Recent article from the Philadelphia Inquirer
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Atlantic City three waysThis upwardly striving casino town has become a good bet for fun that's ritzy (a la Manhattan), glitzy (Vegas) and familiar (Philly).
By Amy S. Rosenberg
Inquirer Staff Writer
ATLANTIC CITY - Is this town turning into Manhattan South, as some real estate agents are buzzing?
If so, whatever happened to the goal of being the Vegas of the East?
And what's left of the old Philly Down the Shore?
We set out to learn where you can experience the three facets of this resilient seaside town. Amazingly, as property values surge, luxury condos spring up, and shrewd done-the-South-Beach-thing nightlife specialists take root, Atlantic City is starting to live up to some of the hype.
At least, if you know where to look.
So here is your guide to Manhattan South, Vegas of the East, and Philly Down the Shore. Pick your paradigm. Just don't expect to get comped the whole way anymore. That is very old-school.
Manhattan South
This concept is being fueled by the tower-building boom. Three casinos - Harrah's, Borgata, and Trump Taj Mahal - are adding towers that will be higher than anything now in town. Plus, condos are being planned for the vast stretch of empty lots, dilapidated housing and speculator wreckage that is the Southeast Inlet. One new 27-story condominium complex, the Bella "ultra-luxe" condos at 526 Pacific Ave., is selling units for upward of $450,000.
The real-estate agents are giddily renaming the neighborhood. The Southeast Inlet is being touted as the next "North Beach" - a hip, luxury seaside community of condos and maybe even a place to buy groceries (Atlantic City's only supermarket, the IGA, closed its doors last month; cue in Reality Check).
That dream is a ways off. For now, the neighborhood is still conducive to taking a golf club and a bucket of balls and making a de facto driving range, as one man was doing recently on a vacant expanse at Oriental and Rhode Island Avenues, a block from the ocean. Fore.
But the Manhattan South concept does have legs, fueled by the presence inside casinos of way-upscale restaurants and actual hip nightclubs. The kind where you can request VIP bottle service, as in ordering a $310 bottle of vodka, which happens to be one of the lower-end items on the menu at Mixx, the always-packed nightclub at the Borgata.
Mixx was the first to bring this very Manhattan (not to mention South Beach, and, as of about four or five years ago, Vegas) nightclub scene here. In Vegas, places such as Tao in the Venetian, created by the owners of the Marquee nightclub and Tao restaurant in New York City, have jumped on this trend.
"When I came from Miami, there was no bottle service in Atlantic City," said Eric Millstein, director of nightlife marketing for Borgata. "When we introduced it, people craved it. They wanted to feel special and exclusive and inclusive in a club setting. They're used to getting it in New York. Why shouldn't they get it here?"
And so at Mixx, the VIP bottle-service line is often as long as the line to pay $20 to get into the club and buy your drinks at the bar. The bottle-service customers get their own little table in their own little alcove or room, their own server, and all the pricey alcohol by the bottle that their wallets can handle. The two-story space gets the full nightclub treatment of sound and lights and dancers and cutting-edge DJs.
(Then again, the idea of bottle service is pretty radical, considering that most people in this town of comps still balk at paying for even a drink.)
Places such as 32 Degrees (the nightclub that replaces the Brulee dessert shop at 10 p.m.) at the Tropicana's Quarter aspire toward the VIP, bottle-service exclusivity model. That place, a more intimate setting than Mixx, is a regular stop for Philly athletes such as Allen Iverson.
Another nightclub with celebrity-watching potential, but outside the casino, is the 40-40 Club at 2120 Atlantic Ave., owned by rapper Jay-Z. This multilevel sports lounge with requisite VIP rooms - an import from New York City - was Terrell Owens' venue of choice for his birthday party last year.
The old standby hot spots, Club Tru (9 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.) and Studio Six (12 S. Mount Vernon Ave.) - native nightclubs that pride themselves on an edgy New York vibe - are still going strong.
Another trend that could qualify AC as Manhattan South is the steak-house resurgence, including Gallaghers in Resorts, an offshoot of the New York steak house that has been on Broadway since 1927. Carmine's, a family-style Italian restaurant designed as "the quintessential New York restaurant" is also at the Quarter in the Tropicana.
Maureen Siman, vice president of marketing for the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority, suggested the Planet Rose bar inside the Quarter as a Manhattan-like spot, presumably by virtue of its cool decor: zebra-skin chairs, leopard-skin carpet, cool neon magenta-and-orange-lit bar, red walls. Could be Vegas, too.
The professional promoters also are looking at the shopping coming to town as being Manhattan-worthy: Gucci, Armani, Tiffany, and other Fifth Avenue shops will be part of the new Pier at Caesars that will open this summer in the old Ocean One Mall complex on the old Million Dollar Pier.
But, for a downtown shopping experience, look no farther than the Walk, the ever-expanding stretch of outlet stores, handsomely designed by the Baltimore-based Cordish Group. Even though they are outlet stores, they are good ones - check out PacSun, Brooks Brothers, J. Jill, Banana Republic, Ecco and the like.
This wildly successful experiment in remaking a downtown has brought the pleasure of big-city shopping to the formerly barren stretch between Atlantic Avenue and the Convention Center.
The Pier at Caesars, while bringing in New York shops, is at its heart a Vegas concept, modeled on the Forum Shops at Caesars Las Vegas. Which brings us to the next category.
Vegas of the East
Inside the four-story Pier - whose outside will feature massive neon billboards harking back to Atlantic City's more brash days - will be one very Vegas-y destination: the city's first wedding chapel, with a gorgeous ocean view, known as the Atlantic Club.
The pier also will feature a dancing-fountains light-and-sound show, with a computerized matrix of more than 150 independently controlled fountain nozzles and surround-sound audio. Dancing fountains are also very Vegas-y, as anyone who has walked by the Bellagio on the Strip knows. Cheesy, maybe, but high-tech-cool cheesy.
The other Vegas trend that has popped up is the bar/lounge right off the casino floor, complete with video poker built into the bar counter, deep leather and velvet chairs and couches, and draped walls to create a private environment in the midst of three-card poker tables. Bars that fill this bill include the B Bar at the Borgata - where a bored-looking Howard Eskin held court while broadcasting his WIP show one recent afternoon - the Xhibition Bar at Harrah's, Swingers Lounge at the Sands, the Liquid Bar at Trump Plaza, the Blue Martini bar at Bally's - you get the idea.
The Eden Lounge at Harrah's, right off the main walkway across from the slots, features live music every night and a small dance floor that grabs a strange mix of revelers in that Vegas, got-to-have-fun-right-now-don't-care-that-I'm-dancing-with-this-grandpa-dude kind of way. The adjacent Sapphire Bar features "flair bartending" - a la Tom Cruise's character in Cocktail.
And then there's the 25 Hours Bar at Resorts, where the Love Kittens, who star in the casino's New Burlesque show (hello, Vegas), like to mingle.
Beginning this month, the Tropicana is turning its entire Quarter into one big nightclub, to handle the overflow from such successful restaurants as Red Square and Cuba Libre. The casino will bring in DJs and mobile bars every Saturday night from 11 to 3 a.m., public relations director Katie Dougherty says.
Grafted onto the front of the Showboat Casino is a House of Blues, the only one in the Northeast (there's one in Vegas). There's a Foundation Room for members only, which sounds exclusive, and maybe it is, but you're just as likely to run into a local soccer mom as a celebrity there. The room, though, has an exotic decor, and there's a great ocean view from the terrace. Plus, the space apparently can be rented for a bar mitzvah, as a Margate family did recently. For that matter, Mixx was also the scene of a recent Margate bar mitzvah, though during the afternoon.
Which brings us to the old-time Atlantic City.
Philly Down the Shore
This role has always been part of the town's charm, but there are some additions to the category.
The most obvious Philly thing in town is TSOP - The Sound of Philadelphia - at the Tropicana's Quarter, trading on the Philly-sound theme. (Though the performer there recently was Patsy Cline impersonator Sherrill Douglas, also offering for sale her collection of signature crystal-studded sunglasses - which was sort of confusing.)
"It's Atlantic City meets Philly meets Vegas meets Texas," is how Sandy Clark, Douglas' sister and manager, put it. Whatever, it was working for the bus-tour party crowd.
Other Philadelphia transplants are Cuba Libre and an El Vez and Buddakan planned for the Pier. Mia - a Georges Perrier creation that replaced the Temple Bar at Caesars - also opened recently. Old standbys such as Angelo's Fairmount Tavern and Dock's Oyster House are still kicking. And the Ducktown section of town still has the best bread, plus an actual cultural offering: the renovated performing arts space, Dante Hall on Mississippi Avenue, where any South Philly opera buff can go to find his or her bliss.
The creation of beach bars in the last few years has brought a little party atmosphere to the beach itself, and they will be back, minus the South Beach import of Nikki Beach. Also back is the Deck at the Trump Marina, a cozy marina-meets-casino outdoor dance club.
The famous enclosed porch of the Knife and Fork Inn - the classic Atlantic City spot where Burt Lancaster took Susan Sarandon in the movie Atlantic City - has been beautifully redone by the Dougherty family (which bought the Knife and Fork from the Latz family this year).
With a tiled floor and those lovely stained-glass windows, the porch area has been transformed into a martini bar popular with locals and the off-the-casino-track crowd.
The ocean view from the corner where Atlantic meets Pacific makes the porch the perfect stop for a pomegranate martini or two. It may offer the truest melding of old and new - transcending any borrowed themes or models - that a town like Atlantic City has to offer: itself, and proud of it.
But ready for reinvention at the drop of a nickel.