Month: August 2010

In Praise of Atlantic City

Helen, Char­lie and I just spent anoth­er won­der­ful week­end vis­it­ing our friends Frank and Suzanne in Atlantic City. That’s right: Atlantic City. It may not be the ide­al set­ting to try and raise a fam­i­ly, but it’s a com­plete­ly under­rat­ed week­end spot, if you ask me.

Sure, we’re lucky; we’ve befriend­ed a cou­ple who invite us reg­u­lar­ly to stay at their amaz­ing arts and crafts home on the south end of town, far from the casi­nos. Need I men­tion it’s just a block off the beach? Yeah, we’ve got it tough, but we manage. But even if you set aside our good for­tune, the Atlantic City we like to vis­it is a far cry from the Atlantic City most tourists see. When we vis­it, it’s like step­ping back in time. The tree-lined streets are cool, the hous­es are enor­mous, beau­ti­ful and unique and the beach is tran­quil and free.

If Helen and I are going to see a show at the Bor­ga­ta, we take the Jit­ney, which may be one of the most amaz­ing ways to trav­el in Atlantic City. You trav­el at about a mil­lion miles per hour through the dens­est traf­fic known to man and yet some­how end up at your des­ti­na­tion in one piece. It’s been in use since 1912 and I hope it’s nev­er replaced by the dull mass tran­sit we’ve come to expect in most munic­i­pal­i­ties, unless Atlantic City ponies up for a mono­rail. (Yes, I’m halfway seri­ous. It would be amazing.)

Atlantic City is hard­ly per­fect, but it’s got­ten a bad rap thanks to the des­per­ate mea­sures under­tak­en to replace the tourist econ­o­my that made it so pros­per­ous. I’m hope­ful that the upcom­ing series Board­walk Empire on HBO sheds some light on what made the town the hotspot it once was and not just the gang­sters who ran all the rack­ets under Prohibition.

Sure, I’m a suck­er for the hey­day of the Rust Belt, but it’s a far sight more inter­est­ing that any­thing the Sun Belt has to offer as far as I’m concerned.

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What I’ve Learned So Far

Bring Your A’s Game has been a whirl­whind. After two weeks I’ve got­ten more press than I could’ve ever imag­ined. This week I talked to Bob Huber at Philly Mag and Shai Ben-Yaa­cov at WHYY.It’s been exhil­a­rat­ing to build a guer­ril­la mar­ket­ing cam­paign out of thing air. And that’s not even the strangest part!

I find myself sud­den­ly immersed in the pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the Oak­land A’s. It’s like my grad­u­ate work has come back to haunt me through my love of base­ball. It’s urban polit­i­cal econ­o­my at its rawest: the A’s and MLB have every­one over a bar­rel as they try to lever­age the best deal from either Oak­land or San Jose. It’s a lose-lose for every­one involved. The A’s new sta­di­um will be cost­ly and it’s not clear to me that it real­ly solves their prob­lem. Can a new build­ing make them the hot tick­et when San Fran­cis­co has Tim Lincecum?

I’m not entire­ly sure where this project will take me, but I’m up for a good thrill ride. The mix of blind ambi­tion plus a smat­ter­ing of con­crete goals ought to shape it into some­thing worth­while, if not entire­ly trans­for­ma­tive. Can’t wait to share my progress!

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The Trade Deadline, Revisited

Helen and I had tick­ets to Roy Oswalt’s debut as a Phillie. Wish it had gone bet­ter, but it was still a bril­liant move for the Phillies. Few peo­ple believed that J.A. Happ could dupli­cate his suc­cess­ful rook­ie cam­paign, myself includ­ed. The Oswalt deal gives the Phillies an intim­i­dat­ing rota­tion, espe­cial­ly in a short series.

But can they make the play­offs? The Phils have been snakebit­ten yet again, los­ing Shane Vic­tori­no, Raul Ibanez and Ryan Howard to injury, leav­ing Jayson Werth as the only Phillies reg­u­lar who has­n’t been hit with the injury bug. It could­n’t come at a worse time. The Phils have moved with­in 3 games of the Braves and seem to be putting the pieces togeth­er before the lat­est round of injuries hit. (Make that 1 game back. The Giants mirac­u­lous­ly beat the Braves last night.) If they can get healthy for Sep­tem­ber, I’d say they have more than a decent shot at win­ning the NL East yet again.

If not, they still made the right move. Get­ting Oswalt for the 2011 sea­son and beyond is still the right move. Dom Brown will have more expe­ri­ence. We may man­age to keep Jayson Werth, though prob­a­bly not. It’s still the smart thing to have done at the dead­line. Now that we’re only one game behind the Braves, our rota­tion may be too much down the stretch.

Love John­ny Good­times’ let­ter of apol­o­gy to Ruben Amaro, Jr. I guess I should sign on to that as well, huh?

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Inception

Very hap­py to final­ly see Incep­tion, my first movie in the the­ater since Char­lie was born. Far cry from the last movie I saw in the the­ater, which was Adven­ture­land, if mem­o­ry serves.

Great, big movie. It’s the sort of stuff that makes you want to shake any­one who tells you art should con­form to the new finan­cial real­i­ties brought to us by pira­cy. I love small movies, but if every­thing were shot on hand­helds I think film art would just die alto­geth­er. What would be left to do? If the world were only filled with ama­teur Cas­savetes, we’d be a pret­ty dour bunch, would­n’t we? I mean, is there even a point to get­ting into the thought puz­zle at the core (?) of the film? I feel like I’m still absorb­ing the movie.

Did any­one see The Pres­tige, Nolan’s stopover flick between Bat­man Returns and The Dark Knight? Guess not, because if they had I think more peo­ple would think of him as the M. Knight Shy­malan you don’t laugh at…yet.

Speak­ing of Shy­malan, the crowd burst into laugh­ter once his name was men­tioned in the trail­er for Dev­il. Dude’s not hit­ting his way out of this slump, unless he intend­ed to be the new Ed Wood.

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The Khyber Post-Mortem

I went to my fare share of shows at the Khy­ber while it last­ed. Was­n’t it great? The stretch they had was noth­ing short of amaz­ing now when I look back on some of the shows I saw there. Sure, there were your obscure psych rock artists like Ghost, city main­stays Bar­do Pond and the occa­sion­al top flight book­ing that was an absolute coup.

I saw the Decem­berists there in 2004, when they were plen­ty famous enough to play a big­ger venue, yet not so big that every­one and their broth­er was a fan. I caught Trad, Gras och Ste­nar there, too. My first glimpse of the Nation­al came there, too. They booked almost any­thing worth see­ing, until John­ny Bren­da’s came along and Sta­cie George stopped book­ing there and the city’s music scene moved north to Fishtown.

It was a beau­ti­ful mess of a place, sand­wiched between too many bad Old City spots to count.  Most of them came and went and now the Khy­ber has (sort of) gone, too. When I read that they intend to trans­form the dingy bar into a fan­cy Japan­ese eatery, I near­ly died laugh­ing. It was the sweati­est, smok­i­est club I’ve ever had the plea­sure of patron­iz­ing. Don’t get me wrong: Steve Simons has had suc­cess as a restau­ran­teur else­where in town, even if those spots are pret­ty unre­mark­able, but this is noth­ing short of using con­ceal­er to cov­er one of Old City’s most trea­sured blemishes.

I’m glad they had the good sense to run the venue into the ground for a good four years or so before doing this. Oth­er­wise I might have real­ly cared.

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