This past summer, I spent 24 hours in Atlantic City, 4, miles away from my home in Berlin. In Germany, I live close to Spielbank Berlin, the largest casino in the city. Unfortunately, it lacks the eye-widening gaudiness of literally any of America's gambling pits. Hitting the jackpot at Potsdamer Platz just doesn't feel like hitting the jackpot. I even had reoccurring dreams about the town, in which a single machine had the potential to change my life. Call me Slot Machine Dream Queen — everyone else in my dreams did.
I hit the slots and, as my dreams predicted, I won and won and won. Within no time, I considered ringing up friends and shouting, "Told ya so! I took a brief pause and considered stopping all together. One sip of a gin and tonic later, I changed my mind and jumped back in. Naturally, I started losing and my small fortune quickly depleted — au revoir!
Suddenly, everything started becoming too much. The machine sounds, the half-naked women dancing on the bar, the countless overweight people who all seemed to be rubbing their palms together as they fantasised about hitting —Jackpot!!!
I ran out of the casino to get fresh air. I grabbed Trump's recent issue of Time out of my bag and held it up to my line of vision. The words on the cover echoed how I felt about Atlantic City: "Deal with it," even if I didn't want to anymore. Ricarda Messner is the publisher of Flaneur Magazine and founder of publishing house editionmessner.
For more on Flaneur, read our 'Inkspots' feature on the magazine here. If you really sat down and tried, you could turn a lot of pages in the space of 30 days.
