When Bally's Atlantic City advertises its Bikini Beach Bar on the radio - sports and guy radio, to be sure - with cheering after the words "no bikinis" and "beer" and boos behind "abstract art," you know all you need to know about the beach bar scene in Atlantic City.
This is not Grandma pressing the progressive slot button or the couple in tux and gown in the baccarat pit. Don't reach for the Dom or sip that Cosmopolitan, and whatever you do, turn off the "Sex and the City" reruns.
Muscling into summer 2008, the three bars on the Atlantic City beach, along with The Deck at the Trump Marina and The Pool, the new hip scene nearby at Harrah's, are intended to be raucous and loud affairs. It's summer at the Shore, after all, and you didn't fill your tank with $4-a-gallon gas to stay demure.
A couple of years ago, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection shut down four casino beach bars, saying they were built on narrow areas that cut off beach access for non-bar-going citizens.
The three that are left are on the middle of the Boardwalk area where the beach is wider. Some rent cabanas and chairs at their entrances, which induces those customers to use the bars for at least some of the time they are lying in front of them, no doubt contemplating the beer-and-no-bikini culture therein.
Bally's Bikini Beach Bar, near the Ohio Avenue entrance to the Boardwalk, has, as may be apparent, bikini-clad waitresses. Open from mid-afternoon until about 2 a.m., the Bikini Beach Bar also promises live beach bands each Friday night from 9 p.m.-1:30 a.m., plus Psychic Wednesdays, from 5-8 p.m., with mediums determining where love and luck will take you in the eons ahead.
The Hilton Beach Bar will be open 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. It is a huge space - the Hilton claims more than 7,300 square feet of beach. The menu is relatively low-key, with wraps, sandwiches, ribs, shrimp, burgers and the like, with the usual beachy-named drinks: Man Overboard, Coco Nutts, Midnight Pass, South Beach and Coco Rhuuuumba.
The Hilton also is using the beach for a big Independence Day Weekend with popular, if long-in-the-tooth, acts. The remaining Beach Boys will be at the Hilton beach at 6 p.m. July Fourth. Shorty Long and Three Dog Night start playing at 5 p.m. July 5, and Bruce in the USA, a Springsteen tribute band, will be there at 10 a.m. July 6 for the early risers - or all-nighters.
