She’s a 77 year old slightly overweight white-haired widowed grandmother from northeastern Pennsylvania who has worked the past 15 years for the state at a minimum wage “Green Thumb” job. But five or six times a year, she and two of her closest friends pay $22 to a bus company that hauls passengers the four hours to Atlantic City.
    “I can’t afford not to go,” Kathleen Gerber says with a twinkle. Depending on which casino the bus goes to, and which day of the week it is, each bus rider receives $10-$20 in tokens from the casino, occasionally another $3-$5 good for the next trip and a $5-$10 meal credit. She can choose from any of 92 restaurants or 80 cocktail lounges; if she eats at one of the lower priced buffets, her meal is almost free.
    To lure 81 million “visitor trips” a year, one-third of whom come by bus, casinos spend about $800 million a year, one-fourth of their revenue, on promotion. For most senior citizens, the $15-$25 worth of “comps” is sufficient. But, for the late evening “high­rollers,” the ones who think nothing of dropping a few hundred every Black Jack hand or roll of the craps dice, the casinos will provide free limousine or helicopter service, luxury suites, food, beverages, show tickets, myriad trinkets from key chains to suits, and just about anything a loser could want.
    Every day, 800 to 900 buses, each carrying 30 to 45 passengers, most of them women over 55 years old, pull into the casinos, stay six hours, then leave. With travel time, combined with lim­ited bus parking, the casinos figure that six hours is the “right” time for the “low rollers.”
    On the casino floors the senior citizens scramble to their favorite slots—they have more than 37,000 to choose from—and most won’t leave for three or four hours, just shoving coin after coin into the machines, watching the dials spin, and hoping for a jackpot. They’ll crowd the nickel slots first; few ever try one of the 46 $100 slots. They’ll put in five coins, get a cherry, and win two coins which hit the metal coin tray and boldly announce yet another winner. Sometimes, they’ll get mini jackpots of five, ten, even twenty times what they shoved into the slot. But, they’ll recycle the change, hoping for the Slotbusters payoff that will give them and their grandchildren an income for life. Sometimes, even if there are people waiting, they will play two slots at once; if one doesn’t pay, its neighbor will—at least that’s what many figure. And most go home with less money than they came with. It’s not unusual for bus travelers to drop $100 in their allotted six hours at the casino. A few have dropped most of their entire month’s social security checks.
    For their part, the casinos tell their players—in TV commercials, on all the printed literature, even in frequent announcements beamed from concealed loudspeakers—to “bet with your head, not over it.” But then they put an acre of machines, tables, dealers, and provocatively dressed hostesses into an air conditioned room that has no windows or clocks, and entice their victims to sign up for plastic card memberships that, when inserted into slots, record the number of times a coin was dropped, and lead to even more trinkets to lure them back into the casino.
    The casinos also send employees around to convert currency into coins, and provide free drinks for parched throats that yell encouragement to the machines, and “wipes” for fingers that become dirty handling all those winning coins. For those who have arthritis or don’t have the energy to pull a lever, the slots even have push buttons. The casinos want their victims to sit there, in one spot, and lose. If they could figure out a way to catheterize the players so they don’t even have to go to the bathroom, they would.
    Kathleen Gerber often comes back with more than she began with. “I know my limits, and I don’t go over them,” she says, emphasizing that unlike some players, she never uses a MAC card to get “just a little more” playing cash, just in case the “big one” is on the next slot pull. It doesn’t upset the casinos. They like it when people win. Nothing entices other people to lose money like the ching­chang of coins dropping into slot trays, and the excited boasts of winners back home. But, most of the gamblers are supposed to spend the freebies, then gamble some more. It has worked very well for more than 15 years.
    The “handle,” the amount of money bet, since the first casino opened in 1978 is about $392 billion, with slots now accounting for about 72 percent of all betting and 60 percent of all revenue, according to the Casino Control Commission. In 2001, the revenue, the amount of profit prior to expenses, was about $4.2 billion. By law, each slot machine must pay back at least 83 percent of its take; most now pay up to 90 percent. The Casino Control Commission even makes public which casinos have better payoffs and which groups of machines pay better than the others. But, few study the numbers, and none of the casinos see any reason to post them.
    The first of the 13 casinos went into business in 1978 follow­ing a statewide referendum to allow gambling in a city that had combined Miss America, salt water taffy, rolling wicker chairs, a four mile boardwalk—and a deteriorating downtown, tenement housing, and the state’s highest violent crime and poverty rates.
    Atlantic City was incorporated in 1854, about a half century after first being settled, as a summer resort on a 3.9 mile long coastal barrier island. In 1870, the city built the boardwalk, and private companies added numerous businesses and amusements, including the Steel Pier, site of innumerable headline acts. The first modern Miss America contest was held in Atlantic City in 1921; the city built a center eight years later to lure innumerable conventions to the city.
    During World War II, the military took over the beach front hotels and turned the city into one of the nation’s largest train­ing camps and rest and rehabilitation (R & R) sites. However, the war also brought an end to the prosperity. For the next three decades, Atlantic City declined as a resort; the rich moved onto other places; the poor remained. The city’s population, infra­structure, and tax base declined. During the mid 1930s, the pop­ulation peaked about 66,000; by the mid 1970s, it was about 46,000; by the mid 1990s it was about 38,000.
    And then came what the state called “a unique tool of urban development.” Legalized gambling will save the city, proclaimed voters, legislators, and even businessmen who planned to mine the East Coast, smugly knowing that one‑third of the nation’s pop­ulation live within six hours driving time of Atlantic City and could easily be lured to a gambling empire that promised instant wealth.
    By the mid 1980s, speculators and the casinos had gobbled up all available land in Atlantic City, expecting as many as 35 casinos to rescue the city. Only when it appeared there would be a saturation of 12 casinos could the school district (which for the 1996 1997 school year received almost $37 million of its $73 million budget from the casinos) finally buy enough land to relo­cate its high school. But, the taxpayers of the $81 million 470,000 square foot high school still had to pay $9.7 million for 48.8 acres, a lot for a school district but less than the $4.6 million the Showboat spent in 1995 for three acres so it could add 200 more hotel rooms.
    Since 1975, the casinos have paid about $6 billion in regulatory fees and revenue, property, corporate, local, state, and federal taxes. About 8.1 percent of the state’s budget is a result of casino taxes.
    For its part, the state of New Jersey has been so appreciative of receiving money, it built a 43 mile long expressway from Philadelphia directly into the Boardwalk. To lure even more middle and upper class marks to the casinos, in 1997 the city and state completed a $268 million 1.2 million square floor convention center, with a 500 room hotel, then added a $100 million three­block “corridor” to link the center with the Boardwalk. City officials are thinking of turning the 380,000 square foot convention center on the Boardwalk, site of the Miss America contest, into an entertainment and shopping complex, and arena for sporting events and concerts.
    By the end of 2003, the city had more than 14,000 hotel rooms and a new $1 billion casino. For those who want a break from gambling and GP rated evening shows, the city recently built a $12 million 6,000 seat minor league baseball stadium, financed primarily by casino taxes and $3 million worth of city bonds. Casino taxes are also paying for $30 million in road improvements around the casinos, a $13 million casino area beau­tification plan, and 192 new jitneys that will carry gamblers and conventioneers throughout the developed part of the city any time of day or night.
    Not benefiting from the taxes and handouts have been the city’s permanent residents. In 1996, the state’s legislature authorized that $175 million from casino taxes, meant to aid the urban poor, be directed back to the casinos to allow for their expansion. To make sure there’s enough land for the casinos, the city and the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority have been using the power of the eminent domain to condemn and then seize homes, businesses, and land in the way of the casinos’ expansion plans or in the route of improved streets going into the casinos. Most of the property condemned in the past few years, often against the will of the owners, isn’t run down or boarded up; most are well maintained, with a presence in Atlantic City several decades longer than the casinos.
    Although city officials are now proudly proclaiming a renais­sance for the ocean front resort, which has received about $500 million in property taxes from the casinos since 1978, about 69 percent of its property tax base, they are also faced by the blemish that four of the past six mayors were indicted on a variety of malfea­sance and criminal charges, the downtown has deteriorated even further, population has declined 14 percent since the first casino opened, there has been an increase in violent crimes and prostitution­and poverty is still the way of life for a large chunk of the 40,000 residents who live in a city with no theaters and only two super­markets, one built as part of a $100 million strip mall for tourists. So deteriorated has Atlantic City become, even with its proposed massive revitalization, that most of the 47,000 casino employees won’t even live in the city where they work.
    Nevertheless, no matter what the city’s problems are, the buses still come to Atlantic City, and senior citizens flood the casino floors by day, while the highrollers take over by night. And the ching­-chang of coins continues to lull Americans into believing the good dream belongs to them.
    [ADDENDUM: The information about Kathleen Gerber was from discussions in 1994-1995; she died in 2000 at the age of 83, about two years after she finally retired. All information about the casinos and Atlantic City, unless otherwise noted, is current as of 2003.]

Copyright 2001 Walter M. Brasch