Atlantic City, located smack dab on New Jersey's coastline is a gold mine for ethnography. If you can filter out the sensory overload of sights sounds and the smells of fried everything, the people watching is fantastic. It's a essentially a bubbling stew of people, activity and human behavior--you can observe pretty much any type of situation from gambling to surfing to just about any form of street performance.
But my favorite part of the trip was walking along the famous (or infamous) Boardwalk at 6:30 in the morning. At this time the usually bustling Boardwalk is eerily quiet with the exeption of a few runners and local stragglers. The stillness was perfect for appreciating some of the more authentic establishments in Atlantic City. Hundreds of tiny storefronts still exist among the newer tourist traps and commercial chains and each time you take a look at one, it's as if you've entered a mini time warp as the signage and interiors look as if they haven't been updated in decades. In a world of change, it's refreshing to see that some things don't.
