. Memo to Long Island road construction crews, "build better drainage!". I do love a lightning storm, though, so it was very cool to see the skies ablaze on the ride home. The nightly news told me there were tornados in that mess I drove through. And I survived, so all in all it was an awesome weekend, even if casino poker isn't my bag, baby.
