# Writing on an Atlantic City Billboard- a story & an opinion



## Mike Str8 (Nov 27, 2007)

*Steppenwolf, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Road, the Stranger*

These were words spray painted on an empty billboard above the corner of Park Place and Boardwalk, in the strange land called Atlantic City. Black paint on the bare white Billboard stood out among the twinkling adverts, and those horrendous monuments that filled our sights: the casinos. These black words shone like bright rays of difference from, of resistance to, the normal landscape that dominates the strip. It was fantastic. I don’t know who it was written for or by, but I for one paid attention, and I could only think of the striking beauty of it all, here, above boardwalk of Atlantic City. 

Now how I got to Atlantic City was all Robyn’s fault. 

Robyn had this strange fascination with Atlantic City, so of course when her birthday rolled around she decided that the festivities surrounding the event would be there. We should all come also, she cried; and, being one of Robyn’s better friends, I knew that I had to go.

It is not like Robyn makes the stay unglamorous or uneventful, if anything but. 

She had the scam to get free hotel rooms in the lavish high rises on the beach. Well, it was not a scam per say, as they were giving them away. They sent these “free night” coupons to the middle and working classes of the tri-state area (New Jersey, New York, and here in Pennsylvania) thinking if they can get them in a free room that will entice them to gamble. (“they”, being casino corporations and into the business of gambling, make their money in this). They bank on some working Joe from Allentown, PA, taking them up on the free room and booze, and then blowing the two grand he made from laying brick on a black jack table. Yeah, they count on this, ‘cause I tell you, no corporation wants to give no freebies, to no working stiff. There is always a catch, and the bling-bling of the slots, and the faux marble in front of the Caesars, is designed to make that guy from Pennsylvania's rust belt forget that truth.

But sometimes these “deals” flow into the hands of “the Punx”, and Robyn is one of the punx savvy enough to actually sign up for the “rewards” card and get the rooms. She has it down and it seems like every other month Robyn is playing pied piper to a group of West Philly Punx (who normally don’t even leave the boundaries of West Philly) on some wacky adventure to the Jersey shore. I normally miss these things as my operations in West Philly seem to be pretty extensive and time consuming, and if a dream of a “vacation” I think about going to some Belgium town of old crusties and interesting architecture, not of… Atlantic City. But it is Robyn’s birthday, and she is one of my best friends, plus Atlantic city is a darkly fascinating city in itself, so I knew this time I had better make the trek.

So that, in a nutshell, is how I, and a group of ten friends ended up on the Boardwalk of Atlantic City on a Wednesday winter night. 

Now the bus ride was a hell of its own (it is Greyhound? Part of the “experience” : $1 plus four hours of your life. More info on the $1 bus ride in the endnotes) and we arrived hours past the designated time, but luckily for the magic of cell phones, we met up with Robyn and her punk entourage, on the boardwalk outside Bally’s, the casino/hotel where she got said rooms. Robyn and Gary, the other birthday punk, announced there was booze in the room and we should partake. I am not normally against the idea of having a drink when seeing good friends. Added with the fact that a Greyhound ride makes a need for a drink if anything does, so I agreed the prospect of a bit of booze. 

We took the journey to the hotel room, past the rooms of slot machines and up the elevator. After many floors we arrived at the room and the spoken upon collection of hooch it contained. After a bit of drinking the overwhelming staleness of the room became apparent, and the ten of us decided to find something new and even a bit exciting. This should not have been hard in this tourist Mecca, even if we were a bunch of punx and having little money to blow. After leaving the hotel room we decided the weird gaudiness of Atlantic City (Las Vegas’s cheaper NJ cousin) could only be met after drinking more booze and smoking some weed, and what better place then the beach. So let me tell you about the Jersey shore in the winter. No one is there. 

People up here in the Northeast only hang out on the beach in the summer, basically because, well, it is warm and most folks kinda need that “warm” category to hangout by the water. Of course we were not the normal people, we were “the punx”, and for those who are not familiar with “the punx” they (we) are similar to rats and cockroaches; we hang out in places where no one wants to go. Mostly ‘cause we are cheap, and like to drink, so here in this tourist Mecca we are drinking on the stone jetty. (That is another habitat of “the Punx” - the semi-dangerous place, since not only is it unpopulated, but it adds a sense of adventure (remember, we where the kids raised on Indiana Jones). After a good bit of “hanging out” (included me walking to the end of the pier and pissing in the Atlantic) we decided that we have collectedly mustered up the courage to face the glitzy inferno entitled Atlantic City. We walked across the beach and into the lights. It was when we were back on the boardwalk, looking for trouble or something exciting, that we saw it. All lit up, right above us what the billboard with the scrawled message

Steppenwolf Thus Spoke Zarathustra On the Road the Stranger

I tell you, it was fuckin’ beautiful. The words they were painted up there, not in some unreadable, fashionable tag, but in simple, readable text. A place where thousands walk by, mostly in a haze of their Atlantic City experience, but some, like us who saw it, and thought it was amazing. We talked about each book for a bit, and about who wrote it. This is what I have been thinking about; Who. Who climbed up the latter, with a can of spray-paint on a board lit up 24 hours a day? And what they said. It wasn’t a corporate slogan, or even a direct political message, it was the titles of four books. Fuckin’ amazing, that some one would do it. In the almost complete privatization of space that is Atlantic City, someone reclaimed a portion to write this. Amazing. 

It is this kind of shit, that proves that in some little ways we can scream that we are still free creatures and not everything is bought and sold and in this capitalist market mechanism in which surrounds us. Even more so that this cry was IN THE REAL WORD. It wasn’t some cyber-world posting that you see when cruising the web. No, it was right there, spray painted on an old billboard, close to “Park Place and “Boardwalk.” 

I get excited for the little victories. The little things we do in our lives, of resistance to the machine of post-modern life. In the array of Billboards, for Movies, for clothing, for Xbox games, all the stupid useless shit, there would be a break of the corporate continuity. Four titles scrawled in spray paint. Who did the author of the spray paint hope would see it. Who did they expect to know what the words meant? How does one tell another about the amazing literature that exists? No marketer will pay for that sort of message. So what are we given? Trash. Well designed trash, to entice our feelings of wanting. Not of what for any desire for understand, not any recommendations of philosophical text, but to motivated of desires to consume. Consume what you ask? Consume knowledge? No, to consume shit. Move stupid products to ease our simple lives. 

All these works written on the billboard have a similar message, a rebellion against the status quo. Or a least a disgust for it. In all the stories there is a common theme, an outsider looks at society. And they are disgusted. A disgust for how the masses live, living on customs sold to them. Giving in without a thought. These books talked about new ways of dealing with the shit of commercial society, of making something oppositional to this, if only in thought alone.

Whoever wrote these names picked a brilliant place, as there is no better of a place to write this, then overseeing the Atlantic City Boardwalk. There, in the privatized main street of the new American resort city is this simple statement. No airtime, or space was bought for this message, it was just one person, a spray can, and the desire to say it. This is resistance, resistance to a media sustained to promote products. Resistance to the art of marketing messages. Besides these spray painted titles, the only readable words in our eyesight, besides beach rules, were messages of the marketers, wrapped up in the layouts that the finest art schools provide. It is quite sad that the “most talented artistic minds” of our generation, are designing adverts for video games. Wonderful, this is what art means, this is what life means, written on the billboard, bought from clear channel, bullshit that some arsehole wants to sell. Great, wonderful, I’ll leave. Take you boardwalk, I’d rather joke with friends about life then think about your sitcom. There are the winter months, and the jetty and the splendor of the sea. Well take that. We will embrace those moments, and try our best to live outside your dream.

If you haven’t read any of these books, they are all worth a read. Camus, Kerouac, Hesse, and Nietzsche are all writers of talent and each speak of the shit, the shit called this modern world. So in these post-modern times, my friends, when alienation and consumerization are running amuck, and you may need a bit of refresher that, it is society which is insane not you - look up these titles, because they might help. Help you in this struggle, this struggle that we all go through. This struggle of life in advanced capitalism that we have inherited. 

Mike Straight - 1127 S. 51st street West Philly, PA. 19143 [email protected]


Endnotes

So about the Atlantic City bus it is another scam promotional. You go to the Philly bus station and buy a Philadelphia to Atlantic City return ticket for $18. You take the 62 mile bus ride to the shore and then you end up at some random casino. Here some “casino representative” meets you and give you $17 of chips or straight cash in which they hope you will spend, along with any cash you also brought, at their games. Tricky, eh? Of course My friend Greg and I, took the cash and then walked right past their machines and dealers, to the boardwalk and down to the Bally’s where Robyn had the rooms. It is a cheap way of getting to the shore, and it takes you to the hell of A-city)


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## Loman (Dec 3, 2007)

I'm reading Steppenwolf right now and I finished the Stranger in September. My mom is sending me On The Road and I have Thus Spoke Zarathustra checked out from the library. So, in one word: awesome.


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## dirtbag (Jul 30, 2008)

That was excellent.


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## nobo (Jul 30, 2008)

"I get excited for the little victories. The little things we do in our lives, of resistance to the machine of post-modern life."

im so glad you wrote that. thats what its all about and those little things add up.


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## zarathustra (Jan 22, 2009)

I enjoyed reading this. I've read those books...

but at the same time.

Are those books really that life changing? Or is it just yet another layer of shit, another stratification in the cesspool?

As FN said, "Muddied waters seem deep". But are they? I think the thing that all these writers didn't take themselves way too seriously. They realized the futility in what they were doing, to some degree. Just like we realize the futility of trainhopping and hitchhiking now and then. It's real...but so is everything else, in the end.

Wow, that was a whole load of bullshit.


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