Atlantic City, New Jersey

For the last three years since we moved to New York, I've been promising my mom I would take her to Atlantic City for her birthday. We moved to New York at the same(ish) time and were roommates for two years before I decamped to Brooklyn and she stayed in Harlem. This year I finally made good on my promise, and thanks to some well-timed Jewish Holidays (I work at a Jewish organization, much the chagrin of my friends that don't) we were able to go to Atlantic City on a Monday/Tuesday in early October.

The last time we were both in Atlantic Shitty was 2008—my parents weren't yet divorced, and we took what would be our last family vacation to the land of hermit crabs and boob mugs. We stayed at Trump Plaza, which has since been abandoned (much like Trump's Presidential ambitions by the end of tonight, hopefully), and our most recent trip included a whirl around the now-shuttered Taj Mahal during its last week in business.

I'd been warned before we went that Atlantic City was in dire straits, but that was part of the appeal. My mom likes to gamble and I love kitsch and ruin, so it was the perfect mother-daughter getaway. The state of the city and the boardwalk in general wasn't actually as bad as I had expected, and even on an off-season weekday the casinos that are still open (particularly Resorts World and Bally's) were bustling. We actually preferred the post-apocalyptic calm of the Taj Mahal—until a machine malfunctioned and ate my $30 credit slip.

 In between visiting Lucy the Elephant and the Clara Glen Pet Cemetery, we ate burgers at Johnny Rockets, won and lost at machines I picked exclusively for their names/animal mascots (Corgi Cash, Kitty Glitter), shopped for souvenirs, snacked on peanut chews and salt water taffy, and strolled the boardwalk. My mom parked herself at a hot machine as I explored more of the boardwalk, including Ripley's Believe it or Not—it's not as impressive when you're now an adult who seeks out real oddities (like at the Mütter Museum), but it was still a worthwhile stop.

After the closing of the Taj Mahal, the north end of the boardwalk is now completely abandoned—with Taj neighbors Showboat and Revel also sitting empty. Revel opened in 2012 only to close two years later, although it's scheduled to reopen again in 2017 under a new name. I don't think more casinos are the best way to save Atlantic City, especially with gambling far more widespread than it used to be, but I'm not sure what it will take to bring AC back to its glory days.

Lucy The Elephant

Built in 1881, Lucy the Elephant is the oldest surviving roadside attraction in the US. She was built by James Lafferty, in Margate City two miles south of Atlantic City, to help sell real estate and boost tourism. Two other elephant structures were built by Lafferty—in Coney Island and Cape May—but Lucy is the last (wo)man standing.

I'm very into novelty architecture, and along with The Big Duck (which I still need to get out to) Lucy might be the best example that exists. She is six-stories tall and covered in wood and tin sheeting. She fell badly into disrepair by the late 60s and was almost demolished. Thankfully, the Save Lucy Committee, founded in 1969, was able to raise the necessary funds to save her from the wrecking ball—in 1970 she was moved 100 yards inland and completely restored. When we visited, she looked as if she had just received a fresh coat of paint, and it's hard to imagine that she was ever in such dire straits.

Lucy is billed as the only elephant "you can walk through and come out alive!" Visiting the grounds and gift shop is free, but to go inside you need to pay for a tour ($8 for adults). Even though I'd been virtually traveling to Lucy for months before actually planning a trip, I was surprised at how large she is (65 feet high and 60 feet long). I still have the same experience whenever I see the Unisphere in person—just totally in awe of how small I feel.

You enter Lucy through a door in her back leg, and climb a narrow spiral staircase to get into the main room. Upstairs is a tiny museum containing photos and artifacts, and you can look out both of her eyes at the Atlantic Ocean. The tour continues all the way to the top, which opens up into the howdah carriage, offering 360 degree views (the Lucy water tower kills me).

The gift shop has floaty pens, a squished penny machine and every other piece of Lucy memorabilia you could want—t-shirts, lucky Lucy trinkets, postcards, erasers, stuffed Lucys, pins, patches and even "shell"ephant figurines. We stayed long enough for the weather to change from perfect blue skies to rain shower, but it was worth it when we realized we had Lucy to ourselves for a while. Like I'm prone to do, I researched this Atlantic City trip for months, looking at Lucy on Google and devouring any information I could about her, and yet there's still nothing quite as wonderful as seeing these things in person.

Trump Taj Mahal

The Trump Taj Mahal opened on the Atlantic City Boardwalk in 1990, and it closed at 5:59 am today. The casino and hotel was built at a cost of nearly a billion dollars, and had 120,000 sq feet of gaming space, 2,010 hotel rooms, and over the years housed multiple restaurants, gift shops, show rooms and the nation's first casino strip club.

It's hard for me to think of the Taj without thinking about the Sex and the City episode filmed there, during which Carrie refers to it as the "understated Taj Mahal." This if funny, of course, because the Taj (like most things associated with Donald Trump) is the very opposite of understated. 

I took my mom to Atlantic City last week for an overnight trip to celebrate her birthday, and one of the first places we went was the Taj. I'd heard that its closing was imminent, but didn't expect that we'd be among some of the last people to ever walk on on its gaudy carpeted casino floors. 

Outside of the Taj, workers have been striking since July, but the mood inside was much more subdued. If you've ever been inside of a casino, you know they're sensory overload in every way, but the Taj was almost eerily quiet. At first glance it might seem as if nothing was amiss, but then we noticed that there was only a handful of people—staff and patrons—and a lot of the machines were turned off, broken or roped off with caution tape. If we didn't already know that the end was near, it would've been pretty obvious after a few minutes.It was sad and weird to walk around the near-empty casino floor—the Sultan's Palace (for high rollers) was completely empty, all of the restaurants were closed, there was only one cashier and the huge hotel check-in counter was deserted. 

The outside looks as opulent as ever—there's still a parking lot devoted entirely to limos—but upon closer inspection, I spotted peeling paint, broken streetlights and dangling wires. Much has been said about Donald Trump the "businessman," and although he no longer owns a stake in the Taj it's hard not to consider his roll in making (and breaking) Atlantic City. It's strange to have grown up with DJT the casino magnate and reality star, and to watch as he tries to reinvent himself as DJT the presidential candidate. But like his casinos (Trump Plaza has been closed since 2014) Trump is all artifice—beneath the flashy exterior it's all dangling wires and peeling paint, and ultimately he too will fail.