Casinos on the Coast

No quote tonight.

I just returned from a week-long conference on the coast. It's changed a lot since I was a little kid and used to go down with my parents every summer for our vacation.

When I was young, the tackiest things there were the gift shops selling dolls made of shells, plastic snowglobes, and t-shirts saying, "My folks went to the Gulf Coast and all I got was this shirt." I remember there being seemingly hundreds of goofy golf courses, water slides, and go cart places. And then there was all that gorgeous sand. The water was always silty; being that close to the mouth of the Mississippi, I guess that's to be expected. The scariest thing I remember seeing was a dead manta ray drifting in the tide.

This time, things were cleaner, but a lot of the kitschy charm was gone. In place of the water slides and seafood shacks were slick, towering casinos. They cluster together in twos and threes as if they're afraid to stand on their own.

I wound up staying in one for the conference. I must say that I wasn't terribly impressed. The room was neither better nor worse than a Holiday Inn. The restaurants weren't fabulous, just expensive. I went to eat sushi and was so disappointed, I almost couldn't finish the meal. No green tea, no ume-shu, and no real sushi chef. To get to the restaurants, you had to navigate your way through a smoke-filled forest of slot machines that smelled horribly of spilt whiskey and was peopled with aging zombies who mechanically inserted credits or bills and pushed the buttons.

The materials that had been used were good. The lights and the sounds tried to make it festive. I just can't get over how few people I saw there who seemed to be having a good time. Most of them were mesmerized by the flashing lights of the machine in front of them. I did not see a single person win the entire time I was there, and heard almost no laugher or even conversation on the game floor.

I miss the tacky kitsch of the coast of my youth. I don't think I like these new casinos. I wrote a poem about it, so I guess the trip was good for that reason. I just wish there were fewer all you can eat buffets, and more actual entertainment.