UNDER THE BOARDWALK
Peck, Keenen
Under the BY BARRY JACOBS Thirty million Americans play at their fantasies every year in Atlantic City, the East Coast's Las Vegas, making it the nation's top tourist spot. Yet Atlantic City also...
...Those who don't get beds will have to lie head-to-toe on bed rolls on the chapel floor—or, if that gets too crowded, cramped beneath the dining-room tables...
...Then there's the group actually out there looking for work...
...Philly is a welder by trade...
...The town is portrayed as a hospitable place to be...
...I had about $2,000 when I came," he says in a quiet, depressed voice, his face blank, "but I lost it all in the casinos in a couple of hours...
...Twenty yards away a white-haired woman from the Midwest begs a dollar...
...Dropping the smile and with a tinge of fury, "I can't even take a shower here because the other men harass me...
...An affirmative judgment was handed down in 1985...
...The residents end up homeless because of Atlantic City's employment problems and lack of affordable housing...
...Maybe go back to New York in a few weeks...
...A huge banner reading A 'Hand-Paid' Jackpot Every 3A Minutes hangs at the far end of several long rows lined by slot machines...
...He lost half the $10,000 he came with in a couple of weeks at the gambling tables, and he was rolled by a prostitute for the rest...
...Most of the men watch him slack-jawed, bored by the long wait to sign up for tonight's dinner—chicken a la king, yellow rice, banana cream pie—and a chance for a night's rest on one of the thirty-two double bunks...
...Young black men jostle the paranoids...
...What does he plan to do...
...The state-funded public-interest group originally brought suit against the casinos to require that a percentage of gambling winnings help fund construction of low-cost housing in the city...
...A large segment of the homeless we serve," Southrey explains between calls, "are people cut loose from mental institutions who migrate here...
...Tell him about Hotel Underwood," says Doug, the man next to him...
...The bells go off and a dozen quarters land noisily in the metal pan...
...Prior to the advent of casino gambling, if we saw fifteen to twenty homeless men a day, we thought we were busy," says the Mission's director, the Reverend Rex Whiteman...
...All told, the various groups the Mission serves reflect a wide sprectrum of society's troubled souls, drawn to or born in a city that sells the promise of easy transformation...
...Southrey calmly but firmly explains to the man the Mission's clothing procedures...
...I'm beginning to get that street-person look...
...Jesus is coming to Earth this year, arriving first in Atlantic City," she says...
...I got a job working for a gardening-supplies center but was only getting minimum wage...
...Once on the gambling floor, the tourists fall in step with the room's pressured pace...
...Passing through the opaque cut-glass revolving doors of the Resorts International casino and into the plush orange-carpeted lobby, the tourists escape not just the Boardwalk, but all banality...
...The Public Advocate's Office of New Jersey has been struggling with this question for five years...
...If you want to drink, we can play the casino floor and get drinks for free...
...Under the soft lighting, everything has a dreamy focus—it could be two o'clock or ten o'clock for all anybody cares...
...You've got to be in a union if you want to work in the casinos...
...I used to live in a condo...
...Doug, in his late twenties, nods his head woozily but then stiffens when asked about his own circumstances...
...I don't know," he says softly...
...As part of the community, the casinos should take some of the responsibility for the homeless but not carry the whole burden," says the Mission's Bill Southrey...
...The man heartily plays along, flirting back, yelling louder, betting more...
...I couldn't accumulate any money...
...Matronly women, wearing thick lipstick, with cups of quarters resting on their thighs, drop coins into the slot and pull with unchanging motion...
...In front of Bally's casino, a bearded man waves a Bible and asks for change...
...His family moved to Philadelphia but he decided to stay on and look for work as a security guard...
...Standing in the Mission's sign-in line is a white man in his thirties with a stylishly cut blue-jean jacket and brown hornrimmed glasses...
...What's surprising is that the chaplains at the Mission agree...
...He's lived in cheap rooming houses when he's held small jobs and at the Mission when he's been laid off...
...Here the aisles are wider, the pace more leisurely, and the crowd racier-younger and better dressed in sports jackets, gold chains, and gowns...
...How to remedy the homeless situation in Atlantic City...
...A young woman croupier glances up at the bettor, smiling with each of his exhortations...
...The casinos want no part of it...
...On every third bench along the Boardwalk, young homeless men are stretched out and asleep...
...In his tiny office off the chapel, the phone rings constantly and people keep poking their heads in his door to ask about clean-up detail and other duties...
...He's on the lam," Philly says...
...My housing was $85 a week...
...The chapel is loud and sour-smelling as Most of the homeless had come to Atlantic City for steady work, easy kicks, a hot streak in the casinos to change the cold luck of their lives...
...A short black man, his wild eyes frantic and disturbed, walks rapidly up and down the aisles, mouthing off to anyone who'll listen...
...It's as if they have their hearts set only on that mother-lode jackpot—to be one of those women they read about who, after pouring in quarters religiously for five or six years, win a million bucks on that one magic pull and retire with their husbands to Florida...
...Not a single machine is unoccupied...
...Would you look at this," he says grinning but with a stumbling, quivering voice...
...Whiteman's right hand is Bill Southrey, a Mission chaplain and director of transient ministries...
...Proceeding down the hall, they reach a short flight of steps descending into the casino itself...
...That is, we sleep under the Boardwalk...
...He worked as a computer programmer for one of the casinos, but the money and the fast life led him deep into alcoholism...
...Now most of my friends won't speak to me because I hit on them for money to drink...
...There are whole segments of the population not fitting anywhere right now...
...I heard that there were jobs on the construction of the new casinos so I came up here," Pops says with a slight Southern accent...
...It happened to a lot of us...
...Dignity is in short supply at the Atlantic City Rescue Mission...
...We shouldn't be singled out as a cure-all for all of Atlantic City's ills," says a spokesperson for the Atlantic City Casino Hotel Association...
...Every detail of the gambling halls conBoardwalk veys the big-time...
...He talks as if in a daze, eyes wandering, miles within himself to ward off the noise in the room...
...The homeless men now squirm sitting elbow-to-elbow on hard chairs for hours in the chapel...
...Whiteman is trying to raise $3 million to build an additional three-story 250-bed facility...
...on a busy day...
...A minor winning combination comes up occasionally...
...They stroll a bit on the Boardwalk to stretch their legs, sniffing happily at the sea air...
...They come here thinking they can find employment and a new start in life but are usually disappointed...
...Only in his thirties, he's a large, bearded papa-bear of a man...
...Now 1 have to stay here...
...He's been at this for more than two years—to one day guard the casino doors against his bunkmates at the Mission...
...One fellow stops him, screaming for a new pair of jeans...
...A five, you sonofabitch," yells a man about fifty years old with thick, wavy, silver hair and overhanging gut, pounding his fist on the craps table...
...Originally from Philadelphia, he moved to Atlantic City a year ago to be with his male lover...
...The gamblers jingle quarters in their pockets, not to hand out but to pour into the slot machines...
...The tourists give these two a wide berth...
...Soon their pace quickens and their eyes light up...
...Around them stare posters of Joan Rivers and Lola Falana and a huge billboard for the Monkees...
...This is what he came to Atlantic City for—to wrest dignity on terms which have meaning for him: Beat the dice and the guy, get the money and the girl...
...Finally," he says, "there are the wayward transients and the local residents...
...Out pile round-shouldered older men in leisure suits and middle-aged women, clutching handbags, in long pants, wool sweaters, and sensible shoes...
...I'm getting a license to work security," he says, as if reciting a list of well-worn pronouncements...
...Later that year, the Public Advocate submitted to the court a plan for the city, county, and state to provide 502 more beds for the homeless...
...There are lots of panhandlers in this town, too much competition...
...The crowds of tourists on a Saturday afternoon never have to see the homeless of Atlantic City, though something about the place's glitz and glimmer has drawn them both here to try to change their lives...
...Atlantic City is the worst, the end," says 'Philly' before taking a swig from a bottle...
...But they weren't hiring...
...We're all staying at the Hotel Underwood...
...Here two weeks from Dover, New Hampshire, and now staying at the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, he says Jesus has ordered him to come here and preach and gamble so that he may "rejoice and prosper...
...Wanted in California...
...After a couple of weeks, I was getting desperate and decided to try my luck at the gambling tables...
...I got fired when the weather got cold and have been living in the Mission...
...Put simply, people with problems are drawn to where the money is fluid...
...The dozens of day-trip charter buses from Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware pull into parking lots adjacent to the casino lobbies...
...Of its 38,000 inhabitants, some 900 are living under the Boardwalk, in abandoned cars and boarded up homes or in the few available shelters...
...Grizzled white drunks shout hoarsely at the chaplains...
...They picked up on the grapevine what's happening in Atlantic City...
...The young croupier bellows even louder for the bettors to get their chips down, glaring at the silver-haired man, subtly baiting him into a kind of he-man struggle...
...Stevie Wonder's "Part-Time Lover" thumps from the loudspeakers as gamblers snap down the slot machine levers in rhythm to the beat...
...It's all here for you...
...Beyond the slot machines lie the gaming tables...
...Then I'll get a place to stay where I won't have to worry about them tearing it down...
...The ceiling blazes with flashing lights and mirrors—the room seems to extend forever...
...The first have no direction in life—they just ride the buses and end up here...
...Don is a twenty-five-year-old black Atlantic City native...
...a hundred homeless men mill about...
...They had envisioned something different: steady work, easy kicks, a hot streak in the casinos to change the cold luck of their lives...
...Soon they're hurrying into the casinos...
...If they had thought they'd end up here, most of these men would never have boarded buses for Atlantic City...
...The casinos are a magnet that draws people from all over the country to Atlantic City...
...Probably they've had some hard knocks—lost a spouse, say...
...Yet Atlantic City also has the highest homeless rate in the United States...
...That's the joke around here," says Philly, a thirty-five-year-old man from Philadelphia with a dark mustache and multiple tattoos...
...He arrived here three months ago looking for a job, but none materialized...
...hand over a few days' stubble...
...The court has not yet considered requiring casinos to help finance the building of more shelters...
...Sitting silently on a chair in another corner of the chapel is Darryl, a twenty-one-year-old black man from New York who came to Atlantic City six months ago looking for work...
...A wrecking crane is obliterating an old building a few blocks inland...
...Most of the gamblers barely crack a smile...
...I came here," Doug insists, "because I heard there was money to be made...
...Stripped of their illusions and their last quarters, some may try Hotel Underwood for a while, but most make their way from the glittery Boardwalk to the overcrowded Mission in one of the city's more depressed areas...
...There's no hot water in the public bathrooms so you can't get a decent shave...
...But you can't win there...
...The famous Steel Pier has new concrete pilings gleaming bleach-white in the sun, finally being rebuilt after decades of decay...
...I'm trying to panhandle enough money now to get out of here, go to my sister's in Georgia," he says, "but it's tough...
...Look at my face," he says, running his Barry Jacobs is a free-lance writer in Philadelphia...
...Now on a slow day we may provide food and shelter for 300 men...
...They think, 'Let's see if I can hold a little job there.' "Another large segment are those who are chemically dependent...
...They get lured here by the hustle and the score...
...it's his job to ask for money from casino executives and other municipal powers, who brought gambling and the ensuing homeless problem to this town...
...The view is as mesmerizing and enticing as from a balcony at a stock exchange: narrow aisles jammed with people yanking on the slot machine levers, and small islands of green felt ringed with anxious faces...
...It won't be a problem getting a job—each time a casino opens, it needs people to work...
...Because, to my mind, the primary cause of the homeless problem is the decay of society...
...Doug takes a long, lingering swig from the bottle and hands it to forty-seven-year-old 'Pops.' Sad eyes, sweet smile, and a frail, lanky frame, Pops was working as a painter for a subcontractor at NASA but was laid off after the Challenger disaster...
...The building my family lived in was bought and torn down," he says in a matter-of-fact, detached tone...
...Micro-skirted barmaids rush drinks to the players and the tuxedoed croupiers whisk away chips...
...As Southrey walks through the chapel, several of the waiting men call out greetings to him or try to catch his eye, and he nods back warmly...
...Then the first night I was on the beach, some guys mugged me and took my suitcase...
...Now he lives on the beach...
Vol. 51 • October 1987 • No. 10
