The New Yorker Presents (2015) s01e02 Episode Script
Episode 2
- What did I tell you about this? - Hey, Mommy.
What did I tell you? Whenever me and my wife met, she had already had Rhyder, and he was 3 years old.
We went to a little rodeo, and he seen some sheep riding, and he said, "I want to do that.
" We put him on one, and he got off, and he just had this big smile on his face and was laughing and thought it was the coolest thing.
Whenever I started practicing a whole bunch and I started getting a lot better, and I was I was world champion.
- Ready? - Ready? Bust him.
Bust him.
Get a hold! Get a hold! Get over there! - Get over there! - Whoa.
Hey.
Get up.
Spurred yourself in the butt, didn't you? - He never touched you.
- I fell on a rock! - Show me where there's a rock.
- Right there! Look.
Look.
Is that a rock? That ain't a rock.
You spurred yourself in the butt because you let go.
Get up.
You're getting on another one.
- You can't let go.
- Ow, ow, ow.
Walk it off.
What are you crying about? What are you sniveling about? What hurts? - What hurts? - My hand.
- Why does your hand hurt? - My rope was too tight.
No.
Your hand don't hurt because your rope's too tight.
Your hand hurts because you're a wiener.
Quit crying.
Or you can go play tiddlywinks.
You want to go play tiddlywinks? - No.
- I know you don't.
You want to ride calves.
I know you do.
You're good at it.
Give me some.
Are you a champ or chump? - Champ.
- Champ or chump? Champ or chump? - Champ.
- Are you sure? It's tough to make them tough.
- You sure? - Yes, sir.
All right, give me another.
All right, be bad.
He has a hard time.
He wants to do it.
He does get upset, you know, and he kind of freaks out at times.
But I've never let him get hurt.
- You can do it.
- Uh-huh.
- It's a rough sport.
- Okay? You get up and go get on the next one.
- You ready? - Squeeze.
Buck him.
Squeeze.
Don't let go.
Stay with him! Stay with him! Stay with him! Don't let go! There you go.
What you did right there is trying.
If you do that every time, the rest of it will come together, you hear me? - Yes, sir.
- Okay.
Come on, Rhyder.
- Hey, is this good? - It's a flake of hay.
Here, Bucky.
Just do this right here.
Take both wires and just twist it up.
Rhyder likes to help me out here at the ranch.
I haul bulls for a living because it's in my blood, I guess.
The ranch that we're at here now is Diamond S Bucking Bulls.
I've worked here six and a half years.
What we're trying to do is generate superstars.
We roughly have, probably, 10,000 acres.
I grew up rodeoing.
That's how I made my living.
I was 26, I guess.
Uh, I finally quit riding bulls.
I hung it up.
Now I can be home to help Rhyder, you know, practice more.
We're going to the YBR World Finals in Abilene, Texas.
So we're going to ride good this week, and you're going to win some money and some buckles.
Are you going to keep riding calves, or are you going to quit after World? - And calves? - No.
You said I'm done riding calves.
- I'm riding ponies.
- Well, if you choose to be done, then you choose to be done.
Yeah.
Okay.
For every calf that you cover, I'll give you $25 out of my pocket.
- You don't even have $25.
- Yeah, I do.
Plus whatever you win.
If you ride three calves and then plus your short ride, you're going to make $100 just from me.
You got faith in yourself? - Huh? - Yes.
Okay.
Just prove everybody wrong.
I'm going to take 12 bulls out to the YBR World Finals.
I hope them kids do good on them.
I do, too.
I don't wish bad luck for nobody, but we'll see how good of riders they really are.
That's right.
Abilene, Texas, it is the eighth annual YBR World Finals.
It's all about the kids.
And let me tell you what about the prize money.
By the end of it all, we're going to be paying out over $80,000 to the champions.
Well, it's time to start go-round number 1.
This is the Mutton Busting.
First cowboy coming to you all the way from Oklahoma.
Yes! Yes! Atta boy.
Stay with that bull.
Numbers coming in on the right.
How about a 70.
5? We start in Mutton Busting 4 to 6.
They ride sheep because you want the kids to learn, and they learn their fundamentals of riding as they get older.
Then they graduate into calves, then junior steers, then they go to our senior steers, then our junior bulls, and then they're in the big bulls.
- Keep on! Go, go, go! - Move! Move! You got one job, and that's to cover your bull.
Don't think about it.
Just do your job.
Stay with him! And there are some out there that take their kids to these things so they can get by.
It's extra income for them.
Ladies and gentlemen, here comes a young cowboy inside the calf riding.
Bring it out, son! Come on! No! No score.
Keep hustling them feet.
If they're slipping, drive him to the ground.
Don't quit.
Be bad.
Are you a champ or chump? - Champ.
- All right.
Be bad.
You got it? Let's go this way.
Go this way.
- Do you want money? - Yes, sir.
Then you got to stay on.
Back number 118 is where we're going next.
- Stand over it.
- Rhyder Rutledge, Weatherford, Texas.
Reserve champion in the Bull Busting of 2014 - stepping it up.
- Get a hold.
You ready? - Get a hold.
- Here we go, Rhyder.
Get a hold! Get a hold! Get a hold! Go ahead! Go ahead! Go ahead! Come on! Yeah! Yeah! When you focus, you stay in the middle, huh? - Better.
- Good job.
That'll move Rhyder Rutledge into first place.
Awesome, dude.
I'm so proud of you.
See? All that stuff Monday, you whining, throwing a fit.
You rode your butt off.
Good job, kid.
I'm so proud of you.
Good job.
The Western way of life is the cowboy was always tough.
And these kids, they suck it up from 4 years old all the way up to 18, 19 years old.
- Come on! - Cowboy done got it done.
They get out there and get stepped on, and you have a bunch of people out there thinking, Oh, they're hurt, and they get up and walk out.
And they're back here the next day.
They're gritting it out.
You got to admire them for that.
That's part of our Western heritage.
The time has come.
The stage is set.
Time for the open bull riders to come out and showcase what they got.
She was about 6 years old when she got on her first calf.
Got bucked off.
And everyone kind of figured that that would be the end of it.
In fact, the announcer said "That will do her in" unless she's tougher than an old boot.
" They all said that I would never be back, and here I am 10, 11 years later, going to World Finals.
The counter with the nickname Augie from Mangum, Oklahoma, she's a five-time YBR qualifier reserve champion Be loose and move it now.
Be loose! - The only cowgirl in the - Hustle now.
Hustle! Folks, are you ready for August Hopper? - Here we go! - Ride, August, ride! Come on, Augie! - Coming down early.
- Whatever.
Good job.
She is disappointed.
- You did good! - You did good, Augie! Man You got one more.
Well, that looks like that'll drop the curtain on the open bull riding.
Folks, we'll see you tomorrow.
- So are you hurting? - Nothing Ibuprofen can't fix.
I think August probably got one of the strongest bulls out last night, and he just jerked her out of there.
I leaned back and got on the end of my arm.
But that's excitement of being at World Finals Trying to prove that I'm a girl, I can ride with the boys.
And she either tightens up - or just tries so hard.
- Yeah.
We're not out of it by no means.
- You ride it all out.
Get mad.
Let's see it.
- Come on, Rhyder.
Get over.
Put your leg over.
- Speed! Speed! Speed! - Come on, Rhyder! I'm so proud.
- You owe me $25.
- I know.
I owe you 50 bucks now.
Hell, he made 150 just off us.
Here you go.
Thank you.
I need you to initial right here, okay? Here's your check, baby.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
There you go.
- What do you say? - Thank you.
Let me see it so I can put it in my wallet so you don't lose it.
Guess we can go buy you a saddle now.
It made him pretty proud whenever he saw me ride that calf out.
As I get older, eventually I will start riding bulls, but I might just start working at a ranch.
Everybody says a girl shouldn't ride.
I'll have that fear, you know, just like any parent does.
It's something that you can't let the kids see.
That will scare them.
Nerves come with the game.
If you're not nervous, you should quit.
When I'm climbing down on the bull.
I can't really hear the announcer, the bullfighters, anything else that's going on.
My dad's the one person that I can hear.
- You've got to be moving! Now hustle.
- You don't really have time to think about what move I need to make, where I need to place my hips.
You just have to react to it.
Eight seconds seems really quick unless you're on the back of a bull.
At times I wonder if maybe I'm pushing her too hard or if she's doing it for me.
But I don't really think it's that.
I think she loves it.
Do I worry about her getting hurt? Yes.
I look at her and say she's such a sweet girl, she shouldn't be riding bulls.
She should stick to softball and basketball.
But I'm not going to break her heart.
There's injuries to come, whether I'm a boy or whether I'm a girl.
It's just a matter of when, and if you can't handle some pain, don't be in this sport.
Whoo! Come on, Elvis.
It's hard to make a living off of the ranching business.
I spend a lot of time having to support it with another job.
Elvis! It's a love.
You don't love it, you won't be there.
Mainly I've got calves, but I do have a little pen of bulls for the kids to ride on.
It's a pretty expensive sport, especially if you're doing it every weekend, like we are.
Some kids have sponsors.
Ours don't.
Ours are sponsored by Mom and Dad.
If your dream is to be a bull rider, you got to be able to practice and learn to ride and make your moves.
I love rodeoing.
I love getting on bulls.
Be aggressive and come riding.
I grew up watching the PBR with my dad.
I used to tell my dad "That'll be me some day.
You'll be watching me on TV some day.
" Hustle! Get over! When you think of most cities, they're there because at one point they started out as a port or as a mining town.
There was some reason for them to exist where they were.
Atlantic City is one of the first cities in the United States where they just imagined there being a place there for the purpose of building a place there.
"Let's just build it, and they will come.
" What they had in mind was a place where people could get away from industrial Philadelphia, go to the beach, clean air, just to get out of the city.
These aristocrats wanted a place that you'd be able to come and let your hair down and engage in all these guilty pleasures.
They'd catch a train down and spend a day in Atlantic City.
Many visitors get sand in their shoes, as the saying goes, and become permanent citizens of this vacation capital.
I'm Marty Wood.
I'm the owner of Wood's Pawnbrokers.
I was born here.
It's a long time to be in Atlantic City.
Years ago, a guy brought in a left arm prosthesis, laid it on the counter.
I said, "Gee, we're looking for a right arm.
" From 1854 probably up to around the '50s, Atlantic City was the number 1 domestic tourist destination in the country.
Any building in Atlantic City, you look at it, somebody had a big idea, a dream "If we build this huge monstrosity, "people are going to come, they're going to spend a lot of money, and we're all going to get rich.
" The Revel was the biggest private construction project in the history of New Jersey.
Nothing else was as expensive as the Revel.
We have a resort destination.
We have a neighborhood.
We have a reanchoring of our town.
And that to me is the celebration of Revel.
My name is Michael Hawke.
I'm the owner of Tony Boloney's.
My father, who owned property here, said, "Listen, you should get into real estate.
" And this property came up, and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, like "Listen, this is something that will be good.
" They're building Revel two blocks away.
" It was going to be a ultra-luxury resort.
"We're not just a casino.
We're not going to make our money off gaming.
" Which, I think, ultimately, from anyone you speak to, led to their demise.
30 years ago, when casinos first opened in Atlantic City, we were the only show on the East Coast.
Things changed.
The next thing you know, casinos opened in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, of course Delaware.
They have siphoned away business from Atlantic City.
There used to be hundreds of buses come in here every day.
Now maybe there's 50 buses a day.
I don't know.
Revel was going to transform Atlantic City.
- Well, that didn't happen.
- The people didn't come.
Atlantic City's Revel Casino opened just two years ago and cost $2.
4 billion to build.
Tonight it's closing its doors in what may be the city's most spectacular failure.
They didn't last very long.
So now you had, at the end of the Boardwalk, this gleaming tribute to failure, and, you know, in a way, that sort of encapsulates the story of Atlantic City.
So along comes this guy Glenn Straub, this investor from Florida.
Uh, buys it for pennies on the dollar.
His idea at the outset was, you know, to convert this giant hotel and casino into what he was calling a tower of geniuses.
This tower of geniuses.
Fill it with scientists and, you know, solve the problems of the world.
Astronauts were going to live over at Revel Whatever.
The deal never went through.
It never happened.
So what are you going to do, tear it down and sell off the parts? The idea of bulldozing a $2 1/2 billion building two, three years after it's built, it's hard to fathom, but it may be the best thing for that end of town.
A hundred calls a day from random people.
"Where are you guys located? Where are you?" "We're on the Boardwalk by Caesar's.
" Walk down all the way past the Showboat, which is closed, and the Revel, which is closed, past the gates and makeshift barrier on the Boardwalk, hop that, walk another block, and then walk down a block into an empty field.
That's where we are.
Think about the amount of people that actually take you up on that offer.
Nothing has ever worked here other than what's here already: the beach and the Boardwalk.
If you close your eyes and you open them and you face the beach from the Boardwalk, you hear the birds, and you hear you smell the salt water air, and you think you could be anywhere.
It just so happens that you're in apocalyptic Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Well, I couldn't describe Atlantic City in three words, but I will give you one phrase, and that is "We get knocked down, - but we get back up.
" - Three words? God bless America.
Last June, at the end of a week, when nine men and women were brutally assassinated by a racist young man in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, I walked a long, rectangular room at New York's Museum of Modern Art where Jacob Lawrence's "Migration" series was on display.
I had seen many of the paintings before in books and magazines, but never in person.
I'd somehow expected them to be as colossal as their subject: The 55-year-plus mass migration of more than 6 million African-Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the Northern United States, beginning in 1915.
The 60 spare and at times appropriately stark tempura paintings Are underscored by descriptive captions written by the artist, whose parents moved from Virginia and South Carolina to New Jersey, where he was born.
I longed to be in the presence of Lawrence's migrants and survivors.
I was yearning for their witness and fellowship, to borrow language from some of the churches that ended up being lifelines for the Great Migration's new arrivals.
But what kept me glued to these dark silhouettes is how beautifully and heartbreakingly Jacob Lawrence captured black bodies in motion and danger and in pain.
The bowed heads of the hungry and the curved backs of the mourners helped the Great Migration to gain and keep its momentum, along with the promise of less abject poverty in the North, better educational opportunities, and the right to vote.
Human beings have been migrating since the beginning of time.
We've always traveled from place to place looking for better opportunities where they exist.
We are not always welcomed, especially if we are viewed as different and dangerous or if we end up, as the novelist Toni Morrison described in her Nobel lecture, on the edges of towns that cannot bear our company.
Will we ever have a home in this place? Or will we always be set adrift from the only homes we have ever known? White supremacists like to speak of black bodies as though they are dangerous weapons, just as xenophobes speak of migrants and immigrants as though they were an invasion force or something akin to biological warfare.
In an essay called The Fear of Black Bodies In Motion, Wallace Best, a religion and Great Migration scholar, writes that a black body in motion is never without consequence.
It is always a signifier of something scripted and coded, and for the most part throughout our history, black bodies in motion have been deemed a threat.
These days it seems that black bodies are more threatened than they have ever been so far in this century.
Or maybe we just have more ways to document the beatings, shootings, and other abuses that have been suffered in the recent past.
Black bodies are increasingly becoming battlefields upon which horrors are routinely executed, each one so close to the last that we barely have the time to fully grieve and mourn.
The massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and other acts of violence against black men, women, and children once again show the hypervigilance required to live and love, work and play, travel and pray in a black body.
And once again, we are seeing black bodies in motion and danger and in pain, and we keep asking ourselves "When will this end? When will it stop?"
What did I tell you? Whenever me and my wife met, she had already had Rhyder, and he was 3 years old.
We went to a little rodeo, and he seen some sheep riding, and he said, "I want to do that.
" We put him on one, and he got off, and he just had this big smile on his face and was laughing and thought it was the coolest thing.
Whenever I started practicing a whole bunch and I started getting a lot better, and I was I was world champion.
- Ready? - Ready? Bust him.
Bust him.
Get a hold! Get a hold! Get over there! - Get over there! - Whoa.
Hey.
Get up.
Spurred yourself in the butt, didn't you? - He never touched you.
- I fell on a rock! - Show me where there's a rock.
- Right there! Look.
Look.
Is that a rock? That ain't a rock.
You spurred yourself in the butt because you let go.
Get up.
You're getting on another one.
- You can't let go.
- Ow, ow, ow.
Walk it off.
What are you crying about? What are you sniveling about? What hurts? - What hurts? - My hand.
- Why does your hand hurt? - My rope was too tight.
No.
Your hand don't hurt because your rope's too tight.
Your hand hurts because you're a wiener.
Quit crying.
Or you can go play tiddlywinks.
You want to go play tiddlywinks? - No.
- I know you don't.
You want to ride calves.
I know you do.
You're good at it.
Give me some.
Are you a champ or chump? - Champ.
- Champ or chump? Champ or chump? - Champ.
- Are you sure? It's tough to make them tough.
- You sure? - Yes, sir.
All right, give me another.
All right, be bad.
He has a hard time.
He wants to do it.
He does get upset, you know, and he kind of freaks out at times.
But I've never let him get hurt.
- You can do it.
- Uh-huh.
- It's a rough sport.
- Okay? You get up and go get on the next one.
- You ready? - Squeeze.
Buck him.
Squeeze.
Don't let go.
Stay with him! Stay with him! Stay with him! Don't let go! There you go.
What you did right there is trying.
If you do that every time, the rest of it will come together, you hear me? - Yes, sir.
- Okay.
Come on, Rhyder.
- Hey, is this good? - It's a flake of hay.
Here, Bucky.
Just do this right here.
Take both wires and just twist it up.
Rhyder likes to help me out here at the ranch.
I haul bulls for a living because it's in my blood, I guess.
The ranch that we're at here now is Diamond S Bucking Bulls.
I've worked here six and a half years.
What we're trying to do is generate superstars.
We roughly have, probably, 10,000 acres.
I grew up rodeoing.
That's how I made my living.
I was 26, I guess.
Uh, I finally quit riding bulls.
I hung it up.
Now I can be home to help Rhyder, you know, practice more.
We're going to the YBR World Finals in Abilene, Texas.
So we're going to ride good this week, and you're going to win some money and some buckles.
Are you going to keep riding calves, or are you going to quit after World? - And calves? - No.
You said I'm done riding calves.
- I'm riding ponies.
- Well, if you choose to be done, then you choose to be done.
Yeah.
Okay.
For every calf that you cover, I'll give you $25 out of my pocket.
- You don't even have $25.
- Yeah, I do.
Plus whatever you win.
If you ride three calves and then plus your short ride, you're going to make $100 just from me.
You got faith in yourself? - Huh? - Yes.
Okay.
Just prove everybody wrong.
I'm going to take 12 bulls out to the YBR World Finals.
I hope them kids do good on them.
I do, too.
I don't wish bad luck for nobody, but we'll see how good of riders they really are.
That's right.
Abilene, Texas, it is the eighth annual YBR World Finals.
It's all about the kids.
And let me tell you what about the prize money.
By the end of it all, we're going to be paying out over $80,000 to the champions.
Well, it's time to start go-round number 1.
This is the Mutton Busting.
First cowboy coming to you all the way from Oklahoma.
Yes! Yes! Atta boy.
Stay with that bull.
Numbers coming in on the right.
How about a 70.
5? We start in Mutton Busting 4 to 6.
They ride sheep because you want the kids to learn, and they learn their fundamentals of riding as they get older.
Then they graduate into calves, then junior steers, then they go to our senior steers, then our junior bulls, and then they're in the big bulls.
- Keep on! Go, go, go! - Move! Move! You got one job, and that's to cover your bull.
Don't think about it.
Just do your job.
Stay with him! And there are some out there that take their kids to these things so they can get by.
It's extra income for them.
Ladies and gentlemen, here comes a young cowboy inside the calf riding.
Bring it out, son! Come on! No! No score.
Keep hustling them feet.
If they're slipping, drive him to the ground.
Don't quit.
Be bad.
Are you a champ or chump? - Champ.
- All right.
Be bad.
You got it? Let's go this way.
Go this way.
- Do you want money? - Yes, sir.
Then you got to stay on.
Back number 118 is where we're going next.
- Stand over it.
- Rhyder Rutledge, Weatherford, Texas.
Reserve champion in the Bull Busting of 2014 - stepping it up.
- Get a hold.
You ready? - Get a hold.
- Here we go, Rhyder.
Get a hold! Get a hold! Get a hold! Go ahead! Go ahead! Go ahead! Come on! Yeah! Yeah! When you focus, you stay in the middle, huh? - Better.
- Good job.
That'll move Rhyder Rutledge into first place.
Awesome, dude.
I'm so proud of you.
See? All that stuff Monday, you whining, throwing a fit.
You rode your butt off.
Good job, kid.
I'm so proud of you.
Good job.
The Western way of life is the cowboy was always tough.
And these kids, they suck it up from 4 years old all the way up to 18, 19 years old.
- Come on! - Cowboy done got it done.
They get out there and get stepped on, and you have a bunch of people out there thinking, Oh, they're hurt, and they get up and walk out.
And they're back here the next day.
They're gritting it out.
You got to admire them for that.
That's part of our Western heritage.
The time has come.
The stage is set.
Time for the open bull riders to come out and showcase what they got.
She was about 6 years old when she got on her first calf.
Got bucked off.
And everyone kind of figured that that would be the end of it.
In fact, the announcer said "That will do her in" unless she's tougher than an old boot.
" They all said that I would never be back, and here I am 10, 11 years later, going to World Finals.
The counter with the nickname Augie from Mangum, Oklahoma, she's a five-time YBR qualifier reserve champion Be loose and move it now.
Be loose! - The only cowgirl in the - Hustle now.
Hustle! Folks, are you ready for August Hopper? - Here we go! - Ride, August, ride! Come on, Augie! - Coming down early.
- Whatever.
Good job.
She is disappointed.
- You did good! - You did good, Augie! Man You got one more.
Well, that looks like that'll drop the curtain on the open bull riding.
Folks, we'll see you tomorrow.
- So are you hurting? - Nothing Ibuprofen can't fix.
I think August probably got one of the strongest bulls out last night, and he just jerked her out of there.
I leaned back and got on the end of my arm.
But that's excitement of being at World Finals Trying to prove that I'm a girl, I can ride with the boys.
And she either tightens up - or just tries so hard.
- Yeah.
We're not out of it by no means.
- You ride it all out.
Get mad.
Let's see it.
- Come on, Rhyder.
Get over.
Put your leg over.
- Speed! Speed! Speed! - Come on, Rhyder! I'm so proud.
- You owe me $25.
- I know.
I owe you 50 bucks now.
Hell, he made 150 just off us.
Here you go.
Thank you.
I need you to initial right here, okay? Here's your check, baby.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
There you go.
- What do you say? - Thank you.
Let me see it so I can put it in my wallet so you don't lose it.
Guess we can go buy you a saddle now.
It made him pretty proud whenever he saw me ride that calf out.
As I get older, eventually I will start riding bulls, but I might just start working at a ranch.
Everybody says a girl shouldn't ride.
I'll have that fear, you know, just like any parent does.
It's something that you can't let the kids see.
That will scare them.
Nerves come with the game.
If you're not nervous, you should quit.
When I'm climbing down on the bull.
I can't really hear the announcer, the bullfighters, anything else that's going on.
My dad's the one person that I can hear.
- You've got to be moving! Now hustle.
- You don't really have time to think about what move I need to make, where I need to place my hips.
You just have to react to it.
Eight seconds seems really quick unless you're on the back of a bull.
At times I wonder if maybe I'm pushing her too hard or if she's doing it for me.
But I don't really think it's that.
I think she loves it.
Do I worry about her getting hurt? Yes.
I look at her and say she's such a sweet girl, she shouldn't be riding bulls.
She should stick to softball and basketball.
But I'm not going to break her heart.
There's injuries to come, whether I'm a boy or whether I'm a girl.
It's just a matter of when, and if you can't handle some pain, don't be in this sport.
Whoo! Come on, Elvis.
It's hard to make a living off of the ranching business.
I spend a lot of time having to support it with another job.
Elvis! It's a love.
You don't love it, you won't be there.
Mainly I've got calves, but I do have a little pen of bulls for the kids to ride on.
It's a pretty expensive sport, especially if you're doing it every weekend, like we are.
Some kids have sponsors.
Ours don't.
Ours are sponsored by Mom and Dad.
If your dream is to be a bull rider, you got to be able to practice and learn to ride and make your moves.
I love rodeoing.
I love getting on bulls.
Be aggressive and come riding.
I grew up watching the PBR with my dad.
I used to tell my dad "That'll be me some day.
You'll be watching me on TV some day.
" Hustle! Get over! When you think of most cities, they're there because at one point they started out as a port or as a mining town.
There was some reason for them to exist where they were.
Atlantic City is one of the first cities in the United States where they just imagined there being a place there for the purpose of building a place there.
"Let's just build it, and they will come.
" What they had in mind was a place where people could get away from industrial Philadelphia, go to the beach, clean air, just to get out of the city.
These aristocrats wanted a place that you'd be able to come and let your hair down and engage in all these guilty pleasures.
They'd catch a train down and spend a day in Atlantic City.
Many visitors get sand in their shoes, as the saying goes, and become permanent citizens of this vacation capital.
I'm Marty Wood.
I'm the owner of Wood's Pawnbrokers.
I was born here.
It's a long time to be in Atlantic City.
Years ago, a guy brought in a left arm prosthesis, laid it on the counter.
I said, "Gee, we're looking for a right arm.
" From 1854 probably up to around the '50s, Atlantic City was the number 1 domestic tourist destination in the country.
Any building in Atlantic City, you look at it, somebody had a big idea, a dream "If we build this huge monstrosity, "people are going to come, they're going to spend a lot of money, and we're all going to get rich.
" The Revel was the biggest private construction project in the history of New Jersey.
Nothing else was as expensive as the Revel.
We have a resort destination.
We have a neighborhood.
We have a reanchoring of our town.
And that to me is the celebration of Revel.
My name is Michael Hawke.
I'm the owner of Tony Boloney's.
My father, who owned property here, said, "Listen, you should get into real estate.
" And this property came up, and he just kept pushing me, pushing me, like "Listen, this is something that will be good.
" They're building Revel two blocks away.
" It was going to be a ultra-luxury resort.
"We're not just a casino.
We're not going to make our money off gaming.
" Which, I think, ultimately, from anyone you speak to, led to their demise.
30 years ago, when casinos first opened in Atlantic City, we were the only show on the East Coast.
Things changed.
The next thing you know, casinos opened in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, of course Delaware.
They have siphoned away business from Atlantic City.
There used to be hundreds of buses come in here every day.
Now maybe there's 50 buses a day.
I don't know.
Revel was going to transform Atlantic City.
- Well, that didn't happen.
- The people didn't come.
Atlantic City's Revel Casino opened just two years ago and cost $2.
4 billion to build.
Tonight it's closing its doors in what may be the city's most spectacular failure.
They didn't last very long.
So now you had, at the end of the Boardwalk, this gleaming tribute to failure, and, you know, in a way, that sort of encapsulates the story of Atlantic City.
So along comes this guy Glenn Straub, this investor from Florida.
Uh, buys it for pennies on the dollar.
His idea at the outset was, you know, to convert this giant hotel and casino into what he was calling a tower of geniuses.
This tower of geniuses.
Fill it with scientists and, you know, solve the problems of the world.
Astronauts were going to live over at Revel Whatever.
The deal never went through.
It never happened.
So what are you going to do, tear it down and sell off the parts? The idea of bulldozing a $2 1/2 billion building two, three years after it's built, it's hard to fathom, but it may be the best thing for that end of town.
A hundred calls a day from random people.
"Where are you guys located? Where are you?" "We're on the Boardwalk by Caesar's.
" Walk down all the way past the Showboat, which is closed, and the Revel, which is closed, past the gates and makeshift barrier on the Boardwalk, hop that, walk another block, and then walk down a block into an empty field.
That's where we are.
Think about the amount of people that actually take you up on that offer.
Nothing has ever worked here other than what's here already: the beach and the Boardwalk.
If you close your eyes and you open them and you face the beach from the Boardwalk, you hear the birds, and you hear you smell the salt water air, and you think you could be anywhere.
It just so happens that you're in apocalyptic Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Well, I couldn't describe Atlantic City in three words, but I will give you one phrase, and that is "We get knocked down, - but we get back up.
" - Three words? God bless America.
Last June, at the end of a week, when nine men and women were brutally assassinated by a racist young man in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, I walked a long, rectangular room at New York's Museum of Modern Art where Jacob Lawrence's "Migration" series was on display.
I had seen many of the paintings before in books and magazines, but never in person.
I'd somehow expected them to be as colossal as their subject: The 55-year-plus mass migration of more than 6 million African-Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the Northern United States, beginning in 1915.
The 60 spare and at times appropriately stark tempura paintings Are underscored by descriptive captions written by the artist, whose parents moved from Virginia and South Carolina to New Jersey, where he was born.
I longed to be in the presence of Lawrence's migrants and survivors.
I was yearning for their witness and fellowship, to borrow language from some of the churches that ended up being lifelines for the Great Migration's new arrivals.
But what kept me glued to these dark silhouettes is how beautifully and heartbreakingly Jacob Lawrence captured black bodies in motion and danger and in pain.
The bowed heads of the hungry and the curved backs of the mourners helped the Great Migration to gain and keep its momentum, along with the promise of less abject poverty in the North, better educational opportunities, and the right to vote.
Human beings have been migrating since the beginning of time.
We've always traveled from place to place looking for better opportunities where they exist.
We are not always welcomed, especially if we are viewed as different and dangerous or if we end up, as the novelist Toni Morrison described in her Nobel lecture, on the edges of towns that cannot bear our company.
Will we ever have a home in this place? Or will we always be set adrift from the only homes we have ever known? White supremacists like to speak of black bodies as though they are dangerous weapons, just as xenophobes speak of migrants and immigrants as though they were an invasion force or something akin to biological warfare.
In an essay called The Fear of Black Bodies In Motion, Wallace Best, a religion and Great Migration scholar, writes that a black body in motion is never without consequence.
It is always a signifier of something scripted and coded, and for the most part throughout our history, black bodies in motion have been deemed a threat.
These days it seems that black bodies are more threatened than they have ever been so far in this century.
Or maybe we just have more ways to document the beatings, shootings, and other abuses that have been suffered in the recent past.
Black bodies are increasingly becoming battlefields upon which horrors are routinely executed, each one so close to the last that we barely have the time to fully grieve and mourn.
The massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and other acts of violence against black men, women, and children once again show the hypervigilance required to live and love, work and play, travel and pray in a black body.
And once again, we are seeing black bodies in motion and danger and in pain, and we keep asking ourselves "When will this end? When will it stop?"