Joni Con
ANOTHER NIGHT; ANOTHER CASINO!
This casino wasn't in Florida, It was actually Mount Airy Lodge in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where Joni and the wife were staying for a week using a time share in that area as a base of operations for a mix of business and pleasure late last year. Joni and the wife used to travel to this casino from time to time when they were living in North Jersey. It was closer than the casinos in Atlantic City and frankly, much safer. Here we see a smiling Joni late in the evening flush with a modest influx of extra cash.
Speaking of Atlantic City, it was once the playground for many back in its heyday more than a century ago, but during the post war years, it became a blighted eyesore on the Jersey Shore. It enjoyed a revival of sorts in the late 1970's when New Jersey decided to become the second state in the USA to permit casino gambling, offering an alternative to the long established casinos in Las Vegas for east coast gamblers. Casino gambling in Atlantic City was never as glitzy as it was in Las Vegas. Nevertheless, a number of high rise beachfront hotels and casinos sprung up along its Monopoly-famed Boardwalk, as well as a few more on the back bay. For about a dozen years, Atlantic City's casinos were extremely popular and profitable, as they enjoyed a monopoly along the USA's populous east coast and cut into Las Vegas' bottom line.
Casino gambling in Atlantic City was much different than it was in Las Vegas. Instead of well-heeled gamblers flying in from all over on gambling junkets, the lifeblood of Atlantic City's casinos were the one day casino bus trips from near and far in which gamblers, many of whom were retirees, were offered free food vouchers and $20 in quarters to hop on a bus to A.C., which basically paid for their trip. While most came to gamble away their social security checks, if not their life savings, it was not uncommon to find people who rode the buses, used or sold the food vouchers, and pocketed the quarters and spent the day soaking up sun on the beach or reading a book on a Boardwalk bench. However, business was brisk in those early days as casino buses could be seen flying up and down the Garden State Parkway and on the Atlantic City Expressway on a regular basis. However the glitz of the casinos never could camouflage the unaddressed blight that characterized the rest of Atlantic City, and criminal activity was omnipresent.
It was only a matter of time before the Goose that laid the Golden Egg for the State of New Jersey was strangled. When neighboring states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, and Florida, among others, including various Indian reservations, made a grab for their share of the gambling jackpot and also legalized casino gambling, Atlantic City's days in the sun were numbered. The casino buses stopped running and the casino business downsized from a high of 13 or 14 casinos to maybe 6 or 7 nowadays.
Among the casualties in Atlantic City's downturn was a casino tycoon named donald trump. trump at the time was busy running his football team, the New Jersey Generals, and his entire United States Football League out of business as he spent tens of millions of dollars in legal fees suing the NFL in a federal antitrust suit after a misguided and failed attempt to force a merger with the NFL. When the jury announced its verdict finding the NFL liable for being an illegal monopoly, trump pounded counsel table and raised his fist in victory, in much the same way he did after he had survived his assassination attempt. His victory celebration was cut short however, as the jury foreman next advised the Court that the jury was awarding trump and his fellow league owners a mere $1.00 in damages, which by antitrust law was trebled to $3.00. Defeated and humiliated, a seething trump quietly slunk out of the court room. His fellow league owners, tired of trump's bravado and intimidating leadership, refused to appeal the damages and cancelled the the USFL's upcoming season and folded the league; an allegorical lesson to be heeded by those who still choose to support the fool.
Undaunted, New York City's master builder of phalanx symbol buildings was also busy buying and building a casino empire in Atlantic City. He eventually owned, but poorly operated, three different casinos in Atlantic City. No other company owned more than one, and really why would they? Have more than one casino, so you can compete against yourself?? Is that what they teach at the Wharton Business School??? I don't think so. Competing against other and better casino operators in Atlantic City, as well as himself, and with new casinos springing up all across the country, trump the genius businessman never anticipated Atlantic City's downturn and naturally lost billions. He was forced to file for bankruptcy and eventually sell off his casinos and properties for cheap; not unlike a losing player in Monopoly who has landed on "Boardwalk" with four hotels with no cash on hand, and has to start mortgaging and selling off his own properties to raise money to pay his bill before he goes bankrupt . . . . One may ask one's self, "How does a person own a casino and lose money and end up bankrupt? What kind of idiot can do that??"
Unlike trump the LOSER, Joni enjoyed a modest winning evening at Mount Airy Lodge and quit while she was ahead.
ANOTHER NIGHT; ANOTHER CASINO!
This casino wasn't in Florida, It was actually Mount Airy Lodge in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where Joni and the wife were staying for a week using a time share in that area as a base of operations for a mix of business and pleasure late last year. Joni and the wife used to travel to this casino from time to time when they were living in North Jersey. It was closer than the casinos in Atlantic City and frankly, much safer. Here we see a smiling Joni late in the evening flush with a modest influx of extra cash.
Speaking of Atlantic City, it was once the playground for many back in its heyday more than a century ago, but during the post war years, it became a blighted eyesore on the Jersey Shore. It enjoyed a revival of sorts in the late 1970's when New Jersey decided to become the second state in the USA to permit casino gambling, offering an alternative to the long established casinos in Las Vegas for east coast gamblers. Casino gambling in Atlantic City was never as glitzy as it was in Las Vegas. Nevertheless, a number of high rise beachfront hotels and casinos sprung up along its Monopoly-famed Boardwalk, as well as a few more on the back bay. For about a dozen years, Atlantic City's casinos were extremely popular and profitable, as they enjoyed a monopoly along the USA's populous east coast and cut into Las Vegas' bottom line.
Casino gambling in Atlantic City was much different than it was in Las Vegas. Instead of well-heeled gamblers flying in from all over on gambling junkets, the lifeblood of Atlantic City's casinos were the one day casino bus trips from near and far in which gamblers, many of whom were retirees, were offered free food vouchers and $20 in quarters to hop on a bus to A.C., which basically paid for their trip. While most came to gamble away their social security checks, if not their life savings, it was not uncommon to find people who rode the buses, used or sold the food vouchers, and pocketed the quarters and spent the day soaking up sun on the beach or reading a book on a Boardwalk bench. However, business was brisk in those early days as casino buses could be seen flying up and down the Garden State Parkway and on the Atlantic City Expressway on a regular basis. However the glitz of the casinos never could camouflage the unaddressed blight that characterized the rest of Atlantic City, and criminal activity was omnipresent.
It was only a matter of time before the Goose that laid the Golden Egg for the State of New Jersey was strangled. When neighboring states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, and Florida, among others, including various Indian reservations, made a grab for their share of the gambling jackpot and also legalized casino gambling, Atlantic City's days in the sun were numbered. The casino buses stopped running and the casino business downsized from a high of 13 or 14 casinos to maybe 6 or 7 nowadays.
Among the casualties in Atlantic City's downturn was a casino tycoon named donald trump. trump at the time was busy running his football team, the New Jersey Generals, and his entire United States Football League out of business as he spent tens of millions of dollars in legal fees suing the NFL in a federal antitrust suit after a misguided and failed attempt to force a merger with the NFL. When the jury announced its verdict finding the NFL liable for being an illegal monopoly, trump pounded counsel table and raised his fist in victory, in much the same way he did after he had survived his assassination attempt. His victory celebration was cut short however, as the jury foreman next advised the Court that the jury was awarding trump and his fellow league owners a mere $1.00 in damages, which by antitrust law was trebled to $3.00. Defeated and humiliated, a seething trump quietly slunk out of the court room. His fellow league owners, tired of trump's bravado and intimidating leadership, refused to appeal the damages and cancelled the the USFL's upcoming season and folded the league; an allegorical lesson to be heeded by those who still choose to support the fool.
Undaunted, New York City's master builder of phalanx symbol buildings was also busy buying and building a casino empire in Atlantic City. He eventually owned, but poorly operated, three different casinos in Atlantic City. No other company owned more than one, and really why would they? Have more than one casino, so you can compete against yourself?? Is that what they teach at the Wharton Business School??? I don't think so. Competing against other and better casino operators in Atlantic City, as well as himself, and with new casinos springing up all across the country, trump the genius businessman never anticipated Atlantic City's downturn and naturally lost billions. He was forced to file for bankruptcy and eventually sell off his casinos and properties for cheap; not unlike a losing player in Monopoly who has landed on "Boardwalk" with four hotels with no cash on hand, and has to start mortgaging and selling off his own properties to raise money to pay his bill before he goes bankrupt . . . . One may ask one's self, "How does a person own a casino and lose money and end up bankrupt? What kind of idiot can do that??"
Unlike trump the LOSER, Joni enjoyed a modest winning evening at Mount Airy Lodge and quit while she was ahead.