Earlier this month, I travelled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to watch an Iggy Azalea concert. The trip was something of a disaster: after three hours of commuter traffic, we arrived to discover that the concert had been cancelled.
Stranded in Atlantic City with a hotel room already booked, I decided to do something that I had never done before: wander around the casinos. It was an eye-opening experience. Before my trip, I had associated casinos with glamour, fun and youthful joy; a combination of Monte Carlo, James Bond and a stag party. But the Atlantic City casinos looked more like an electronic opium den designed for senior citizens: the halls were filled with flashing, multicoloured machines, surrounded by clusters of (mostly) shabbily dressed people who, to my surprise, were overwhelmingly elderly.
It’s possible that some of those people were having a great time but their faces did not show it. Instead, most were glued to the slot machines with an expression of pinched intensity, seemingly oblivious to the world around them. Indeed, they barely moved, except to get a (subsidised) drink or withdraw more money from the plentiful ATM machines. And what really startled me was that when I passed through again early next morning, on my way home, people were still glued to those machines — I suspected some had been there all night.