Golden Nugget, former Trump Castle, at left — © Brian Rose

Initially, most of the casinos were built on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Since most gamblers were not interested in the raucous entertainments of the boardwalk, nor were they likely to be found sunning themselves on the beach, several casinos were built on the other side of Absecon Island in a marshy area well away from the crime-ridden streets of the city. Trump Castle was the first to locate in that area.

Like a rat abandoning a sinking ship, Trump pulled out his interests in Atlantic City little by little. In 2011, the Trump Marina (formerly Trump Castle) was sold for about a tenth of what it was originally worth, and now operates steadily under new management as the Golden Nugget.
— Vox

Now he was looking for work as a livery driver. Brown also used to work in the casinos, at the Showboat, bussing tables, and at Trump’s Castle, stripping and waxing floors. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” he said. “It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”
— The New Yorker

Trump Taj Mahal, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

The Trump Taj Mahal appears from the boardwalk as a complex multi-leveled building festooned with towers, domes, and a grand staircase leading up to the sky. The reality, however, as seen along Pennsylvania Avenue — the Monopoly Pennsylvania Avenue that is, not Washington, D.C. — is a massive windowless box containing cavernous casino, restaurant, and entertainment spaces. Everything is internalized. Only the high rise hotel rooms offer views of the ocean and the New Jersey  pine barrens to the west.

Trump Taj Mahal, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

As I walked along the wall of the Taj casino I came across the abandoned Human Resources Offices of Trump Entertainment Resorts. No jobs available here any more. Lots of smiling faces of fictional employees and a dead pigeon.

Trump Taj Mahal, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

And then, to my astonishment, a group of women came walking along Pennsylvania Avenue carrying  “Make America Great Again” signs. Even here, at the epicenter of Trump’s business dissolution, at the nexus of Russian dirty money and the fleecing of gullible gamblers, there are, apparently, true believers.

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Back in Atlantic City on a bright, somewhat cold, February day. Earlier in the week, I read that the Trump name was being removed from the Trump Taj Mahal.I decided that I better go back and get some more photographs of the Taj before it was completely de-Trumpified. All traces of the name had already vanished from the Boardwalk. On the back side of the tower, however, workmen high on a crane were busy detaching the red letters from the facade. It was not something I could do much with using the view camera, so I moved on.

I walked out on the beach for an overview, stopping behind a restaurant, closed for the season, with some of its furniture shrink-wrapped in plastic, the bulbous shapes oddly echoing the onion domes of the Trump Taj Mahal. The casino, as i’d noted before, looks less like the Taj Mahal of India than it does a Russian Orthodox church. Despite all the Trump/Russian connections, that was probably not the original intention. But it’s one more thing that makes you go hmm.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Snowfall in Brooklyn.

Statue of Libetry — © Brian Rose

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Statue of Libetry — © Brian Rose

Resist!

La Guardia Airport, New York — © Brian Rose

This is who we have become.

American airports have become frightening places. On Tuesday, a man was held and questioned for an hour attempting to enter the United States. He had visited Iran three years before. His passport indicated that he was no less than the former prime minister of Norway.

When I photographed the Iron Curtain back in the 80s, I had to cross the border from east to west many times. It was always a harrowing experience. The East German guards were curt and officious. Your passport was taken and examined out of sight. You never knew whether you would be allowed to pass through the checkpoint or not. Several times I was taken aside and questioned about my camera and my reason for entering the country. I was never detained for more than 15 minutes.

This was the German Democratic Republic, a brutal autocratic government under the sway of the Soviet Union.

Point of View, by James West (2006), Pittsburgh — © Brian Rose

George Washington and the Seneca chief Guyasuta stare into each others eyes above Pittsburgh — wearing pussy hats, of course.

As a proud alumnus of Cooper Union, my appeal to the administration for a statement regarding President’s Trump’s immoral and unconstitutional executive order:

We urgently need a statement from Cooper (Laura Sparks/BoT) condemning President Trumps’s executive order against refugees and Muslims. Cooper Union has always stood for religious and racial diversity. This is a moment when that commitment needs to be reaffirmed in the strongest and boldest terms.

Echoing the constitution, Peter Cooper said, “Neither my own religious opinions nor the religious opinions of any sect or party whatever shall ever be made a test or requirement, in any manner or form, of or for admission to or continuance to enjoy the benefit of this institution.”

The president’s actions violate American principles and pose a threat to Cooper Union and other institutions of higher learning dedicated to free inquiry, inclusiveness, and the nurturance of community across borders both physical and spiritual.

Cooper Union must take the lead and speak out.

Trump Taj Mahal, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Day six.

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Now baby everything dies baby that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

— Atlantic City, by Bruce Springsteen

Fifth Avenue, New York — © Brian Rose

Williamsburg, Brooklyn — © Brian Rose

Signs of the times.

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Hail, Caesar!

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

— Shakespeare

House near Revel, currently empty casino — © Brian Rose

1963: Pauline Hill becomes executive director of the Atlantic City Housing Authority and Urban Redevelopment Agency. Under her leadership, about 80 acres of South Inlet land were razed to make way for casinos and high-rises. The project displaced more than 1,500 residents, and development never came. The still-empty tract is known as Pauline’s Prairie.

— Press of Atlantic City

South Inlet neighborhood, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

It was poor before casinos, poor when it had them, and it’s even poorer now that five of them have been shut down. Most of the people you see in the South Inlet are people of color. Most of the businesses are run by ethnic minorities. The Alpha & Omega grocery is owned by Greeks and staffed by Oaxaqueños. Around the corner, the marquee of the Baba Jones Food Market announces you can buy baby food with your EBT card. There’s also Mike Hauke’s pizzeria Tony Boloney’s, which sells tikka masala slices to intrepid hipsters, construction workers and the few remaining neighbors. In 2015 in a New Yorker article, Hauke described his patrons as a mix of “shitbags, crackheads, hustlers, and pimps.” These were happier times. Today even the shitbags seem few and far between.

— Route 40


Atlantic Avenue — © Brian Rose

Historic black church (Price Memorial AME Zion Church) on Atlantic Avenue with abandoned fire station.

During the early years, Blacks were integrated throughout the city. However, as their numbers increased they were forced out of White neighborhoods and into a ghetto known as the “Northside,” an area that was literally the other side of the railroad tracks that ran through that section of town.

The Northside became a city within a city. As Blacks encountered racial prejudice, they reached inward to construct a social and institutional life of their own. While White racism had created the physical ghetto, it was civic-minded upper- and middle-class Blacks who led their community to create an institutional ghetto in order to provide services that the White community had denied Blacks. The first major institution established by Blacks in Atlantic City was the church.

— Nelson Johnson (from his book The Northside)

Trump World’s Fair site — © Brian Rose

In the 1980s and ’90s, the casinos with which Trump was associated comprised between a third and a quarter of AC’s gaming industry. The Playboy Hotel and Casino, which was founded in ’81, became the Atlantis in ’84, and went bankrupt in ’85, was acquired by Trump in ’89 and renamed The Trump Regency; he renamed it again as Trump’s World’s Fair in ’96, and it was closed in ’99 and demolished in 2000. Trump Castle, built in cooperation with Hilton in ’85, was rebranded as Trump Marina in ’97, sold at a loss to Landry’s Inc. in 2011, and is now operated by Landry’s as the Golden Nugget. Trump Plaza, built in cooperation with Harrah’s in ’84, went bankrupt and shuttered in 2014 and now just rots.

— Joshua Cohen

The Revel Casino, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Back in Atlantic City for more pictures, Joshua Cohen writes in n+1 Magazine (http://tiny.cc/9oriiy):

I FOUND MYSELF — America finds itself now — at the very end of the Boardwalk. The very end of this immigrant’s midway lined with cheap thrills and junk concessions, pulsating with tawdry neon and clamoring moronically. The end of this corny, schmaltzy Trumpian thoroughfare that entertains us with its patter and enthralls us with its lies.

Down at the Boardwalk’s terminus, by Oriental Avenue, by night, the seagulls keep flying into the Revel and dying. Or they flap and limp around a bit before dying. You never see or hear the impact, you just get what happens after. Immense white gulls, flapping, limping, expiring. They fly into the Revel’s giant vacant tower of panes and break their necks, because without any lights on, the glass is indistinguishable from the sky.

Trump Plaza, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Trump Plaza and the three other casinos he once owned are now shuttered, but his presence hovers over everything here in Atlantic City. To such an extent, that one group wants to build a Trump museum.

As an example of the possible impact of a museum, Fox pointed to Sevnica, Slovenia, the birthplace of first-lady-to-be Melania Trump. Since the election, people have been flocking to the town to get a glimpse of where she grew up.

“This is something that could drive people to the city,” Fox said. “You look at what is happening in Melania’s hometown, and why couldn’t that happen here?”

— Press of Atlantic City

Trump Plaza, Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

“The legacy of Trump is an asset to the city. I would not be opposed to turning this project into a research facility and allow people to access them,” Blaskiewicz said. “His story in Atlantic City could tell us what he is going to do in the future.”

— Press of Atlantic City

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

We are back in Atlantic City on a relatively balmy Friday in January, The Trump Taj Mahal may be closed, but a carved elephant still points the way to the “8th wonder of the world.”

Atlantic City — © Brian Rose

Kirkorov’s wide-eyed enthusiasm for the Republican candidate goes back 22 years, when Kirkorov performed at Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.

Trump dubbed him “the Michael Jackson of Russia,” and the bro-mance has been going strong ever since.

“I hope that when the Donald becomes the president, our relationship will be much, much closer, and all American people finally understand — understood? Understand? — that Russia is a great country, Russian people is a great people.”

– CBS News