Chapter 337: The Struggling Atlantic City

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Al doesn't do anything in Chicago, and Li Yaoyang is different from him, although he has done a lot of violent things, he has not done anything to lose his conscience.

At least he is still trying to clear his name, whether it is the establishment of a newspaper, the construction of the 'Deep Blue Building', or the resort project that has not yet begun, it is a symbol of his efforts to get better.

It's just that the era we are in is not suitable for keeping to ourselves.

With his involvement, Atlantic City is taking a different path.

However, in the words of many people these days: Atlantic City, a paradise for the rich, a hell for the poor!

Of course, this sentence can be applied everywhere, where there are people, there must be rich and poor, and rich people can always live the life they want.

On the other hand, the poor are poor everywhere because there is no flexibility.

However, this sentence is especially evident in Atlantic City.

Today, Atlantic City is a paradise, with countless entertainment, supreme service, and a wonderful living environment, and you have to have money to enjoy it all.

If you don't have money? I'm sorry, but it's located in the northwest and northeast areas, which are more suitable for you to live in.

What is the saying?

The places that can't be reached are called far away, and the world that can't be returned is called hometown, and people living in the northwest and northeast have always longed for the world of the Esplanade.

But it's so close, but it's like a moat.

And the precursors of the impending economic crisis are also reflected in Atlantic City, and at that time, the tragic situation is likely to intensify.

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After his ninth unsuccessful attempt to rent out his property in Atlantic City, Mike Hawk reluctantly opened a fast-food restaurant there.

He bought the building three years ago at his father's suggestion.

His father, who was an accountant, thought it was a wise long-term investment to invest in cheap real estate, but it became a hot potato for him.

The three-storey, dilapidated partition building has been repeatedly damaged and demolished along with most of the surrounding unused neighborhoods, creating a desolate landscape on the road to the dunes. This is Southwater Bay, which used to be the center of the city, but with the development of casinos and hotels and the gradual relocation of south, it is now an untouched slum in the northeastern corner of Absecon Island, which hosts Atlantic City and three other autonomous communities.

Known to the locals as the inland people "from the sea", the entrance to the island is always considered to be north because it runs northward, but the locals think it is east.

Atlantic City seems to have the mysterious power of the Bermuda Triangle, where the compass fails.

Three blocks west of Mike Hawke's fast-food restaurant, a massive building is rising in this barren land:

The Northern Ireland Casino & Hotel in Kiel Eland will be a city of prosperity and opulence never before seen in Atlantic City – with twin towers of 12 floors, nearly 2,000 rooms and more than 4,000 parking spaces.

The investor is the Irish consortium represented by Kiel Eland, and after buying the land, it has invested nearly 15 million yuan, but this is not the final investment.

Mike Hawk tries to get a piece of the pie.

After being unable to rent the ground floor of his house to any one tenant, he began selling cheap takeaways to construction workers in Levey.

The construction team wears down his employees with the sheer volume of orders during the rush hour, but at other times, the place is silent:

One or two casino staff and, in the words of a high roller, "jerks, junkies, crooks and pimps."

After graduating from Boston University, Mike Hawk worked in sales in Manhattan for several years, but he had no experience running a restaurant.

Among the first guests was an addict who lived nearby and was called V8.

Not surprisingly, almost all white children smoke Du, and this harbor little money seems to have a magical evil power.

On the night the restaurant opened, V8 got into a fight with a male and female branch and another customer at the counter, and Mike Hawk smashed open a pizza tray and scared him away with the pointed end.

Attempts were often made to sell him the stolen goods, while at the same time, the stolen shopkeeper was chasing him down the street.

Early one morning, a neighbor kid on a bicycle threw an earthen tube bomb from a window.

Mike Hawk drove after him, forced him into an abandoned house, abandoned the car, and chased him through an abandoned residential area.

Kiel Eland tried to intimidate the district's inhabitants to achieve his hopeless dream of urban rise, but he failed.

The fleeing child panicked and jumped into a truck parked on the side of the road, where sheriffs arrived to arrest him.

The reason for the child's resentment was that he thought the sheriff was biased in favor of Mike Hawk, and the sheriff had kicked his cousin out of the room that Mike Hawk had rented.

His cousin made a living by defrauding social assistance, always throwing dirty diapers at his customers from upstairs and often running to the rooftops to catch pigeons.

Despite the difficult situation, Mike Hawk hoped that the Northern Ireland casino would give him a chance to survive, or simply buy his ownership.

Several nearby shopkeepers thought it was impossible, and they had been struggling to do so for years, hoping to sell their property to a big casino so they could retire to the countryside.

But the reality is that they have been crushed by growing property taxes and intermittent economic development.

The problem is that the land is like a big casino-hotel vacuum.

You can't build a house here, and the few houses left nearby that haven't been deliberately or accidentally demolished or burned down have been dilapidated by the salty air of the sea.

One of them was a waterfront house near the beach, opposite a run-down residential area, and belonged to a teacher named Tony whom Mike Hawk knew.

Tony's parents were teenagers when they bought a property in Atlantic City more than 10 years ago.

He later worked as a baccarat dealer in the casino until the casino closed, and now he teaches in an elementary school.

Atlantic City adjusted its tax system several times, and as a result, his property tax was significantly increased.

Tony tells Mike Hawk, "Get out of here while you can!" β€œ

What Mike Hawk couldn't accept the most was that the Northern Ireland Casino in Kil'Eland seemed to have suspended construction due to a lack of funds.

If this were to be given up completely, the losses would be as high as 8 figures.

The construction site was halted, and Mike Howker's business was in ruins.

There are no more tourists or construction workers, mostly sheriffs, and some addicts who want to get their hands on free unique products.

But there was something about the city, and the dirty sandy beaches in the nearby bay, that made him want to stay.

Maybe it's because his great-grandmother lived here.

After another year, Mike Hawk closed the fast-food restaurant, painted it, and reopened under a different name.

He bought a food truck, named it the Mustache Mobile Food Truck, and developed a pizza and sandwich route under the banner of "Atlantic City's Local Specialties" in an attempt to find a way out of it.

Soon, the new restaurant with its new name won a number of food awards and began to attract customers other than gamblers, nightclub hangers, food truck drivers, politicians and sheriffs.

Among them is a team of casino tycoons and real estate speculators who are in the vicinity, and they often secretly evaluate the distressed real estate in the surrounding area.

Kiel Eland was still capable, and despite a lack of funds, he quickly used his position as a congressman to push for New Jersey's tax incentives for Atlantic City.

Rumors, the offer could reach $30 million.

If the news is true, he will soon be able to find new investment from Wall Street to get the Northern Ireland casino back up and running.

The success of the Northern Ireland Casino and Hotel is a matter of life and death in the northeast corner of Atlantic City, as well as Kiel Eland's career as a councillor.

As a result, construction resumed, and Kiel Eland invited the governor to come to Atlantic City in person.

After taking photos at the "Mustache Truck", he visited the construction site of the Northern Ireland Casino, and also visited Mike Hawk's newly opened restaurant.

He encouraged Mike Hawk to keep the store open, "Listen, you've got to keep going." So said the governor.

Northern Ireland executives and Kil'Eland aides also advised him: "If you're leaving, it's too bad for Atlantic City, don't leave." "Eight One Chinese Net

Finally, the Northern Ireland Casino opened in the spring of 1924, bringing in a musical theatre band from Broadway for three consecutive days of performances.

The actual completion of the Northern Ireland Hotel has been somewhat smaller than originally planned - with just over 1,000 rooms and only one planned twin tower.

And you can clearly see that in the central part of the tower there are almost six floors that have not been completed.

Even so, it's still an amazing building.

The lavishly decorated marble atrium and lobby are a far cry from the cavernous-carpeted, windowless casinos on the boardwalk.

Unlike them, Northern Ireland Casino has a large outdoor space that draws attention to the sea;

It also boasts a balcony that is nearly two acres in size with an outdoor brazier and changing rooms.

And, from the outside, Northern Ireland also has an ethereal charm.

Huge glass reflects the beautiful colors of the sky in the sunlight, and every dusk, it becomes transparent, like an invisible casino guarding the edge of the city.

During the construction, a scaffold collapsed and there were many casualties, and a worker was struck by lightning and died in a cement bucket;

Three senior executives in Northern Ireland died in a traffic accident;

A guest falls down a rotating escalator in the center of the hall;

A couple was found dead in a suite after overdose;

Photos of a famous baseball star beating his fiancΓ©e in an elevator went viral in the newspapers.

However, the operating profit in the early days of the casino's opening did not meet expectations.

Many believe that the reason may be due to the layout of the entire building, the North Ireland Hotel does not have a direct elevator to the casino, and the circuitous road from the hotel entrance to the registration office also avoids the casino;

It has also been suggested that the root cause may lie in Northern Ireland's anti-smoking regime;

Perhaps the slot machines in the casino are the direct cause of all this;

At the same time, some people believe that the management of Northern Ireland should be more generous in handing out vouchers to attract tourists.

So, while hotel occupancy rates are extremely objective and nightclubs and restaurants are overcrowded, the profits from gaming tables and slot machines are not enough to keep Northern Ireland afloat – including interest on bank loans, high property taxes, uneconomical leases, and expensive electricity bills.

If this continues, it will be bankrupt in less than a year.

On the other hand, the Pacific Hotel is full of customers, but it is also facing a decline in casino revenue, which seems to have become an indisputable fact.

If Northern Ireland really had to close its doors, then the follow-up to the tragedy was:

Northern Ireland is mired in a quagmire, and Kiel Eland is desperate to find a partner who is on equal footing.

During this time, Mike Hawk's restaurant has been the go-to restaurant for potential investors and buyers.

In the midst of the influx of people, Mike Hawk and the staff at the restaurant claimed to have seen a variety of fund managers from New York;

There was also a group of representatives of British banks who at one time had intentions to buy.

They talked for hours in Mike Howke's restaurant, but they didn't order anything.

And a guy who always wears tatters and has a mustache that comes several times a year.

He talked about Wall Street in Mike Hawk's restaurant, claiming that he represented someone who wanted to buy Northern Ireland, but no one believed him.

Unexpectedly, he reappeared this spring, but this time in a baby blue convertible Rolls-Royce, maybe what he said was true.

"My men will provide $20 million," he gushed, adding that his men from Florida will erect a "Tower of Genius," a high-end think tank, on the site of Northern Ireland.

The current state of affairs in Atlantic City is shocking, and it could be even worse.

Compared to historical cities that were formed by commercial development or strategic needs, Atlantic City emerged more because of a proposition or strategy.

The leaders of Cape May, the oldest seaside resort in the country, had no intention of building a railroad and were not interested in how many classes of carriages tourists would take to get here;

There were also some wealthy Phillies who came by boat.

Later, in 1854, a group of investors began to build the shortest railroad along the coastline from Philadelphia to the seaside, also known as the "railroad to the land of nothing."

Years later, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, people had plenty of leisure time and money to splurge freely, and this wedge-shaped saline beach became the "playground of the world" – a melting pot of tourists and entrepreneurs.

In some ways, Atlantic City was the beginning of the ugly country's development of amateur pastimes into formal occupations, and it is also known for its passion for crime and entertainment.

Like many other cities in the country, the city has racial problems.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Atlantic City had one of the largest numbers of African Americans north of the Mason-Dixon Line, thanks to the ample jobs available at local hotels.

On the boardwalk at the time, there was a highly archetypal caricature of working-class white tourists sitting on rickshaws propelled by blacks β€” a "public performance of racial discrimination," as one historian later called it.

"Brother Shen!"

"Hmm!"

Shen Changqing walked on the road, and when he met someone he knew well, he would say hello to each other or nod his head.

But it doesn't matter who it is.

There was no superfluous expression on everyone's face, as if they were very indifferent to everything.

on this.

Shen Changqing is used to it.

Because this is the Demon Suppression Division, it is an institution that maintains the stability of Great Qin, and its main responsibility is to kill demons and monsters, and of course there are some other side jobs.

Arguably.

In the Demon Suppression Division, everyone has a lot of blood on their hands.

When a person is accustomed to seeing life and death, then he will become indifferent to many things.

When he first came to this world, Shen Changqing was a little uncomfortable, but over time he got used to it.

The Demon Suppression Division is huge.

The people who can stay in the Demon Suppression Division are all powerful masters, or people who have the potential to become masters.

Shen Changqing belongs to the latter.

Among them, the Demon Suppression Division is divided into two professions, one is the town guard and the other is the demon exterminator.

Anyone who enters the Demon Suppression Division starts with the lowest level of demon slayer.

Then step by step, he is expected to become a town guard.

Shen Changqing's predecessor was a trainee demon slayer in the Demon Suppression Division, and he was also the lowest level of the demon slayer envoys.

Have memories of the predecessor.

He is also very familiar with the environment of the Demon Suppression Division.

It didn't take long for Shen Changqing to stop in front of an attic.

Unlike other places full of slaughter, the attic here seems to stand out from the crowd, and in the bloody Demon Suppression Division, it presents a different tranquility.

At this time, the attic door is open, and there are occasional people entering and exiting.

Shen Changqing only hesitated for a moment, and then stepped in.

Access to the attic.

The environment has changed in vain.

A burst of ink fragrance mixed with the faint smell of blood came to his face, making his brow furrow instinctively, but quickly stretched.

The smell of blood on everyone's body in the Demon Suppression Division is almost impossible to clean.