I was baby faced at the poker table. To the right of me, a white haired woman rocks her head from side to side and looks up sharply. She’d fallen briefly asleep, a small pile of chips in front of her. This Monday night at the Trump Taj Mahal it’s mainly the elderly in the room. The retired with time on their hands.

It’s my first time gambling in a casino, and the scape of this one is designed to illicit some awe. In 1990 Michael Jackson performed at the inauguration of this one billion dollar building. Today it has has 2,000 rooms and a few thousand workers. 2,531 slot machines grace it’s huge floors. But while it used to be the highest grossing casino in the city it’s opulence, just like its carpets, is now somewhat faded. The newer bigger Borgota casino has stolen it’s thunder, as well as a couple of hundred million dollars in annual revenue. This said, and despite the average age in the room, I’m still sucked into the atmosphere.

The room is an antidote to the passing of time. Clocks are absent, lights relatively low, and a big busted waitress wanders between the tables with free drinks. There is the constant shuffle of cards and click of poker chips across the dozen or so active tables in the room. Few cries of jubilation, but the steady murmur of competitive chat and trash talk. Even at this midnight hour, many people here are clearly regulars. A number are on first name terms.

I came with an expectation of chatting to these people around me. But aside from a conversation with a security guard I couldn’t escape – one where he professed in monologue the beauty of Princess Diana and his admiration for the British royal family; with the exception of Charles! – I’ve stayed pretty quiet at the table. Nerves getting the better of me. It always matters more when you put money on. Even if I have only put at my disposal the cash I’d spend on a night out, the potential upside is still there. I even waiver the complimentary beers in favour of bottled water. My attention focused onto the succession of bad poker hands dealt out to me. Ultimately, with bad hands, and bad bets my stack of chips dwindles. With it goes my optimism and confidence, volume dialed down still further. I eventually go all in and lose against a pair of pocket aces. Time to slink back along the boardwalk to my hotel.

Along this walk the Taj Mahal and the Bogota casinos are not the only monuments to excess. There’s also the wild west streets of Bally’s and the Roman opulence of Caesars. In each of these, enormous floors of slot machines, where souls feed in their notes and quarters. (Again it’s mainly the elderly. The young, with jobs and perhaps other addictions to feed.) It’s the allure of that cascade of coins, flashing lights, exciting sounds. That chemical buzz of a win, sustaining those in the chairs. My gambling is done for the night though. Thankfully there’s just enough change in my pocket for a slice of pizza, which I eat, with the Atlantic breeze in my hair.

A few days after I visited the city two of the largest casinos shut down, and one more is about to. All in more than 6,000 job losses. The survival of some of the others, including this Taj Mahal is also in doubt too. Gambling hasn’t lost it’s sheen. Simply migrated to other regional casinos and online. Gone are the days when Atlantic City had a near monopoly on East Coast gambling, and the place isn’t able to compete with the magnetic pull of Vegas.

Atlantic City will surely survive in some form. Initially a late nineteenth century beach resort, it boomed as an escape from prohibition in the 1920s, and then again as a casino town after the city legalized gambling by popular vote in the 1970s. It’s been a place of pleasure and vice for more than a hundred years, ahead of the nations curve. What might be next?