Resort

ATLANTIC CITY - Maybe you've noticed the new lighting on the Boardwalk. Or the dozens of "ambassadors" along it eager to answer questions about where to dine, shop, or just have fun. Most likely, you've seen the splashy "DO AC" ads on TV and billboards, or heard them on the radio. All are part of a bigger effort, along with the Atlantic City Tourism District that was created last year by Gov. Christie and the Legislature, to boost tourism and give the Queen of Resorts a makeover.

BRIGANTINE, N.J. - When Shore real estate agent Maria Schrenk started getting calls last week inquiring about a cheap summer rental on an upscale property that she had listed for sale or annual lease, she knew something was awry. When she took a quick look on Craigslist, she discovered the mischief: Scammers had poached information from the legitimate real estate website where Schrenk had listed the property and fashioned a phony advertisement with an irresistible price tag. The scammers were offering the cute Cape Cod in the 1500 block of Sheridan Boulevard, three blocks from the beach, for $1,400 a month.

In a cabin next to the fat oak tree where Eleanor Roosevelt once lectured on noble ideas to hundreds of garment workers, Karen Dewire and Anna Maria Brocca were looking for a bargain among the castoffs of seven decades. Dewire pushed firmly on the corner of a mattress, selling for $15. "This one's great looking," she said, shaking her head unbelievingly. "You can't go wrong, you can't go wrong. " Across a well-kept lawn, two other local residents loaded a truck with furniture outside a set of shaded cabins.

The late Cus D'Amato, who took Mike Tyson out of a detention school in upstate New York and trained him as a teenager, had an old saying that went something like this: When a fighter depends on intimidation to win a fight, he's not a real pro and he's setting himself up for a fall. Teddy Atlas, who worked with D'Amato and Tyson in those early days, said Tyson, now 34, would do well to remember those words before his heavyweight bout with Andrew Golota, 32, tomorrow. "Tyson is always unsure of himself, and he always wants to know he has some kind of edge," said Atlas, now a trainer and an ESPN boxing analyst.

Three top executives of developer Donald Trump's Atlantic City casino empire were killed yesterday when their helicopter lost its main rotor and crashed on the wooded median strip of the Garden State Parkway about two miles north of the Barnegat toll plaza. The helicopter's pilot and co-pilot also were killed in the crash, which occurred shortly before 2 p.m. about 30 miles north of Atlantic City. Witnesses said they heard a loud bang and saw the sleek, Italian-made helicopter's 36-foot main rotor stop spinning and then "pop" off. The craft, flying at 2,800 feet and probably traveling about 150 m.p.h.

THE PAGAN stationed on a corner of Atlantic Avenue in Wildwood stood with his burly arms crossed over his belly, guarding the infamous motorcycle club's hotel-turned-fortress like a living, breathing gargoyle. Behind him, yellow caution tape and blue tarps draped the Binns Motor Inn - a signal from the Pagan's Motorcycle Club for "citizens" and nosy cops to keep out during the 2011 Roar to the Shore biker rally this month. It's the same hotel where federal prosecutors say that leaders of the Pagan's Long Island chapter at last year's rally told their minions to prepare for death or prison as they plotted a hand-grenade attack on the rival Hells Angels.

HANOVER, Md. - Maryland Live, the largest and most successful of the state's three operating casinos, introduced dealer-staffed table games late last week, doubling its workforce seemingly overnight - and, some say, amping up its threat to gambling halls in Atlantic City and Delaware, plus at least one casino along I-95 in Pennsylvania. Craps player Nick Giron, 28, of Prince George County, said he'd be cutting back on his trips to Atlantic City. It's a 30-minute drive to Maryland Live vs. three hours to the Shore, where he typically plays craps at the Borgata.

We're off to a bad start here. Our free breakfast, the payoff for enduring a time-sharing condo pitch, sits cold before us. Across the table, our salesman, the redoubtable Rudy, pauses to smooth his hair, as though anything short of a jackhammer could muss his meticulously lacquered coiffure. The moment of truth has come. Despite his casual dress - he is nicely turned out in a cotton guaybera shirt and white-duck slacks - the hard-eyed Rudy is in reality the house "closer," the fellow they send in to extract the signatures, the salesman from hell.

Several windows and doors at the Buck Hill Inn have been smashed in by vandals, and the openings have been crudely covered with plywood. The once magnificent gardens and terraces are overgrown with weeds. Inside are eerie tableaux from happier times, when the Buck Hill Inn was one of the premier resorts in the Poconos. Firewood is still stacked beside the fireplace in the Green Leaf Library and has been since October 1990, when the inn's owners unceremoniously evicted guests and closed the doors.

Luge team's sleds lost in Pa. Some of the U.S. luge team's sleds went slip-sliding away down a Pennsylvania road. Now USA Luge is trying to get them back, and needs the public's help. Team marketing director Gordy Sheer said Thursday that he was returning to his hotel after working at an eastern Pennsylvania ski resort last week when five sleds fell out the back of the truck. They were gone by the time he realized what had happened. State police said a man in a black truck was seen picking up the sleds and driving off with them.