Where the noise never stops
Inside an Atlantic City casino, if you haven't prepared yourself by hanging out in Grand Central Terminal during rush hour or a steel mill, the noise can be overwhelming. It's all civilized and artificial noise. Nervous gamblers clacking their chips hand-to-hand or on the table; blackjack dealers reading off the value of hands in an affectless monotone; waitresses asking "Coffee? Soda? Juice?" every few tables as they walk; and the constant metallic brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring of the latest slot machine to pay off big.
But the funny thing about Atlantic City is that it's extremely close to the ocean of the same name. The casinos are all built to turn their backs on it, but it hasn't gone away. And if you walk out of the back door of the Tropicana--as I did before dawn this morning when my poker game broke up--the ocean is waiting for you.
Not a hundred feet away from where Chinese businessmen exhort their hands to come right and American retirees complain about the service, the overwhelming noise is the endless hiss and roar of the surf. It was there long before mankind invented the slot machine, and it will be there long after the last roulette wheel rusts to a stop forever. Long after Donald Trump and his works are forgotten, and the boardwalk is covered under drifting sands, and the hotels house nothing but rats and squirrels, the ocean will still be there.
The ocean has nothing but time.