Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Galileo Goes to Atlantic City!

For those of you not in the know, I live on Long Island. If you don't know what that is, it's that fish-shaped island hanging off the tail end of New York. It's quite close to a number of great places: New York City, Upstate NY, Six Flags, and of course, Atlantic City and the rest of the Jersey Shore.

I've been talking about wishing to travel to good Old AC since around the "Things That Start with A" and "B" entries from last year. I had always wished to see its Boardwalk and the awesomeness that lied within.



And here it is! That's my buddy Steve candidly posing for the picture. I believe that's Carmine's behind him. As you can see, it was a great day with perfect visibility throughout the day. I went last Friday (8/21) for a day-trip via Coach Bus, and you couldn't ask for a better day. Sun, no clouds, hot-but-not-too-hot, and thanks to the recession, not a crowded boardwalk!



This shot didn't come out as good as I wanted it to, but you can still see some rust and dilapidation on the facade of this building. When Steve ask me why I was taking a picture of THIS building, I told him that this building in particular lived up to every visual expectation that I had of Atlantic City. So of course I had to take a picture. All in the name of web journalism.



Here's a picture of the buffet I ate at. This was just the dessert island, and there were worse puns at the other stations. I kept getting hints that the Virginia City Buffet in Bally's Wild Wild West is the best one in AC, and I'm starting to agree. Sure, it's the only one I've been to so far, but it set the bar. Sadly, looking through all my pictures again, I realize that my current camera is much more prone to blurring than my old one was. Not to mention the crappy lighting.



Like this shot I tried to take of some desserts. Shot-glass sized strawberry shortcake and chocolate whatever-the-thing-on-the-left-was. The flash on my cam has the following settings for a shot like this: "Blinding" "Unrecognizably Blinding" and "Too Dark To See Any Damn Details." This shot was the latter.



We found this on an oven at that buffet. Good advice.



Found in a candy store called "It'Sugar" that was in a mall next door to Bally's Wild West. Excellent signage, crappy picture. These pictures came out awful.



Another example of unintentional blur ruining a good picture. That marquee on the theater on the right says "The Color Purple. And Red, Blue, and Orange..."

Besides a Conestoga Wagon and an elephant made entirely of Jelly Bellies, those were the worthwhile moments of my Atlantic City trip. I lost about $60 to slots and video poker, but I don't care, I had an awesome time and I'm up for going again. I still need to saltwater some taffy and find more Monopoly properties. I found several, but I'm looking for Baltic Avenue on the entire standpoint of just liking the name.

I did find Mediterranean Ave, though, and I designated the area between it and the Boardwalk as "Go." I also realized a solution to the bailouts: Have someone stand on that spot and give people $200 for crossing it. If they trey it again, the guy would tell them "Nope, you gotta go the whole way around again!"

...Ok, here's the Jelly Belly Elephant:

1 comment:

DJ D said...

I've always wanted to make my way up to that area sometime. I'm in desperate need of a vacation.

That's a lot of jelly bellies.