Atlantic City has a Bermuda Triangle effect it can confound a compass. People from “offshore,” as locals like to call the mainland, tend to think of the island’s Inlet end as north, because it’s upcoast, but locals call it east. This was the South Inlet, a once thriving part of town and now more or less a desolate slum at the northeastern end of Absecon Island, the landmass that is home to Atlantic City and three other municipalities. It was a bedraggled three-story clapboard house that years of neighborhood demolition and neglect had stranded at the edge of several mostly vacant blocks, which together formed an urban badlands reaching all the way to the dunes. This piece of real estate seemed to test the proposition. He had bought the building three years earlier on the advice of his father, an accountant who considered distressed real estate a smart long-term bet. Mike Hauke opened a pizza and sub shop in Atlantic City in 2009, but only after he had failed in nine tries to rent the space to somebody else. Photograph by Andrew Moore for The New Yorker Revel was supposed to be the most opulent casino the place had ever seen.

If not for zany schemes, Atlantic City would be a sand dune.

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