Scribblings › Atlantic City & the Miss America Pageant

Growing up on the outskirts of Philadelphia in the 1970s, there was a single Saturday evening each year when I would willingly suffer the preemption of The Carol Burnett Show. On those September nights, I could practically reach through the screen of our family room Zenith to touch a world of ultimate glamour, so near, yet so far away. Just 90 minutes from my suburban home, along the same splintery Atlantic City boardwalk where I'd eaten my fill of corn dogs from the DipStix vendor and James' Salt Water Taffy ("Cut to fit the mouth") during family beach trips the month before, 51 outstanding young women (Don't forget Miss District of Columbia) gathered before a throng of admirers to display their white Chiclet teeth, their sequined gowns, and—in what I considered lucky years—their talents at ventriloquism or baton-twirling.

"Look at those boobs!" my 16-year-old babysitter Robert guffawed during the swimsuit competition one year. "Miss Vermont—Jiffy Pop-o-Rama! Miss Wisconsin—ice cream cones! Miss Wyoming—pitiful pancakes!" While I offered a few half-hearted laughs in response to Robert's breast-fooding, I felt that he was missing the point (Not to mention the fact that I'd recently gone to see him prance about in the local high school production of Cabaret.)

Even at nine-years-old my proto-homo brain was already sensing some tackily transcendent dimension to the Miss America competition. As I tapped my toes to the strain of a cornfed cheerleader's accordion solo, I reflected on the words of those earnest tuxedo-clad spokesmidwesterners who stepped up to the podium each year, insisting that Miss America is much more than a beauty pageant.

As I got older and my Saturday nights stopped being organized around television programming, Miss America slipped my mind (and much of the nation's, if Nielsen ratings are a gauge) for a decade or so (Well, except for those Vanessa Williams pictures in 1984). Last year, however, I decided to get back in touch with my inner child and hang out in Atlantic City around pageant time. Like the pageant itself, the city is ridiculous, delightful, and nostalgic all at once.

It's the ultimate in summer camp.

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Even if you arrive in Atlantic City by car, you'll want to swing by the commuter rail station just a few blocks south of the boardwalk casinos. In a small landscaped area outside the Sheraton Convention Center Hotel entrance facing the station, you'll find a lifesize bronze sculpture of the late Bert Parks. A popular radio and TV quiz show host in the 1940s and 50s, Parks hosted the Miss America telecast for 25 years, from 1955 until 1980, when he was replaced by a C-grade Rolodex of ever-changing emcees, including Wayne Brady, Donny and Marie Osmond, and the mismatched team of quarterback Boomer Esaison and View-host Meredith Vieira, who seemed primed for a catfight throughout the 1998 telecast.

Despite Parks' long-ago ousting by pageant officials seeking to inject the festivities with fresh hipness (Donny and Marie!), for gay men who grew up suckling at the televised teat of Miss America, Bert is still The Man. And his statue lets you be The Woman. When you tuck your head into the bronze crown held in the statue's outstretched arms, you'll become a pageant princess as you trigger a recording of Bert, crooning an old familiar tune:

"There she is, Miss America. / There she is your ideal. / The dream of a million girls who are more than pretty, / can come true in Atlantic City. / For she may turn out to be.The Queen of femininity!" Those astonishingly awkward lyrics were written in 1954 by Bernie Wayne, who seems to specialize in music that takes a surreal turn over time. His other big hit was "Blue Velvet."

The musical Bert Parks statue is a year-round fixture, but if your visit to Atlantic City—or AC, as the locals call it—happens to coincide with pageant week, step inside the Sheraton lobby where the song plays over and over as a big screen video system plays an endless loop of crownings-through-the-years. The Atlantic Ocean is just blocks away, but for entertainment value, it doesn't come close to this mascara-polluted sea of tears.

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Both the pageant and the ocean are part of what lend Atlantic City its own peculiarly queer appeal. This is a town with a befuddled self-image, practicing a perpetual balancing act between self-proclaimed wholesomeness and exuberant vice, never quite able to reconcile the two. While the Miss America pageant toddles along with its retro-vision of smiley sexless glamour, AC has recently introduced a new tourist slogan: "Atlantic City. Always Turned On." Okay then, that's clear.

AC's original heyday was during summers from the 1920s to the 1950s, when families from along the east coast would come for family-friendly days at the beach, stays in boarding houses, and strolls along the boardwalk, dressed up in evening clothes. The Miss America Pageant was started in 1921, an apple-cheeked marketing ploy dreamt up by the local hospitality business in an effort to prolong the profitable summer season beyond its traditional Labor Day ending. The pageant chugged along—and provided most Americans with their only real awareness of Atlantic City—through the resort town's serious mid-century economic slump.

Atlantic City was jolted back to life with the advent of casino gambling in 1978. This was before casinos began proliferating like Wal-Marts and there were hopes that AC, in easy travel distance for millions more people than America's only other big gambling town, would become an East Coast Las Vegas. But despite the AC casinos' financial success, the odd juxtaposition of nouveau glitz and old-fashioned seashore setting has always made for a jarring vacation aesthetic. Las Vegas has scads of topless showgirls; Atlantic City forbids nipples in casinos, but once a year offers Miss Utah singing an aria.

And then there's that ocean. Every year, on the Sunday morning after Miss America, the newly crowned queen has her first post-pageant photo shoot, dipping her toes in the ocean). Just steps away from the smoke, the booze, and the clanging of the slots in any of the Atlantic City's nine boardwalk casinos is the squawk of seagulls, a broad white sand beach and an endless expanse of crashing surf. It's huge, it's natural and it reminds you how contrived the casinos—and the pageant—are.

While this weird combination of attractions can make visitors feel a bit like they're in the twilight zone, it can also make for a rewardingly diverse weekend's activities, a cheerful combination of sunning and sinning. During the first two decades of the gambling era, beachgoing visibly diminished in Atlantic City, but in recent years the boardwalk casinos have realized that there's a market in presenting themselves as more all-purpose resorts. The Beach Bar at Trump Plaza provides full bar service, umbrella-covered tables and light fare on an exceptionally well-groomed block-long stretch of beach, occasionally staying open for special evening entertainment events, like last summer's musical performance by Bruce Willis. Caesar's and the Atlantic City Hilton have also notably stepped up their on-beach services.

"In the past few years, Atlantic City has changed radically," says Joseph Jenci, the openly gay Vice President of Hotel Marketing at the Tropicana Casino and Resort. It used to be all about Tilly from Philly coming down on the bus with her rolls of quarters. But with the rise of the Indian casinos, we've had to step things up and let people know that there more activities than gambling in Atlantic City." The Tropicana even offers a bicycle rental service, a rarity in the world of casino hotels, which tend to make every effort to keep potential gamblers on their own property.

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By bicycle or by foot, it's a relaxing two mile trip beyond the Atlantic City limits to the end of the boardwalk in Margate, the summer weekend-house community for many well-heeled Philadelphia and South Jersey suburbanites. Take another mile's walk along the Margate beach to ogle the muscular tanscape of college boys on summer vacation and the million dollar beachfront houses, a few of which audaciously feature swimming pools overlooking the ocean. The most impressive site here, however, is one of an Atlantic City weekend's queerest highlights.

"I call her the world's biggest drag queen," says Richard Helfant, the lanky 47-year-old Executive Director of Lucy the Margate Elephant.

An architectural folly listed in the National Registry of Historic Landmarks, Lucy is a pachyderm-shaped building originally constructed in 1881 by a real estate speculator who wanted to attract potential customers to visit his lots along the Jersey shore. Sporting two well-hung tusks, only found on male elephants, the building has an ill-chosen moniker.

"No one knows for sure where the name came from," says Helfant. "But the most widely told story is that the architect had a crotchety, rather large relative named Lucy, so one of his kids started calling the elephant Lucy."

For $4, Helfant's volunteer docents will take you on a guided tour of the bowels of the beast, which stands 65 feet tall, has spiral staircases in its legs, and windows in its eyes, overlooking the sea. Another cleverly positioned window is referred to by Helfant as "the pane in the ass."

Lucy may be the main lady in his life these days, but, like many gay local natives, Helfant, a former Vice President of Entertainment at Resorts International Casino ("Oh, the stories I could tell you about Cher," he teases before withdrawing the offer), is forever passionate about Miss America.

"In today's world, Miss America means nothing west of the Garden State Parkway. I used to be on the volunteer parade committee," he explains, voice slowly rising. "And I just got more and more involved. I'm not someone who can just stay on the outskirts. If I believe in something, you get 150% of me. And you can tell how emotional I'm getting just talking about this. I mean aside from the casinos and the boardwalk, Miss America is Atlantic City."

Helfant fears that the Miss America organization is out of step with contemporary styles and still caught up in fighting the accusations of sexism that assailed the pageant in the 1970s.

"It's not about scholarships. Face it! It's about the glamour, the tits, the ass, the magic, the mystery, the excitement! That's what it's about. When some 5-year-old is dreaming about being Miss America, she's not dreaming about getting money to go to college. She's dreaming about walking down that runway and the TV cameras and the fame and the glitz of show business. When you have some stage mother—and there are 51 every year here—and the girl is in her pre-teens and they're starting to participate in local pageant competitions around the country, that mother's not thinking 'I want my girl to do this so she can win a scholarship!'"

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"I grew up lower middle class," says Michael Callahan, originally of Pennsylvania, now an openly gay Manhattanite and an editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. "When I was a kid growing up, on Saturday nights my family sat around together and watched television. Miss America was a big deal. It marked the end of a big week, because it came right after the new school year started."

To this day, while acknowledging the shopworn quality of some recent years' pageants, Callahan remains enthralled. And not because of the scholarships:

"Miss America is the original Survivor. The whole sudden death thing. When it comes down to the finalists, they call your name and it's all over."

As a journalist, Callahan has covered the proceedings for four publications and has become quite adept at picking the winners. "There's a certain look they won't ever go for," he says, "It's very hard for anyone from the Northeast to win. You can pretty much lop off the country from Maine to Connecticut. There's a southern tilt to it all."

In addition to strong state pageant organizations in the south, Callahan points out another aspect of the pageant that adds to both its sense of Southernness and camp queerness. "It's not a cosmopolitan enterprise. It harkens back to Gone With The Wind. There's an aura of repressed sexuality. The people who run the state organizations are straight: they're into power, connections, raising a lot of money and getting their jollies out of looking at tits and ass. Very traditional and paternal. But the grassroots are soooo gay, I've met tons of men from the state pageant organizations who are big queens, lots of them are married and in hiding. The national pageant is really wary about its hostess committee. You'll notice the ess. At the national level men have to be 'security.'"

The result of all these gay men from around the country convening in Atlantic City for one week a year is, says Callahan, "Like a PG-13 circuit party." One of the party's big moments always takes place on the Friday night before the pageant on the area of the boardwalk by New York Avenue when the Miss America Parade passes by. As parades go, it's a rather humdrum affair: New Jersey dignitaries and high school bands, mostly, and of course, the state contestants, ferried in a fleet of vintage cars. ("It's got nothing on the Tournament of Roses Parade," admits Callahan, "That's a beauty pageant in itself. Every gay florist in the country is there. It's the West Coast division of Miss America.").

At New York Avenue, the 60-foot-wide boardwalk becomes a gay melting pot, as throngs of men crowd along the siderails in the sticky summer evening, craning their necks (and coyly letting hands fall where they may) and screaming "Show us your shoes!" as the contestants roll by.

The "show us your shoes" ritual began in the early '70s, when a group of drag queens, dressed as Miss Americas watched the parade from balconies overlooking the boardwalk. Peering down as contestants were chauffeured by sitting atop the back seats convertibles, the queens could see what spectators on the ground level couldn't: beneath their expensive evening wear, many contestants wore casual shoes or went barefoot. Perhaps out of resentment that they'd wedged themselves into mules while the real girls hadn't, the chanting began and several good-humored contestants lifted their legs high to reveal stockinged feet and threadbare slippers. "Show us your shoes" quickly became a Miss America tradition, although today's clued-in contestants display high fashion footwear when they raise their gams to salute the gays.

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The night of the parade is one of the biggest dance nights of the year at Atlantic City's major queer nightspot, Studio Six on Mount Vernon Avenue, just a block and a half south of the boardwalk at Kentucky Avenue. Studio Six has been the center of Atlantic City's gay scene since the '80s, when it played host to live shows by the likes of the Village People, The Weather Girls and Grace Jones back in the pre-Queer Eye era. Given the club's New York-style hours—things don't really get hopping on the dance floor until after midnight—Studio Six became a linchpin of Atlantic City nightlife in the early years of the gambling era. Visiting showroom headliners—ready to party after their 10 pm performances—would head over to the studio with their entourages in tow, adding celebrity glitter to the already charged-up atmosphere. The likes of Cher and Joan Rivers were regular drop-ins, happy to soak up the adulation of their gay fans while cutting loose a little.

In addition to the late night club scene, the sprawling Studio Six features an outdoor bar deck with barbecue service and a small swimming pool, a pubby lounge called the Brass Rail with regular karaoke and stripper nights, the Oak Room—a more upscale piano bar and showcase for cabaret-style performances, and the adjacent Surfside Hotel with 50 rooms at rates that—during peak summer season—are considerably lower than those of the nearby casino hotels.

In 2002, Studio Six underwent a major expansion, opening additional bars, a massive second dancefloor, and upgrading its sound and light systems. The additions, which also include a second entrance to the club on Martin Luther King Boulevard, have been monikered Club Tru and marketed to a younger generation of clubgoers more accustomed to mixed gay-straight crowds than the original clientele of Studio Six. But make no mistake, whether you call this gay-owned-and-operated complex Studio Six or Club Tru, it's a straight-friendly gay club and not vice versa. With regularly scheduled drag shows, go-go boys and summer Sunday T-dances on the deck, it's Atlantic City's gay oasis.

Joseph Jenci, the gay Vice President of Marketing at the Tropicana, theorizes that the reason there aren't more gay clubs in Atlantic City is twofold. While there's a high proportion of gay staff in the hospitality businesses that serve the tourist trade, AC's casinos are non-stop operations and shift-work is the rule, which means that a significant portion of the local gay population is hard at work during nightclub hours. Likewise, gambling is the local vice of choice, regardless of sexual orientation. Where drinking and partying are a part of every town's nightlife, AC is gaming-focused and on a short one or two night visit, tourists—gay and straight—like to stay close to the action.

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If you want to party and gamble under one roof while you're in town, your best bet is the spectacular new Borgata Hotel and Casino, one of three casino complexes a ten minute cab ride away from the boardwalk in a less honky-tonk side of town, fronting the bay, rather than the ocean. While anyone who appreciates the kitsch of the Miss America pageant would be a fool to miss the tawdry charms of the boardwalk—$5 t-shirt shops, cheesy arcades, overpriced lemonade stands, Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, rinky-dink thrill rides and miniature golf course—most gay visitors will also appreciate the luxe trappings of Atlantic City's most cosmopolitan resort.

Opened in spring 2003, the Borgata is Atlantic City's only new casino in 14 years. Compared to the thematic glitz of the boardwalk complexes—especially Caesar's faux-Roman statuary, the Disneyfied Middle East of the Trump Taj Mahal, and the appalling Wild West decor at Bally's—the Borgata seems tastefully restrained. Well, as tastefully restrained as Atlantic City gets. Which means spectacular Dale Chihuly glass sculptures blooming from the ceilings like exotic flowers, a backlit wall of water rushing down behind the reception desk, 300-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and internet access in every guest room, a vast greenhouse-styled indoor swimming pool area, and a men's spa with a very sexy pinpoint spotlit steamroom.

The sound design at the Borgata is also markedly better than anywhere else in town, it's actually possible to walk the periphery of the gaming floor to visit the hotel's retail and restaurant operations feeling seduced rather than assaulted by the nearby battalions of slot machines.

While clearly trying to distinguish itself with an urbane atmosphere to attract high rollers, some of the high quality in evidence here is available at reasonable prices. Yes, there are $95 Kobe beef steaks at the Old Homestead steakhouse and intimate comp-filled concerts by the likes Sting and David Bowie (It's virtually impossible for mere mortals to get tickets), but there are also more affordable pleasures. Beneath the extravagantly priced Specchio Italian restaurant is Ombra, a grotto-like underground wine bar where you can sample imported cheeses, olives and homestyle entrees. And the charmingly appointed Metropolitan does justice by shellfish and modest French bistro fare.

The Borgata's most unique dining experience is Club Mixx, a snazzy multi-leveled restaurant and bar with dining tables that are whisked away late in the evening as the space transforms into a spectacularly lit dance arena, where same-sex couples will feel altogether comfortable moving to a blend of house, techno and worldbeat spun by resident djs accompanied by a live percussion ensemble. But don't just come to Mixx for the dancing.

Chef Edwyn Ferrari spent eight years dividing his time between the New York and London branches of Nobu and at Mixx, his Japanese repertory blends with a passion for Latino cuisine to create the hybrid dishes that led to the Mixx name. Try the rare seared tuna with habanero chile and garlic, the ceviche of poached lobster with passion fruit and habaneros, or the complexly spiced chimichurri "Macho Steak." All of these dishes are available in small plate portions for under $12, so order a wide range of items, some sake and some mojitos for a quirky and adventurous meal.

On pageant morning, consider making an appointment at the Borgata's deluxe men's barber shop, Shaving Grace, complete with a pool table in the waiting area. What could be more appropriate grooming for a gay man at Miss America than a good old-fashioned straight razor shave?

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Stroll the boardwalk on the afternoon of the pageant and you'll run into the die-hards, hovering around Boardwalk Hall for hours before the doors open at 7 pm. For Brian Lloyd and Justin Rains, both 27, from Lexington, Kentucky, 2003 marked their fifth consecutive pageant trip to Atlantic City.

"Down South they say that Northern people aren't friendly," says Lloyd, "But I don't feel that here. Every corner you turn you meet another friendly face, including all the store keepers and the hotel people."

"I've just been fascinated with it for my whole life," explains Rains, who works in the University of Kentucky's Neurology Department. "I started watching as a little kid, but when I was in high school I started volunteering with the local pageant and everything just skyrocketed from there."

"We have all the program books and videos," says Lloyd, a stockbroker. "The fascination for me is watching the girls go from being regular college students to being part of this whole glamorous pageant. It's this total transformation. It's like drag." "Our all-time gayest moment at the pageant was last night. A friend of ours had passes to a party for all the former Miss Americas who are here. Lee Meriwether served us cake. I felt so unworthy!"

"We have friends who we meet here, year after year," says Rains. "One of our friends from Kentucky who works in our state pageant comes here and meets a guy from the Rhode Island pageant every September. They spend this week together once a year, and then they're back to their separate lives."

"It's a very good week," notes Lloyd, "If you're looking to hook up."

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Pageant night itself can be a bit of a letdown if you've grown up watching the show on TV. That's because while the local and state pageants around the country held in the six months leading up to September are played to fawning live audiences in small theaters and school auditoriums, the Atlantic City finale is first and foremost a television show, staged and choreographed to look good to home audiences of millions watching on small screens, not the 10,000 spectators seated in Boardwalk Hall, who are often left trying to figure out where exactly they should be looking at any given moment. During the 2003 pageant's Parade of States, what appeared onscreen as a procession of 51 young women approaching the camera to introduce themselves and their homes was actually four short lines of contestants approaching four different cameras spread across the bland and gargantuan stage set. Sitting in the stadium, spectators were hard-pressed to figure out where to look to see the next contestant. By default you end up turning toward the ceiling at the center of the arena.where you can watch the proceedings on a giant TV. When Clay Aiken appeared to perform "This Is the Night," he made deep, meaningful eye contact not with the audience, but with the lens of the camera parked a few feet in front of him on the stage.

To get more up-close and personal with the contestants—and see more of the talent than is featured in the telecast, you'll want to arrive in Atlantic City earlier during pageant week. The public is welcome to attend Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night preliminary competitions, performed in smaller, more intimate venues than Boardwalk Hall, which works better as a hockey arena than a girl-watching venue. "That's the way to see all the stuff that never gets on TV," notes Michael Callahan, "It's probably the only chance you're gonna have to see the clogger and the puppeteer."

The big difference of course between home viewing and the live experience, of course, is who you're watching with. In lieu of your bitchy, couture-critiquing friends (or your overstatedly heterosexual teenage babysitter), you're shoulder to shoulder with the true faithful. Pageant organizers and contestant relatives from around the country fill row upon row of seats, waving signs with the names of their states and the airbrushed pusses of their favorite daughters. They're overdressed for an evening in a hockey arena and they smile hard and curse under their breath as the eliminations begin. Even without following the onstage action as well as you might in the comfort of your living room, it's a kick to be immersed in such a fevered community. You've never thought of hardcore in quite this way before.

If you're sitting in the right spot, you can get lucky. "I ended up right by the winner's family in 1988," recalls pageant buff and Cosmo editor Callahan. "Keilani Rae Rafko. Miss Hawaii. She was such a breakout in the talent competition, doing this Tahitian dance in a costume that made her look like a castaway on Gilligan's Island. When she won, her grandmother hugged me. It was electric!"

Whether or not they felt electricity at last year's pageant, gay audience members were undoubtedly relieved at the power shift that took the crown away from the reigning Miss America, Erika Harold (from Illinois) who, after winning her post unexpectedly became a spokeswoman for Project Reality, a right-wing group which advocates abstinence until marriage, effectively denouncing gay and lesbian sexuality and relationships. Harold's arch conservative stance—which emerged stealthily despite a stated pageant platform of fighting violence in schools—was widely viewed as a disrespectful by gay pageant aficionados like Kentuckian Justin Rains, who fondly recalled his own state's 1998 Miss America, Kate Shindle, who used her year-long reign to promote AIDS advocacy. "Erika Harold's changing her message after she was crowned felt like a real slap in the face to a lot of people."

To the roar of an approving crowd, Harold, in a high-collared blue dress, turned over the crown to 2003's beaming 21-year-old Miss Florida, soul-singing Ericka Dunlap, and a statuesque beauty in a cleavage-accentuating buttercup yellow evening gown. Dunlap's platform, to the relief of gay followers, was "Celebrating Cultural Diversity and Inclusiveness."

"But nobody sang the Miss America song," complained Michael Callahan. "I was appalled. As were all the pageant faithful. We wait all year to hear that song."

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Unbeknownst to most of Miss America's loyal TV audience, but beloved by gay fans and Atlantic City insiders is the post-pageant Sunday night event known as Miss'd America. Well worth extending your AC weekend an extra day for, Miss'd America, celebrating its 13th year in 2004 is an extraordinarily well-produced drag pageant parody held on the outdoor deck of the Studio Six nightclub as a fundraiser for the South Jersey AIDS Alliance.

A thrillingly unifying event, played to a liquor-lubricated audience of several hundred casino executives, state and local politicians, and screaming queens, Miss'd America puts the spotlight on drag performers who are uniquely "New Jersey" in their coarse humor and fashion sense. The 2003 event featured a musical parody of the summer's Bennifer bomb, Gigli, a showstopping Ethel Mermanesque routine with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken by the rotundly marvelous Ms. Chunkie Marinara, and a topical striptease by the faux-Iraqi diva, Barbie Bhurka, who slithered out of one all-concealing shmata only to reveal a second demure layer of sack-cloth beneath.

Even the local sponsors get in on the act. The 2003 program book included an ad from The Law Offices of Jeffrey R. Wilson, offering its services "For those times when handcuffs aren't a pleasure."

The winner of last year's pageant, Brittney Lynn, was formerly known as the Susan Lucci of Miss'd America, having been named first runner up for five years in a row. She finally took the crown with a musical performance including an agonizingly tasteful medley of "I've Been to Paradise, But I've Never Been to Me" and "Circle of Life" from The Lion King.

Of the real Miss America pageant, Lynn says, "I know every gay boy has the fantasy of walking down that aisle and being Queen for a day, but really it takes itself too seriously. I bet the girls wish they could just relax, walk the runway in sweat pants and have a pizza or something."