The phenomenal growth in the casino industry that occurred in Nevada through¬out the 1960s and ’70s as a direct result of the popularity of Ed Thorp’s Beat the Dealer, had the East Coast politicians and business leaders buzzing with plans to get casinos legalized in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere on the East Coast. So much gambling money was flying west to Vegas and Reno every day, a plan had to be hatched to keep those dollars closer to home.
In 1974, a referendum to legalize gambling in New Jersey failed, but a similar referendum that would limit the casinos to Atlantic City passed in 1976. Atlantic City had been chosen as the first East Coast gambling venue because the politicos felt, and rightly so, that the public would accept it. It was well located and had once been a popular vacation resort town, but had long since fallen on hard times. The once-famous boardwalk was in disrepair, and the surrounding residential neighborhoods had become slums of broken-windowed tenements.
No one in the state could make an argument that casinos might destroy the neigh¬borhood. The neighborhood was a pit of poverty and despair. Instead, the hope was that casinos might revitalize the town.
There were some who predicted that if New Jersey legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City, the town would soon dwarf Las Vegas as the country’s gambling mecca because of the relative proximity to all those big East Coast cities—New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Everyone figured Nevada would likely keep the California trade, but Florida was closer to New Jersey than Nevada, as were many of the big Midwestern cities—Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland.
Obviously, these seers have been proven wrong. There is a lot of gambling in Atlantic City today, and a lot of blackjack, but in the nearly three decades since casino gambling was legalized, no one today could imagine Atlantic City making much of a dent in Las Vegas’s status as the gambling center of not only the U.S., but the world.
What is most striking to players who gamble in both Nevada and New Jersey, however, is the totally different “feel” of the casinos in these states. The difference is based on the way the two states entered the gambling industry. Nevada’s casinos grew out of mob money. The whole state was wild and loose and dangerous. New Jersey’s casinos, on the other hand, came out of a corporate environment. High-powered business tycoons, politicians, and lawyers were behind every casino that opened its doors. With the state requiring a five hundred-room hotel as a prerequisite for even applying for a casino license, the types of punks and hoods who set up bust-out joints in Las Vegas back in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, didn’t even dream of opening a casino in New Jersey.
Today, despite the corporatization of Nevada’s casinos in the past few decades, the difference between the Nevada and New Jersey casinos—and it’s a palpable differ¬ence that you can feel, even if you can’t quite put your finger on it—is the difference between the cops and the robbers. Nevada makes us think of what the world would be like if the robbers ran the show, made the laws, and owned everything, while New Jersey gives us the feeling that the cops are in charge. Most of us don’t really care much for either cops or robbers. But we can’t deny that if we’re looking to let loose on vacation, robbers are a bit more fun to party with.
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