Atlantic City- August 8, 2023

We slept late… because that’s what we do there.
 The fixed toilet was not. I forget if it wouldn’t fill or wouldn’t stop running, but either way we were tired of dealing with it on vacation.
And I was tired of the sand blasting levels of sanitation needed for washing my hands every time I had to correct it.
 
We called, texted, and I ran down to the desk to get help. The hold music, though extensive, won out this time by ending first.
 
Whatever they promised to do we planned to deal with later. It turned out to be sooner, though, as the beach was insanely windy. In the three minutes I tried kneeling down to desperately hold Rosa’s towel in place so she could set up and get on it, the sun burned the backs of my hands and both heels.

 
Rosa went to the desk to address the toilet issue. Anabelle and I thought the wind might be less by the outdoor pool…
Which was on the roof.
 
NOPE!
 
After a brief period where a nearby, bolted down, beach chair nearly killed us by flapping in the breeze we retreated back to our room.
 
It did not remain our room, as the people Rosa met at the desk acknowledged that Housekeeping Sucks. (I’m paraphrasing)
 
Once we shifted our stuff down the hall for the final night, we decided to reclaim what was left of our sanity by getting some food into our faces. We went to the Sports Bar with the good buffalo sauce we ALWAYS end up at no matter what we plan. As further proof of this we recognized the waitress. Even with the brief stay out there on the beach, the room move and hiking up and down a few times, we were still sandy while eating.
 
Anabelle and I returned to our new room to wash up and read. Rosa, still needing beach time, returned to face the wind. The air had calmed a bit, but the crowd hadn’t. She saw several lifeguard rescues and one altercation between families, which became inflamed when the less obnoxious one started filming the other.
And people wonder why I was as happy as I was spending summers with people I knew for multiple generations. 

At least there, you knew who the crazy ones were.
(Everyone… it was everyone. But in a good way.)
 
We picked “random college party people” time to take the elevator down and had to deal with multiple stops and folks randomly changing cars. A guy about my age who stayed in our car for the whole trip had a Lenny Bruce t-shirt on. This definitely called for a comment. I complimented him and we talked foundational stand-up for a bit.
 
Anabelle walked away telling Rosa, “I love abandoning Dad to talk to a stranger.”
 

We took yet another Boardwalk stroll, this time planning to turn around at the, sadly closed, Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum. Though we’d never been inside, the loss of the fun things outside their door, and the Pee Wee’s Big Adventure music was still sad.
 
We stopped in Rita’s because Anabelle wanted a hand scooped Italian ice. She was happy with her mango. I realized I hadn’t had hand scooped Italian ice since my Grandfather would walk to Duryea Avenue in the Bronx for the paper when I was little and would bring me back one.
 
Usually it was lemon, but I decided to celebrate the find with the once in a while special flavor of “blue.”
(Yet another thing I didn’t know was raspberry flavored.)
 
I learned why I hadn’t had one in so long. After only a few steps I got a brain freeze severe enough that I needed to sit down. Anabelle took this opportunity, as she takes many opportunities, to point out that I am old.
 
After a bit of a rest and watching someone walk a bunny on a leash down the Boardwalk, we continued the journey back. Avoiding the man angrily telling some police officers that there was a dangerous, schizophrenic woman wandering the Boardwalk and yelling at people was an added moment of fun.
 
A little closer to out hotel, we saw her…
Or maybe that other one was her.
Or possibly another one across from us.
Honestly, there were several candidates, not counting the one walking her rabbit.
 
There was a performing Living Statue, who was WAY more the former than the latter.
 
Closer to the hotel we passed the big outdoor restaurant that has a giant Hookah on each table in the warm weather.
Anabelle’s comment, “What, are people going by and say, ’Hey I wanna be like the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland?’”
 
Rosa had a stop off for some ups and downs at her, now smoke free, fish slot machine.
 
In the room, Anabelle went hunting for a book coupon, looked up who was going to be on the Video Music Awards (is that still a thing? That may be a typo.) and read her second book of the trip. I checked the mirror and inspected the effects of wearing sunglasses, a reverse racoon sunburn.
 
When Rosa finished, I went to the casino floor and demonstrated what a good gambler I am by doing it amazingly fast. After seeing the show that summer, I spent a bit on the “Little Shop o’ Nothing” slot machine. "Feed Me" indeed. For the first time in very many trips I remembered (before running out of the small amount of allotted gambling money) the machines I used to like- and played digital poker for a bit. There was a minor burst of ups and downs, before the downs won out, as they always do.

Wondering what to do for dinner, the ladies of my family decided on “Fancy Night Part Two.” They had each brought a second dress… for just such an occasion. Since I had only worn my loud, travel stamp, Disney World shirt for a couple of hours the previous evening, I figured there would be no problem reusing it.
 
I figured wrong.
 

Passing the Imax theater, the ticket seller paid us a Fancy Night compliment,
“Y’all look nice.”
 
When we sat down at P.F. Chang’s the waitress said she liked my Disney shirt.
Another calm preview.
 

Rosa was happy with her usual Gluten Free Egg Drop Soup and Fried Rice.
Anabelle had the deluxe sushi roll in mind that she’s had at the location of this restaurant near home. This one we were in, however, had no sushi, leading to moments of confusion.
 

We each ordered various appetizers leading to a mix of ribs, dumplings and shrimp being delivered. We each ate what the other had ordered, plus a few crab wontons thrown on as an extra to finish the meal.
 
The Kirin (Japanese Beer) Sake Bomb sounded impressive referencing a “tower” which I believed to be some sort of contraption to drop the sake into the beer glass. 

The contraption was “my hand.”
Outside of that minor disappointment it was a well thought out combination.
 
I’m not much of a fan of plain sake but dumping it into what can be described best as “a good homework beer” added a bit of a needed edge to the flavor and kick of the beverage.
 
There was a quick stop before leaving in a location where the black tiles, fixtures and dragon handled doors earned it the name “Darth Toilet.”

 
We exited the restaurant directly into the situation that changed Anabelle’s tune from:
“Why are you taking notes, we don’t do anything here.”
To
“You HAVE to write up this trip.”
 
As we stood near the fountain in the center of Tropicana’s “The Quarter.” A woman approached raving about my shoes. Based on her slang selections, appearance, and clothing style I would guess she and her husband were about Seventy.
 
Based on many other visual, auditory, and olfactory clues I would guess she was hammered.
 
HAMMERED.
 
HAMM…

ERED!!!! 
 
She kept going on about how my four-color Converse high tops were “Boss,” using the word upwards of fifty-seven times in a sentence. While she did that, she threw in references that she knew the CEO of Converse and therefore knew they charged way too much for their footwear.
 
Then she used that fact as a segue into an offer to buy them. 

“Name your price!”
 
More than slightly flustered I responded, “Um… I doubt they would fit.”
 
This seemed to sink in through the alcoholic haze and she stated, 

“I would want them in Phillies Gray anyway.”
 
There was way too much to unpack in that statement quickly, and I had other distractions to focus on. Her husband (Joe, apparently) had reached us by this point and was rattling on more about my shirt than my shoes, assessing the sleeve fabric between his fingers, which was exactly as creepy as it sounds.
 
The overwhelming stench of alcohol coming off him was slightly overtaken by the cigar reek that accompanied it.
 
He stepped towards Anabelle with his phone out, and I immediately puffed up and leapt between them.
 
While I did keep him from getting closer to my daughter, it put me in the perfect place for him to put an arm around my shoulder and ask my increasingly confused child to take a photo of us while his wife chimed in, “Make sure to get the shoes.” He leaned in mid continuous compliment stream about my shirt and whispered, “But I wouldn’t be caught dead in it,” in a non-visible but still blinding aura of cigar stench.
 
They said thank you and walked off… in the direction we wanted to go.
 
Therefore, we went the opposite way, and up the stairs.
 

And then we stood there fidgeting for what we figured would be long enough for them to stagger back to the bar or casino.
 
Anabelle chastised me while we waited,
“This is your fault for wearing those shoes around drunk people!”
 
We killed some more time, as a safety buffer debating on what to do next. The result was a return to Hagen Dass.
 
It was closed.
 
Oh no. It wasn’t- it was open.
(Cut us some slack, we’d been through a traumatic experience.)
 
Unfortunately, there was no butter pecan.
 
We made our way on to the nighttime Boardwalk, constantly looking all around and over our shoulders to ensure there would be no return engagement of my footwear fans.
 
A few stores down, we found butter pecan.
 
We also found a guy playing really loud music for no visible reason…
And Batman again.
 
Just another night in Atlantic City.
 
Given the evening’s levels of stress, I broke down and got a Mega Cookie at Mrs. Fields. Rosa had - not a milkshake as previously thought- but another smoothie. This explained the weird texture of the first one.
 
Anabelle curled up in her bed with the Morgan supplied Betty the Axolotl for the final night in the room. We watched the last part of the wolf show where the side pieces really came to the forefront. This is particularly true for the screaming marmots.
 
While Rosa was setting up the bags for us to leave, the glasses case we had been looking for throughout the trip surfaced… still in the suitcase.
Perhaps we did need rest.
 
We discussed hitting the beach early before check out time, and Rosa told us she would go alone as we were annoying on the beach.
We are a remarkably close family.
 
To be fair, considering neither of us has any patience to sit still, and my skin reacts to any sunlight as if it were an air fryer… she was not wrong.

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