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This is the Social Security crowd, whose imperturbable coin stuffing accounted in large part for 55% of Atlantic City's gaming win last year. From the street corners of New York City to the hamlets of Pennsylvania, these gamblers in thick-soled white sneakers begin their pilgrimages at dawn, first making their way to deserted parking lots or pick-up points, then wobbling up the bus steps, down the aisle and into a seat. For Josephine Baumann, 71, a retired cook with the face of Edith Bunker, the trip to Bally's Park Place on a recent Wednesday is a welcome -- and cheap -- respite from arthritis, television and the addicts and prostitutes on her midtown Manhattan block. "I even forget my name," she says. The trip actually costs nothing: in exchange for her $18 Gray Line ticket, the casino refunds $15 in coins plus a $5 coupon off on the next trip.
Many of the travelers are old enough and isolated enough to need the trip as a passage out of lonely routines and back into society. Driver Michael Torrey pulls up to the casino around 11:30 a.m. and waits as his passengers move inside to swap their coupons for coins. "You'd think she'd need a walker," he says, pointing at an elderly tourist painfully climbing a ramp to the Boardwalk. "But she's in Atlantic City. Look at the willpower she has."
Some of the losers wind up at the Atlantic City Rescue Mission. Its population has included an Egyptian mathematician, a scholar from Hong Kong and a retired Israeli brigadier general who was a well-to-do appliance distributor in Jerusalem. William Southrey, the mission's director of ministries, once picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be his old high school teacher and coach.
The mission's overnight guests like to say they are passing through on their way to something better. Michael, a weasel-faced gambler who landed there after blowing his last $11,000 at craps, says he will soon be reconciled with his wife in New Jersey and on his way to Florida. "We're talking about getting out. Building a little house, a little boat. Soon." John, who last made a living recycling cans, was lured to Atlantic City by one of Trump's ads. "I'm going back to see my daughter in Tacoma. If I can ever get out of here," he says.
But John may find that Atlantic City does not easily release its grip. History and geography have bestowed on the city a curious destiny as a metaphysical place on the edge of ordinary life. "It's the end of the railroad line. It's the end of the bus line. It's the end of the airline. It's the end of the expressway," says Barry Durman, the mission's director. "Once you get here, where do you go?"