My mission was clear. Our apartment may be decorated poorly, but at least no one can say it's not decorated. The effort was there. Still, there remained one corner shelf without a creme filling, and to be honest, it was really starting to bug me. I could've placed four baby elephants and the most expensive vases I could find atop our other shelving units - as long as this one went unprettified, that's all anyone would notice. Something had to be done.
Now, this corner shelf is practically the first thing you'd see upon entering our home, so I knew I had to put something particularly special in that spot. This wasn't another case of filling a used Snapple bottle with white rocks and calling it 'folk art.' This shelf called for something that would both start conversations and shape dreams, and I didn't think any trips to a substandard department store were going to help fill the void. I needed to spend my money elsewhere. That shelf had to play host to only the most inspiring of entries into the world of home decor. Armed with a 20-dollar budget and a strong belief in materialistic voodoo, my journey took me out of the state, down Black Horse Pike, and right into the only place in Jersey where the slots have a 98% payout rate. Atlantic City, a spot heralded for it's casinos, resorts, and casino/resorts. I knew better. This wasn't the place to gamble. This was the place to buy decorations for your bare corner shelves.
After the winter we've had, I felt lucky to make this trip on a warm, sunny weekend. Warm, sunny weekends are way more conductive to buying shelf decorations than cold, rainy weekends. Ask anybody. Atlantic City isn't normally so 'alive' in March - at least not out on the boardwalk. The combination of the holiday weekend and the farmer's tan weather made for a much more spirited experience than we were expecting. I guess this would be a 'plus' for some, but I've always likened the social element of the Atlantic City boardwalk as a sort of warm-up to either purgatory or Hell, or some other mythical place that's even worse. Today was especially strange, as I noticed that many of the boardwalkers were wearing plastic green hats, green-framed sunglasses, or in the worst case scenario, full-body leprechaun costumes. I took this as a few people merely overdoing tributes to their Irish heritage. After all, we were coming up on St. Patrick's Day. Little did I know the truth. Of all the days for me to choose to wander around the AC boardwalk - well...we'll get to that in a few minutes.
There were six of us on this most recent excursion, and like every other time we've come to Atlantic City, keeping our expenses down was of prime importance. Even discounting the casinos, it's just not a cheap place to hang around. An hour-long visit to any bar could easily rack up a bill for several hundred, and if you're looking to eat toast, be prepared to spend an extra six bucks on the butter. More precisely, the only time you're actually having fun in Atlantic City is when you're spending money on something. All those 'free moments' shown on postcards and in travel magazines? Bullshit, they don't exist. Even if you want to take a piss in one of these hotels, you've got to dodge an offensive line of 4-6 employees waiting to tackle you for a tip just because they're standing within ten feet of the sink you washed your hands in. Now maybe by the standards of Zimbabwe, I'm well off. Here? Not really, every dollar counts.
In choosing a hotel room, our biggest concern was the price. We didn't care what the place looked like or what kind of amenities it had - we just wanted the cheapest place with a vacancy. I think we got a little more than we bargained for. On a Saturday where nearly every hotel room in the city topped the 300-dollar mark, we found one for half of that. It seemed like a blessing at the time. Little did we know...
Room 201? Not so fun. :(
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It was unparalleled filth and revulsion. The room had more bodily fluid stains than a dumpster behind a Little League field. Everywhere we turned to find a trait more disgusting than the last, as we quickly realized the downside of vacationing on a shoestring. I could write a list that'd go well into the thousands detailing each and every thing wrong with our hotel room/multi-time crime scene, but for brevity's sake, I'll just give you some of the highlights.
Stenchwise, I felt as though we had just stumbled into the former stomping grounds of a family of bears who shit too often. The air was thick with stale moisture that gave all of us some alien form of bronchitis. Everything was dirty, and I do mean everything. The bedsheets contained more manjuice than a sperm bank, and the once-yellow shower was now brown with grime. There were colored handprints on the walls, broken chairs, a television that only got the kind of reception shown above, plus a few artifacts under the beds that looked to be either prop ape skulls or real ape skulls - either way, we weren't happy.
Worst of all, there was nothing we could really do about it. We'd already paid our money, and everywhere else was booked. We were forced to make due with a hotel room that literally had framed pictures of Satan on the wall above our beds. One of my friends offered to pay for a whole new room himself, but what good would that have done? Once you walked into this place, the filth was on you forever. We felt like that cartoon skunk; everywhere we went was followed by the odor and stagnation of this tormented hotel room.
See that? That was our window - usually lit up in sporadic fashion by police lights outside the building. Making matters worse was the fact that the hotel's ice machine was located just outside our room. All of the drunken, godless freaks staying here seemed to really enjoy their ice, evidenced by their repeated and noisy trips to the ice machine well into the morning hours. The thing that really got us was this: the hotel couldn't even afford phones that didn't collapse to the touch, but of course, the damn ice machine was in perfect working order, right outside our door. Loudest ice machine we've ever heard, too. Every time some bum came for a bucket full, we thought someone's car exploded. After opening the door to see what was up, all we saw was a group of old men having a contest to see who could write their names on the wall in urine with the best penmanship.
Locking the door was really more of a token gesture than anything else. In actuality, we had to wedge a table against it to keep the door closed. So while locking it didn't really help matters any, it just felt like the right thing to do. Same goes for our decision to cover our bodies in plastic bags before sleeping on those dirty beds where so many hookers and crack addicts had previously been conceived. I'm pretty sure the two females in our group got pregnant just by breathing the air there. I didn't get pregnant. I had the surgery years ago.
A few of us decided to wash our troubles away with alcohol at the Tropicana's 'Top of the Trop' lounge, which was actually one of the nicer bars I've been to, in or out of Atlantic City. The Trop isn't particularly tall compared to some of the other hotels, but the bar was still way up there, twenty stories in the air and overlooking the beach down below. The beach looks so much cleaner from that far up. You can't even see the syringes or the post-roulette suicide attempts. Every bar in every AC hotel is expensive, so there's no reason to shop around based on the merits of price. Really, you're just looking for ambiance. The 'Top of the Trop' had ambiance, and a wine glass full of pretzels, too!
The pretzel thing is a big unmentioned competition between all of the bars and lounges in Atlantic City. They have this silent contest going to see which bar can hand out pretzels in the most inappropriate kind of servingware. Tropicana has 'em in a wine glass, Bally's usually uses ashtrays. Harrah's uses hollowed-out coconut shells, because nobody goes there and there's no point in spending cash on real pretzel bowls. Factoring in the tip, drinks cost roughly ten bucks each. Still, they do come with straws and casino-themed plastic stirrers. That's gotta account for what, three or four cents? The drinks are a bargain, all things considered. And the pretzels? 100% free. Am I coming in loud and clear here, guys?
FREE PRETZELS.
Lest we forget, I didn't come to Atlantic City to get drunk or eat pretzels. I had to find something to put on my sad, empty shelf back home.
It was back to the boardwalk, and again, the amount of people walking around surprised me. Under normal circumstances, the boardwalk is pretty dead until late spring, even on the weekends. Granted, the nice weather might've brought a handful of shut-ins out of the woodwork, but something seemed amiss. All of these people looked like they were waiting for something, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was. I soon would find out.
Anyway, I sought to fill my empty shelf with goods from one of the boardwalk's souvenir shops. I should've known better. If you remember our past reviews of Atlantic City here on the site, you'd recall the alarming amount of plastic dicks and coffee cups shaped like tits that were on sale. Well, things haven't changed much.
Somewhere along the way, I guess Taiwan decided to shift its focus from paper umbrellas and plastic army figures to sex toys. Dashboard dicks, flying peckers, wind-up vaginas - you name it, it's on the boardwalk. Even more amazing is the fact that this particular shop hadn't changed their souvenir shelf in over three years. I saw the same exact rubber nipples and jerk-off monkeys back then. I hadn't realized just how timeless dancing penises were.
Wow. Tumblers shaped like dicks. In regular and glow-in-the-dark varieties. 88 cents each. These are novelties on a comedy scale almost to the level of 'Old Fart' jellybean vitamins and 'Wish You Were Here' greeting cards with pictures of someone's crotch on the inside.
Both Bill Clinton and Santa Claus got the treatment, now being represented as action figures who whack their big plastic cocks. On the above left is my favorite of all the items offered - a wind-up toy featuring a man fucking a sheep up the ass. High art. I considered the options, and while having a sheepfucker on my empty shelf would've been interesting, I didn't think it was quite the look I was hoping to achieve. I needed something with a little more class and a little less dick.
Unfortunately, the rest of the souvenir shops brought more of the same. The only items that didn't have plastic genitalia were either fuzzy dice or, for some reason, generic brands of cereal with pieces shaped vaguely like lions. I wasn't doing too well with today's mission. The shelf was still without it's trophy, and I was down 50 bucks on the slots. And I was having a bad hair day. I decided to spend a few minutes on the beach, to regroup and to hopefully find one of those empty hermit crab shells I adore so much.
While on the lukewarm sand, I heard lots of commotion coming from the boardwalk. Strange music, people running, cop cars leading some kind of cavalcade down the wooden planks. What was I missing?
Atlantic City's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. Oh boy...
Okay, before I begin, you must first forget anything you thought you ever knew about parades. I've seen the people of Atlantic City attempt to put one of these on a few years ago, and it ain't pretty. They didn't disappoint this year, either. In truth, it's only a 'parade' in the sense that people are walking with purpose down a mapped-out path. If your idea of a 'parade' includes attractions that don't completely embarrass the people responsible, then this one might not be for you. For those of us who enjoy watching strangers make complete and total fools of themselves, this was a St. Patrick's Parade for the ages.
Apparently, the parade was moreover an excuse for the city's everyday citizens to look important. Important and green. There was little rhyme or reason to the event - people dressed in plain clothes marched right along with the costumed freaks, and at one point, a massive line of used cars drove down the boardwalk to the tune of a bunch of old ladies clapping their wrinkled hands off. It was an assault on all the senses. Here's some of the highlights...
The Grand Marshall. I got nothing.
The Dairy Princess, arriving on the boardwalk with about as much fanfare as yours truly. I'm not sure who she was waving to, but the only thing she got back was a bunch of people yelling 'holy crap, that's a big queen!' The Grand Marshall and the Dairy Princess were nothing compared to what was to come...
Here's an army of guys and gals either dressed up in tin foil or as inmates, for reasons never fully explained. Just so we're clear on this parade being stupid, I should mention that they weren't playing any music. Yes, this parade group marched along with their instruments, pantomiming their way through song after song. This did wonders to hush and confuse the onlooking crowd, 80% of which had already returned to the casinos by this point.
The event's luster was fading, and fading fast. It just kept getting worse and worse - marchers attempting to keep up to the band in wheelchairs, little kids in green sweatshirts, and a bunch of jitneys carrying people across the boardwalk who looked neither Irish or at all interested. If the day was to be saved, those responsible for this sham of a parade needed to have a really great trick up their sleeve. Something that would both hold interest and make the audience happy to the point where we all forgot the unbridled idiocy of everything we'd already seen. Instead, we got this:
A guy wearing a costume consisting of: a bulldog mask, leprechaun hat, sports jersey, plastic elf shoes, sweatsocks, Capri pants, and an oversized blue bracelet. To say the least, we were unimpressed. To say the most, this parade made me hate all Irish people. Oh yeah, this freak up above? He didn't just walk in the parade. He walked in the parade while throwing stale candy at everyone he passed. I'm not kidding - here, we picked up a piece...
That's right, it's candy with a political agenda. Keep in mind, the bulldog guy couldn't see where he was walking, much less where he was throwing candy. I personally witnessed at least a few people hit the floor, victims of the Lucky Bulldog's blindsided aim. I would've overlooked all of this if the candy tasted even the slightest bit good. It didn't. It was from 1973. 1973 wasn't a good year for antismoking candy. And while we're at it, 2003 isn't a good year for candy from 1973. 2003 isn't a very good year for guys in half-dog, half-leprechaun costumes, either. I hate St. Patrick's Day.
It was endless, too. We were in the vicinity for hours, and the parade was still marching on as we left for home. I kind of wish it would've come to a close before we left, because in my mind, that parade is still going on. As far as I'm concerned, the Dairy Princess and that bulldog are still frolicking on the boardwalk right now. It's making me afraid of ever returning to Atlantic City. Actually, it's making me afraid of leaving the house in general. I mustered up enough courage to continue my mission, because God forbid I come home without anything to put on that poor, naked shelf. My home decor shant be defeated by a bulldog/leprechaun hybrid.
I tried a few more souvenir shops, but still found nothing of interest. If the items didn't include plastic cocks, they were either broken or downright boring. I was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, Atlantic City wasn't the best spot for a person to buy home accents. It seemed so natural at the time. I was just about to give up when I saw a peculiar candy shop just begging for my patronage. Maybe it was fate, maybe I just wanted some cotton candy.
It was called the 'Sugar Shack,' Atlantic City's premiere distributor of cotton candy and caramel apples. Or so the legend goes. I swear, this trailer-like stand just appeared absolutely out of nowhere; it was like that thing that made Tom Hanks 30 in Big. I approached, a victim of a strange magnetism I cannot explain. I guess I was secretly hoping that this mysterious candy shop somehow sold an item that'd fit perfectly on my empty shelf. But really...a candy store? Candy stores don't sell home decor.
It might have been wishful thinking on my part, but it's not like I really believed in the theory. It's just that I had already tried everything else. At this point, I would've taken to digging in the sand to look for rusted pieces from old chaise lounges to put on that damn shelf. I couldn't fail my mission, I just couldn't. How am I supposed to survive in the world if I can't even find one thing to put on a shelf in a whole entire city? Sure, the Sugar Shack wasn't a natural pick. I kept the faith because that's what you gotta do if you want to git dey job done son.
'Prehistoric Dinosaurs' was a tube of jelly beans topped with a rubber dinosaur torso. Not what I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless. I actually saw something in the window that would've been perfect, but I was sure it was part of the store's permanent decor. It reminded me of the time I tried to buy the Ronald McDonald statue. Like mogwai, Ronald statue not for sale. I thought the same would go for the Holy Grail I saw standing in the Sugar Shack's sugary window.
Finally, we asked. "Is that for sale?"
The man working at the Sugar Shack said that it was for sale, and I was shocked. Salvation...at the Sugar Shack? I celebrated by taking the picture shown above, and I can't say that the candy guy was too happy about it. I don't know what it is about Atlantic City junk food vendors, but they just hate being photographed. Either all these people are part of witness protection, Amish, or they're well aware that they're about as photogenic as roadkill. I tried to play it off as though I was merely trying to adjust the lens on a camera that clearly had no adjustable lens, but I think the flashbulb going off had convinced him otherwise. When he gave me the total, it seemed around two dollars higher than what it should've been. I considered it a tip for not beating me up and destroying the film.
Before presenting me with my hot new prize, the candy guy turned his back and seemed awful busy. I was kind of hoping that he would quickly turn around with a pair of those goofy wax lips in his mouth, shouting 'booga booga trooga wooga,' but he ain't no court jester. So what was the candy guy doing? I know you won't believe it, but he was putting a bow on my item. A shiny new bow! I love St. Patrick's Day!
Wait for it, wait for it...
A giant bottle of Hershey's Strawberry Syrup! Actually, it's even better! It's a BANK shaped like a giant bottle of Hershey's Strawberry Syrup. It's glory in pink plastic! It's officially licensed by Hershey's! It's all mine!!
The Sugar Shack had come through - this 2' strawberry syrup bank was just what the doctor ordered. I was either satiated or avenged; I don't really know which one is applicable. The trip to Atlantic City wasn't a bust after all, and I won a hundred on the stupid Pac-Man nickel slots to boot. Plus, I got to see the Lucky Bulldog and the Dairy Princess. And drink tumblers shaped like dicks! If I didn't catch ichthyosis from the hotel, this would've been the perfect weekend. Speaking of perfect...
The Bank Shaped Like a Giant Bottle of Hershey's Strawberry Syrup looks great on the shelf. Check out the shiny bow. The candy guy gave me a gold one because I said please and thank-you. Mission accomplished. Happy St. Patrick's Day, Grand Marshall!
