Gambling on Atlantic City

Last week Mr. Sax and I took a trip to Atlantic City. If your only idea of the town is through the HBO series, “Boardwalk Empire,” you’re getting some of the flavor, but hardly the whole enchilada. The city’s history, tied to booze and vice, is woven into the present. A.C. is still a gamey, even ridiculous, place, but that’s part of the charm, or at least that’s my opinion.

I grew up in Atlantic City. It was my childhood home. I lived on Raleigh Avenue and attended the Richmond Avenue School. For the most part, my part of town was staunchly middle class. My best friends fathers were a surgeon, a psychiatrist, and a funeral director. My own father, while still alive, was in the music business. Elementary school is one big blur, but memories of life outside school remain vivid. Four seasons of the year we played on the beach and walked the boards. We lived on sub sandwiches, frozen custard, fish freshly caught. We rode bikes or took the Jitney or walked by ourselves everywhere. We were savvy at dealing with tourists. By 10, I was an expert panhandler.

My mother wore a mink stole when she left the apartment. In those days, the grand hotels, the Marlborough Blenheim, the Traymore, the Claridge, the Shelburne, the Ritz Carlton, the Ambassador, and Chalfonte-Haddon Hall were still in operation, but the mid 1960’s, the town was seriously run down. It was a big deal when Atlantic City was chosen to be the site of the 1964 Democratic Convention. Lyndon Johnson actually stayed in a beautiful house very near our apartment. The convention and the press coverage, however, cast a harsh light on the corruption of the city, and afterwards things faded fast. By the early ‘70’s, the grand hotels were being demolished and the town was overcome with drugs and pimps and the homeless.

Legal casino gambling revived Atlantic City, bringing thousands of visitors back to the shore. In 1978 Resorts International opened its doors. I’m not here to argue whether legalized gambling really is a good thing, but I am happy about the new and glam Revel entertainment complex.  Erected in what was for 50 years the most blighted part of the city, The Inlet, Revel, which is gorgeous, got off to a rocky start. Morgan Stanley, the 90% majority owner, discontinued funding for continued construction, and put its stake in Revel up for sale. Love him or hate him, Governor Chris Christie offered Revel $261 million in state tax credits to assist the casino once it opened.

Will the state’s gamble pay off? It’s a big bet with lots at stake. Not being a gambler, I still proposed to my spouse a visit to Revel to celebrate a major anniversary. Major foodies, over two and a half days and nights we dined at world class restaurants featuring Iron Chefs, Michelin chefs, James Beard Award winners, and food concepts from New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. We laid out in the sun. We swam in the outdoor pool. We walked the beach and the boards until our feet were falling off.

Speaking of food, what didn’t I eat? I had Sack O Subs, Steel’s Fudge, Fralinger’s almond macaroons, clams on the half shell, steamed clams, escargot. At American Cut, headed by Iron Chef Marc Forgione, Mr. Sax had a steak he raved about. I loved Robert Wiedmaier’s Mussel Bar. At Village Whiskey, we snacked on Iron Chef Jose Garces’s duck fat fries and deviled eggs. Other famous chefs featured at Revel include Alain Allegretti, Luke Palladino, and Michel Richard. On Saturday we lunched at Bally’s at Harry’s Oyster Bar. Located just off the Boardwalk, under an umbrella in the sun, I had a half dozen little neck clams on the half shell, followed by an order of steamers in garlic broth. Mr. Sax had a grilled seafood platter featuring lobster, clams, scallops, oysters, flounder, and crab cake. Buzzed on Bloody Mary’s, afterwards we entered an arcade at the base of Steel Pier to spend $20 in quarters playing Skee ball. That was great.

A friend back home had asked me to place a bet for her on the roulette wheel, but we didn’t do it because we can’t gamble. Neither Mr. Sax and I could make sense of the slot machines, and we were afraid to lose our shirts at the blackjack tables or in the poker room, or at mini baccarat, or craps. We did get a kick out of  Ivan Kane’s Royal Jelly Burlesque Club, where round the clock pretty women wearing very little prance and strut their stuff.

What was my favorite part of the trip, aside from a chance to walk past my favorite childhood haunts and the homes of my old friends? It was Mr. Sax’s unrestrained joy returning to our room at 4 a.m. after an hour and a half of dancing at the HQ night club when he was too wound up to sleep. They were hosting a Madonna party, as the singer was in town. “The doorman was stopping lots of people, but he let me right in,” my husband gloated, slipping between the sheets. He attributed this to a cool hat purchased that afternoon at Irene’s. His elation was  so exciting. I was so glad for him.

Bigger than the White House

In the last days of August while my neighbors were all gone and the streets were so silent you could hear a pin drop, Mr. Sax and I had a “staycation,” in our own neighborhood. One afternoon we traveled to Cold Spring; another day, we hit Fahnestock State Park. In Portchester we had drinks and appetizers outside at BarTaco, and on the final day of our holiday, we drove to Pleasantville to catch a film at the Jacob Burns. The film we saw was “The Queen of Versailles,” which I’d read about in The New Yorker and was a topic of conversation at a sophisticated cocktail party in Pound Ridge we’d been to the night before. At the party, several people were talking about the film. “She got what she deserved,” one woman carped.

The film, a documentary by Lauren Greenfield, details the rise (and the fall) of David and Jackie (mostly Jackie) Siegel. David Siegel is a time-share magnate, founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts. The couple live the American Dream, but SuperSized. In 2007, when filming started, the Siegels are building a 90,000 square foot home in Florida they call the American Versailles. Larger than a 747 airplane hangar, featuring 9 kitchens, 30 bathrooms, two movie theaters, and a bowling alley, the home, if it is ever completed, basically dwarfs the White House.

In interviews before and after the film was released, Lauren Greenfield explains how she first met Jackie, who is fairly down to earth. The filmmaker, who has had a long career photographing images of extreme wealth for “Elle” magazine, encountered Jackie Siegel when she was taking pictures of Donatella Versace for the opening of the designer’s new store. Jackie is/was a valued Versace client. Soon Greenfield was helping Jackie convince her husband they should make a film about themselves.

At the beginning of the film, both the Siegel’s are open and voluble, clearly loving their extravagant lifestyle. In addition to Versailles, David is opening Westgate Resorts in Las Vegas, meant to be the largest and tallest building on the strip. Mr. Siegel talks about his modest youth in Indiana, and his father, who was addicted to Vegas. Siegel hints on film it was his money and influence that got George W. Bush elected. Jackie, a former Mrs. America and pageant queen, is 30 years younger than her husband (she’s Wife #3). Her joy and enthusiasm for spending and consuming is almost childish. What Jackie has most going for her is she’s not a snob. Cameras rolling, she’s just as much at home with McDonald’s as she is with caviar.

While the film play for laughs some of Jackie’s worst foibles, like asking for the name of her driver when she’s renting a car from Hertz, the real story begins after the financial collapse in ’08 when Westgate’s business stumbled, and its timeshare customers couldn’t make their payments. Six thousand employees are let go, the creditors close in, and construction stops on what was supposed to be the largest private house in America.

Greenfield is calm but ruthless as she continues to document the Siegel’s downfall. Chauffeurs, housekeepers and nannies are let go, dog poo collects on the marble floors. The Siegels are living in the 26,000 square foot home in Orlando the family still inhabits, and Jackie does her Christmas shopping at Walmart instead of Neiman’s. To ease the distress of the Orlando-based, Westgate ex-employees, on her own she in a warehouse a kind of Salvation Army. Kept mostly in the dark about her husband’s troubles, she tells Greenfield that it’s only through the filmmaking process that she understands what is happening.

While Jackie comes off as likeable if a bit dim, by the end, David Siegel is anything but sympathetic. One wonders why he permitted Greenfield to keep filming. As of this writing, he is suing Greenfield and the Sundance Film Festival for defaming his company. His lawsuit against them was filed about a week ago in Orlando in U.S. District Court.

When the Siegels initially decided to be filmed, they thought they were creating a legacy. At the end of the day, that’s still what happened, even though the story arc changed. In the film, David Siegel said, “This started out as a rags to riches story, and now it’s riches to rags.” By the end of the film, he is angry. He’s mean. He dislikes his wife and children, who go on blindly loving him. When Jackie says on camera that if it ends up the family lives in a modest $300,000 house, “with lots of bunk beds,” and that’s OK with her, you know she means it. Unlike a real floozy or gold digger, she did marry for better or worse.

 “The Queen of Versailles,” is, of course, a parable about legalized vice and greed. Siegel’s father ruined himself gambling at the casinos; Siegel gambled with the banks. On the Today Show a few weeks ago, Jackie appeared with Greenfield. They both want the film to succeed. Jackie said her husband’s company Westgate is “doing great,” and that they still have dozens of time share resorts in operation. She believes they will finish building Versailles. “We came through the recession,” she said proudly. “And the house was never at risk.”