Atlantic City: Casinos and Clams (cont.)

Tom Sykes Sr.’s house is next door to where the Tuna Club once stood.   The house is modestly elegant, and it seems strange that it belongs to an architect who has done extensive work with the casinos.   A wooden bench runs along each wall.  He explains that the house was a speakeasy during the prohibition era.  The space between benches was used as a dance floor. 

Standing on the balcony of Tom Sr.'s house, I have an encompassing view of Gardener’s Basin: a dock for clammers, a triad of restaurants, a group of boat slips, an aquarium and fishermen of all races, ages, and genders.  There is not a casino in sight.  Clammers and tour boats come and go throughout our conversation. 
The business of the casinos isn't of much concern to the fisherman.  The clams caught by local fishermen are shipped out-of-state, Tom Sr. explains, so a rise or fall in the casino-industry does little to change life in Gardener’s Basin.

In recent years Shoobies  (a somewhat derogatory, term for anyone not originally from Atlantic City) who are either tired of or cannot afford the Hamptons or Cape Cod have been turning to the Jersey Shore for their summer homes.  Additionally, many of the families that fled during the city’s decline are returning.  In an act that Sykes Sr. calls “buying the middle class back into town,” the Casino Reinvestment Development Authorities (CRDR) is subsidizing housing in many of the upwardly mobile areas of the city. 

On a jetty under the north end of the boardwalk, a group of seven or eight people cast their lines into the channel.  The group is predominately Black. One of the fishermen has lived in the area for twenty-five years. 

“I’d say it’s been changing,” he says without taking his eyes off the water in which his line lies.   “Different types of people are moving in,” he says.  His answer is ambiguous, but I understand what he means. 

He is understandably apprehensive. Massachusetts Avenue, has been a predominately Black area since the depression.  Now it is possible that the fisherman will be driven out of his home. 

That evening I go to Tom's house for a clam barbecue.  Tom bought clams from a local restaurant.  I know something about clams and suspect that these clams were not caught by local fishermen, but probably shipped from Maine.

“Where’d you get the clams?” I ask once the barbeque is ready to cook. 

Tom misunderstands my question.  “The market was closed,” he groans.  “I had to go to a local restaurant.”

“But where are they from?  Are they local?”

“No, I doubt it.  Probably from Maine,” Tom says. 

We eat and drink, and day quickly becomes evening and then night.  In the last instances of natural light, the silhouette of a clammer can be seen passing behind the houses on Massachusetts Avenue. 

The transition from day to night here is like the passing of a relay baton.  As the sun leaves for some other part of the world, the casinos take over without missing a step, their light encasing the night sky.  This is a place, after all, that never sleeps, a place of clockless casino walls.  The lights, I imagine, can be seen from miles off, but on the porch they are in both the sky above me and the water below me. 

Later in the night, more people come over and I decide go kayaking.  For some time, I sit idly at the mouth of the cove, deciding if I should turn back or enter the larger waterway.  The water’s surface is tar-like, and it swiftly carries the light across its wide back.  The deck at Harrah’s is empty.  Boats rock in the slips.  The chatter from Tom’s porch is somewhere behind me.  There is not another person in sight, only the coast guard station and the distant echo of music from the casinos.  Ultimately, intimidated by the darkness, the stillness, the emptiness, I turn around.  Halfway between the mouth of the cove and Tom’s house, I set my paddle down and drift with the slow current, the chatter in front of me, muffled music in back.  I’m not ready to return to the party, the blanket of noise.  And if only for now, I’m able to choose neither Clam Creek nor Tom’s house because Atlantic City, like all islands, has plenty of water. 

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