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“But we did have one customer who came in, took a look around and said, ‘There went our gay bar.Las Vegas is an exceptionally friendly destination for gay and lesbian travelers. At the drag show one recent night, the delighted audience was mostly heterosexual couples, average age hovering around 55. Instead, a bigger problem might be the opposite. They agreed that in Atlantic City at least, that train had left the station. Ballesteros, his marketing executive, discussed whether a gay presence would turn off a general audience. There’s no reason it can’t come back.”Īt Resorts, Mr. “For a while, the Atlantic City market was 35 percent gays, 35 percent Canadians and the rest was New York,” Mr. The 1967 ruling in its favor by the New Jersey Supreme Court made the bar an early, pre-Stonewall symbol of gay resistance.īy the 1970s, though traditional tourism was in steep decline here, Atlantic City’s gay scene boomed at the gay beach in front of the Claridge Hotel and popular gay gathering spots like the Entertainer’s Club, the Lark, and Grand Central Resort.īut as the economic might of the new casinos sucked life from the rest of the city, the New York Avenue scene dried up, the land more valuable for parking than for clubs. Soon, New York Avenue became an excitable strip of smoky bars, with prostitutes frequenting some and gay couples and cross-dressers in others.Ī crackdown in the 1960s led to a landmark case in which Val’s, a New York Avenue bar, fought off state efforts to close it on the ground that it was frequented by homosexuals. As early as the 1920s, Louisa Mack was running the city’s first gay-tolerant bar off the Boardwalk. “It’s a place that’s ripe for rediscovery.”Ītlantic City has a long gay history. “My guess is you can take the Atlantic City brand and help modernize it,” said Howard Buford, president of Prime Access, a marketing firm specializing in Hispanic, African-American and gay consumers.
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But some experts say that Atlantic City has particular potential for gay patrons because of its beach scene, period architecture, louche history, access to urban communities from New York to Washington and even the campy resonance of the Miss America Pageant.
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In many casino markets, that may still be an issue. Still, most of the wooing by Atlantic City casinos has been sporadic and sotto voce, perhaps out of fear of turning off customers who are not gay. Schultz and his partner, Gary Hill, each year present a drag queen Miss’d America pageant, evoking the long-gone original. A popular club, Krave, has become a magnet for gay visitors but is not inside a casino.Ītlantic City casinos, including Harrah’s, Caesars, Bally’s and the Showboat Casino Hotel, have held “Out in Atlantic City” weekends in recent years, and the Trump Taj Mahal has hosted “gay bingo” nights. Mindful of figures showing that gay and lesbian travelers spend $64.5 billion annually in the United States, Las Vegas hotels for years have had weekly gay-oriented pool parties and club nights, and advertising directly addressed to gay travelers. The casino industry has not been oblivious to gay customers. The idea, part of the hotel’s ’20s-themed makeover, was not just that members of the gay community were a ripe market, but that they were something of a pop culture signifier whose support would also pull in a younger, hipper audience than Resorts had been attracting. Still, the opening of Prohibition in May was a sign that just as the city has courted various markets over the years - Asians, families and others - it is now reaching out to gay customers as a way to cope with too much competition and too few gamblers.
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So the most surprising thing about Resorts’ new turn may be that it didn’t happen sooner. On the hotel’s Web site, a menu tab reads “LGBT.”Ĭasinos have always promised a walk on the wild side, and Atlantic City’s raffish history includes rich, largely forgotten, gay chapters. Across the hall is a female impersonators’ show. There is Prohibition, a new nightclub that is believed to be the first full-time gay bar at any big American casino. ATLANTIC CITY - At the Resorts Casino Hotel, the somewhat faded Boardwalk grande dame that became this city’s first casino in 1978 after New Jersey legalized the business, you can find slots and blackjack, concert posters featuring performers like Paul Anka and Wayne Newton, the de rigueur all-you-can-eat buffet and the other familiar diversions of Casinoland.īut there is also a rainbow flag flying above the entryway.