Today's NJBIZ morning roundup contained an AP story about Pennsylvanian casinos firmly ousting New Jersey from the title of nation's No. 2 gaming market (though the Keystone State first overturned the Monopoly board about a month ago).
The Roman god Janus is an appropriate symbol for Atlantic City because he has two faces and nobody pays attention to him in modern times.
As is typical of Atlantic City, which has a Janus-like response to everything, the attitude was: We don't care about gaming anymore! And we just opened a $2.4 billion casino!
Revel is still enjoying its honeymoon, and frankly, if the city is to succeed, the casino must — so for now, I'm giving it a pass. But Atlantic City's newly hatched motto suddenly blasé approach to gambling is odd, especially when there's such staunch opposition
to a North Jersey casino. As proof, last week the city chucked its innuendo-laden "Always Turned On" marketing campaign — which I actually preferred to "What Happens in Vegas," but poor taste is personal — in favor of "Do AC," which of course cannot be interpreted sexually at all, thereby instantly making the resort a draw with families.
Forget the fact that the powers that be evidently
stole the slogan from the Wildwoods, thereby turning the supposed "Las Vegas East" into "Wildwoods North." What I'm waiting to see are the ad campaigns from
Foxwoods,
Sugarhouse and the other competing casinos. Here's what I'm betting we'll see: "Don't Do AC," "Do Something Worthwhile" and, of course, "Been There, Done That." Perhaps, with that last one, we can work in some other mid-'90s cultural references, like "talk to the hand" and Right Said Fred.
I'm even more irreverent on Twitter @joe_arney.