Atlantic City tourist information

Atlantic City has always been primarily a resort town. Its location in South Jersey, hugging the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, presented itself as prime real estate for developers. The city was incorporated in 1854, the same year in which train service began, linking this remote parcel of land with the more populated, urban centers of New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Atlantic City became a popular beach destination because of its proximity to Philadelphia.

BoardWalk
In 1870 the first boardwalk was built along a portion of the beach to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. The idea caught on, and the boardwalk was expanded and modified several times in the following years. Today, it is several miles (kilometers) long and sixty feet (twenty meters) wide, reinforced with steel and concrete. It is now the world's longest boardwalk.

Democratic National Convention
The city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for President and Hubert Humphrey as Vice President. The ticket won in a landslide that November. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline.

Poverty and Crime
Although a small city, it had been plagued with many large city problems, especially poverty and crime. The neighborhood known as the "inlet" was particularly impoverished. In an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 approved casino gambling for the city of Atlantic City. Resorts International became the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978.

Other casinos were soon added along the boardwalk and later in the marina district for a total of twelve today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many have argued that it only served to magnify those problems, as evidenced in the stark contrast between tourism-intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods. Drug-infested tenements in poor condition stand directly beside multi-billion dollar casino hotels along the ocean in some locations.

In addition, Atlantic City has played second-fiddle to Las Vegas, Nevada, as a gambling mecca in the United States. On July 3, 2003, Atlantic City's newest casino, The Borgata, opened with much success. Another major attraction is the oldest remaining Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditorium in the world. It is also Ripley's Believe It or Not, Ripley's most famous odditorium.

Wind Farm
Atlantic City is home to New Jersey's first wind farm. The Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm consists of five 1.5 MW turbine towers, each almost 400 feet (120 meters) high.

Uh Oh
Gambling was stopped for the first time since 1978 at 8:00 a.m. on July 5, 2006, during the 2006 New Jersey State Government Shutdown mandated by Governor Jon Corzine. The casinos reopened at 7:00 p.m. on July 8, 2006.

Atlantic City has been a rather frequent subject in popular culture. The eccentric 1972 Bob Rafelson film The King of Marvin Gardens with Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, and Ellen Burstyn was shot on location there and strongly conveys a feel for the pre-casino/post-glory-days limbo the city was mired in at the time. The powerful Oscar-nominated 1981 movie, Atlantic City, by French director Louis Malle, starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, reflects the city at the dawn of its casino-driven "rebirth". Atlantic City is cited as the Sundance Kid's birthplace in the 1969 classic western film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. A popular Bruce Springsteen song, "Atlantic City", depicting a young couple's escape to the city, appears on Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska.

More recently, several episodes of Donald Trump's television show The Apprentice have been based and filmed in Atlantic City.

Atlantic City is often mentioned in Friends (which is based in nearby New York).

It was the home of the Miss America pageant from 1921 to 2005. In August 2005, it was announced that the pageant would no longer be held in Atlantic City. On January 21, 2006, the first pageant to occur outside Atlantic City took place in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Aladdin Casino and Resort.

The streets of Atlantic City are used in the American version of the boardgame Monopoly.

The sticky confection salt water taffy is closely associated with the Boardwalk.

Episode 5.3 of the US hit show Sex and the City is set primarily in the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.

A Disney Vacation Club (DVC) resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Disney's BoardWalk Villas, is based on Atlantic City in the 1930s.

The Simpsons also visited Atlantic City, with Homer making a derogatory remark towards the flag by pointing out that it has a fat man kissing a woman on it. Of course in reality it doesn't. In another episode, after Homer's plan to build a casino run by South Pacific island natives goes awry, he remarks to the islanders, "I gave you a glittering Vegas, and you turned it into a skanky Atlantic City."