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In a glitzy resort, this is the side that no one
talks about
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
BY MARK DiIONNO
Star-Ledger Staff
This is the other Atlantic City.
Not the Atlantic City of scarlet carpet and green felt and
gold lamé.
This is the Atlantic City of police bundled up against the
leaden November skies of the Jersey Shore, searching for clues
in what looks like a story from the gambling resort netherworld.
On a sandy road through the tall swamp grasses in this
Atlantic City, the pink and orange and lime green evidence tags
marked the areas around the spots where the bodies of four women
were found Monday night.
The sandy road, a sewer easement, runs behind the Golden Key
Motel, a pink-and-turquoise short-rate or long-stay flophouse,
depending on your luck or business.
In this Atlantic City, taxicabs come and go, taking girls
squeezed into budget fashion jeans up to Pacific Avenue, where
darkness brings the convention of streetwalkers and slow walkers
from the casinos, looking for company or just looking.
In this Atlantic City, taxicabs come and go, taking the
busted low-rollers into town with dreams of getting flush or at
least even. This is the Atlantic City of gaming reality: For
every winner, there's a thousand losers with shot credit and
broken lives, and the luxury casino industry is built on their
habit.
This is the Atlantic City of other drug addicts and
alcoholics, of the unemployable, of those living month to month
on Social Security or disability.
In this Atlantic City, taxicabs come and go, bringing
minimum-wage housekeepers and busboys to their jobs in the $200-
to 300-a-night casinos, and back again to their $15-a-night
rooms, where they get a bed, a toilet and a door that locks, and
the cigarette stench of all the hookers, gamblers, addicts and
workers before them.
A few years back, there was a relentless ad campaign for a
towering new casino on the inlet side of Atlantic City. Come see
"the other Atlantic City" was the blitz's theme. It
may have been Trump Marina. Or Harrah's. Now the Borgata is
there, too, on the inlet side.
But high-end casinos are not "the other Atlantic
City."
The other Atlantic City is a place nobody advertises, a place
people know how to find if they're looking for it.
The other Atlantic City is here along the Black Horse Pike,
the old road into the island from the west before the Atlantic
City Expressway was finalized to accommodate the casino crowds.
On the wide side of the street are new hotels: a Ramada, a
Quality Inn, places cheaper than beachfront or marina hotel
casinos, places that get the summer overflow.
On the other side are the old motels. This is the Atlantic
City of cut-rate motels for down-and-outers, and up-to-no-gooders.
The Star, The Fortune, The Golden Key, all names that allude to
the Atlantic City of Caesars, Bally's and Resorts, but are a
world away in image and reality.
The reality of this Atlantic City yesterday was an army of
police from the state, the Atlantic City Prosecutor's Office,
the Egg Harbor Township Police Department. This Atlantic City
was a big crime scene, with 200 yards of yellow tape blocking
off the three old motels and part of the abandoned and decaying
Hickory Lodge restaurant.
Between the Hickory and the Golden Key is a vacant lot, used
as a dumping ground. Paint cans, refrigerator doors, other stuff
that has been picked through and left.
Tire tracks jump the curb off the Black Horse and lead
directly to an opening in the easement. There is another vacant
lot on the other end of the motel strip, with more tire tracks
over the curb, leading to another opening in the easement. It
was between these openings that police were searching for
evidence yesterday, bagging stuff and leaving markers.
One marker was left near the base of a billboard post.
"$1 Million Slots! Winner Take All." The sign points
toward the Atlantic City Expressway, which whisks visitors in
and out of Atlantic City, just a few parallel yards but a world
away from the Black Horse Pike.
At the Golden Key, they went into Room 101 with rubber gloves
and evidence boxes, and stationed an officer outside for the
rest of the night. Yasmin Olan, who has been living at the
Golden Key for about two months, said the man in 101, who once
told her he was a crack addict, moved out a few weeks ago. She
didn't know his name, where he was from or where he went.
That's life in the other Atlantic City. They come and go,
from the streets and the motels. There are four unidentified
dead women nobody seems to know, dumped in a ditch behind a
crummy motel painted in the festive pink and turquoise signature
colors of South Beach, Miami.
But this isn't South Beach. It's Atlantic City.
Mark DiIonno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com.
Original link: http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-10/116417445527240.xml&coll=1
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