Atlantic City is what it has always been: Naughty

FROM THE MOMENT Resorts International (now Resorts Atlantic City) opened its doors 31 years ago, there has been opposition to legal gambling's presence in Atlantic City.

Some critics cite the toll - gambling addiction and an increase in crime (especially prostitution) - casinos can take on society. Others have decried gaming halls and their attendant amenities as an affront to the town's glorious past as a wholesome, family-friendly destination.

Both groups are obviously well-intentioned. But those subscribing to the latter philosophy are also misguided, if not downright delusional.

A mythology about Atlantic City's past as a sort-of proto-Orlando has evolved through the decades. But the truth is that its current status as a filling station for peoples' baser desires is nothing more than a continuation of a legacy that began way before the vociferous gambling opponents were gleams in their parents' - or grandparents' - eyes.

To put it another way, Atlantic City is, was and, if the past is indeed prologue, always will be Sodom-by-the-Sea.

That the city was ever anything but a boardwalk-rimmed den of inequity is "absolutely a myth," said Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Nelson Johnson. He's the author of "Boardwalk Empire" (Plexus Publishing, $18.95), a definitive account of Atlantic City's naughty, bawdy and gaudy history and the three corrupt overlords who reigned during a good chunk of its 155-year existence.

According to Johnson, whose 2002 book is being developed as an HBO miniseries by Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese, from the time of its founding in 1854, Atlantic City's raison d'etre was to "give the people what they want."

To buttress his point, he cited a quote from the late Murray Fredericks, a local attorney who explained the town's vice-ridden history this way: "If people came for Bible readings, we would have given them that. But nobody asked for Bible readings. They came for booze, broads and gambling, and that's what we gave them."

Victorian roots

 

Atlantic City's position as Sin City USA (or as author-historian Vicki Gold-Levi has described it, "Las Vegas before there was a Las Vegas") was established during the Victorian Era, when less-than-noble pursuits, carnal and otherwise, were looked upon harshly by mainstream society.

By the waning years of the 19th century, vice had become as important to the tourism industry as the beach and ocean.