My favorite posts #3: Greetings from Atlantic City
Continuing our series of summer reruns while I'm away. See "My favorite posts #1" for more details!
This one is actually a "ringer," too. It's taken verbatim from my very first comic book, also titled Innocent Bystander (you can still buy it if you want, but I won't twist your arm...in fact, you can still buy just about all of them, with the possible exception of the third issue and the trade paperback collecting issues 1 through 4).
Originally published on April 24, 2005 as "Greetings from Atlantic City"
Here's today's lesson, kiddies: Never pass up those little out-of-the-ordinary gift shops (or sometimes gift shoppes) that say they're selling books. You never know what little gem you may find inside.
While in Los Angeles on business last week, I happened upon one such store and was happy to find a book from 2004 that somehow escaped me: Monopoly: The Story Behind the World's Best-Selling Game. Now, I can care less about games. I don't like board games, card games, role-playing, video-games, you name it. I'm non-denominational. I dislike them all. So, that's why this book never jumped out at me. Because while it IS about Monopoly, it's more about Atlantic City, New Jersey, the city the board game is based on. It's chock-full of great old color postcards of that resort town, too and has a great cover design. And while I'd love to blog about the Atlantic City of MY youth, pre-Casino, I realize that nothing I write will compare to the first thing I wrote about my summer vacation home, back in 1995, and presented as an illustrated story in Innocent Bystander #1. So, for those of you who've read it before, I apologize. For those newbies, and that's pretty much most of you, this is from one of my comic books. Click on the INNOCENT BYSTANDER link to the right under "Photo Albums" for ordering information.
1964: And as we left the White Diner to go on vacation, my father made a momentous decision: We would go to Atlantic City instead of Asbury Park. We went back 10 times over the next dozen years, never really noticing the slow decline of a once-great resort town. Nothing I loved about the place still exists. It lives only in my memory and on the old postcards I've sought out in hopes of recapturing that time of my life.
Well...some of the old hotels are still there. The Claridge is a casino, Haddon Hall is Resorts International. But most of the big, old dinosaurs of the Golden Age are gone. I was too young to appreciate the beauty and size of those somewhat-rundown castles by the sea.
By the time the Traymore (on the illustration above) died in 1972, I knew something was missing. Even though I barely set foot in it, the Traymore was an integral part of "my" Atlantic City, a dominant image I'll never forget.
We never stayed in the big resort hotels. In the 10 years we vacationed in Atlantic City, we stayed in 2 motels: the Monterrey the first year, and the Crown all the other years. Both were located at the corners of Pacific and Pennsylvania Avenues, one block from the Boardwalk.
I loved that block of Pennsylvania Avenue. It was wide and long and tree-lined, with great old boarding house-style hotels slammed up against skyscraper-like motels. That block was like an airlock to me, a last mile before I plunged headlong into the sights, smells and sounds of the Boardwalk on a hot August night. Once up that wooden ramp, I was in another world.
Steel Pier was part of that world. Billed as "a vacation in itself" and "the showplace of the nation," it stretched more than a half mile out over the ocean. The Pier was home to live music acts (usually up-and-coming or down-and-dying), movies (third and fourth run), "Tony Grant's Stars of Tomorrow" (child performers from hell), and the usual assortment of games, rides, and gimmicks to separate you from your money. Over the years, I saw Herman's Hermits (twice!), Chicago, the Four Seasons, and the unforgettable Brenda Lee. I also saw my first Woody Allen movie (Take the Money and Run) there. Steel Pier burned down in 1982. The whereabouts of the the world-famous Diving Horse are unknown, but I trust she's far, far away from water.
Central Pier was a much smaller affair, a bit farther up the Boardwalk. It consisted mainly of an arcade, a miniature golf course and some rides, including the giant Sky Tower, which almost mystically appeared one summer. Our vacations always included at least one trip on the Tower, usually on a clear night. The arcade section of the pier contained pinball machines, skiball, some old Mutoscope card machines and some "girlie" type movie viewers (which I desperately wanted to see). My favorite game by far was "Atomic Bombadier." For a whole nickel, you trained your precision bombsight on the rotating drum below you. When the bombsight made contact with the raised buttons on the landscape, you obliterated the enemy off the face of the Earth and did your patriotic duty.
The Boardwalk, like any other great theatre, had its share of actors. One of them was Mr. Peanut, who I found both fascinating and terrifying. (He has no eyes! He has no teeth! RUN! Waitaminute...How does he see and eat?) Another star attraction was the Belgium Waffle man. Around 11 each night, this little, round, red-faced man would start to moan, almost-orgasmically, about the virtues of his product: "And when you get up in the morning, you SPRING right out of bed!!!" But only if you ate one of his giant waffles. And then there was the Kazoo Man, who lurked inside Woolworth's. I never heard him speak. He just...kazooed. Constantly. He was as skinny as the Waffle Man was fat, and I never understood where he got all that air to keep on kazooing.
Convention Hall was the last outpost of civilization on the Boardwalk, as far as we were concerned. Past it lie a miles-long stretch of decaying old hotels, fronted by decaying old people sitting in parked rolling chairs. They only came out at night. The Hall was also the site of our yearly excursion to the Ice Capades, a quiet kind of torture, interrupted only by the soft, swishing sound of razor-sharp blades on slowly-melting ice.
Atlantic City is gone now, replaced by greed and a row of gleaming casinos. But in my mind, Atlantic City still exists. It's always a hot August night, the Boardwalk stretched out before me like some giant amusement park. The side streets are still tree-lined and the long boarding house porches still echo with laughter and the constant squeak of rocking chairs rocking. The beach is wide and clean and in the afternoon, the sand is hot and covered with people. Steel Pier still stands, the Diving Horse still dives and "Case's" still serves the best hamburgers on the Boardwalk. Taber's Toy-A-Rama has all the new G.I. Joe outfits and Batman TV show toys, the Sky Tower still shoots up to the sky and it gets chilly at night on the Boardwalk, so bring a jacket. This is my Atlantic City. It exists only in my memories, and, for a few brief moments, on this page.
There's no argument that Steve Ditko is at least partly responsible for one of the world's most famous superheroes, the Amazing Spider-Man. In fact, I can't type that word--amazing--without seeing it in some kind of early Marvel Age of Comics hand-lettered font on a cover: bright, bold and tantalizing. I probably associate that word with Ditko more than anyone--or thing--else.
