The Optimist

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William K. Cheatham attends most of the meetings of the City Council of Atlantic City. He attends the board meetings of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. He is president of the Board of Trustees of the Atlantic City Free Public Library, a member of the Shade Tree Committee and an alternate on the board of the Atlantic City Municipal Utilities Authority. He was active in the First Ward Civic Association and was a regular at the meetings of the city Taxpayers Association (which reviewed the municipal budget) but those organizations no longer assemble on a regular basis. He’s a former member of the county construction board.

More about: Government, Voices, Atlantic City, CRDA, disenfranchisement, government, segregation, William Cheatham

Atlantic City Awards Bike Loop Construction Contract

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Atlantic City’s purchasing department on Wednesday awarded Egg Harbor City’s Command Company a contract to build out the chunk of a planned bike loop that will connect the beach to Gardner’s Basin via specially-adapted city streets in the inlet.

More about: Atlantic City, Exploring South Jersey, Government, absecon island, Atlantic City, Bike Loop, Bike route, bikeway grant

The Sporting Life: Gather Ye Tootblans While Ye May

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It started with a simple question: What to make of Ryan Theriot? Do you know what his slash line is? Do you need to know? The Cubs shortstop was beloved of fans, who will, let’s face it, tend to focus their affection on players who get their uniforms dirty and don’t cost a lot of money, and “The Riot”, as he was known, was an affirmative on both those counts.“He dove for balls to his left. He dove for balls to his right.

More about: Sport

A Pine Barrens Documentary Nears the Finish Line

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There’s a scene in David Scott Kessler’s film about the Pine Barrens where Steven Carty, a basket-weaver from Mount Holly, reflects on the nature of Piney identity. Steven’s a Bozarth, which makes him Piney royalty, and he’s Lenape Indian (“the first Pineys”) on his mother’s side, but he has an open mind on the question of what makes a Piney a Piney—if you say you’re a Piney, you are one. But he does have one pet peeve. “If you ask me, claiming to be a ‘redneck’ does not make one a Piney,” he says. “Some folks forget the Mason-Dixon line ends at Delaware.”

Apt words during these interesting times in the history of our Republic, when identity crises have burst forth into our political culture with such unprecedented force.

More about: The Pine Barrens

The Legal Fight Behind Atlantic City’s Hot Pink Mess

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Atlantic City’s Ducktown Arts District has a new fuchsia warehouse, courtesy of Jimmy DiNatale, its colorful owner, who is in the process of suing everyone’s favorite state agency, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, over what he says is CRDA’s failure to disclose environmental contamination on the site, where he’d planned to open a Hooters and a sports bar. Last year, while lawyers for DiNatale and CRDA were writing pointed letters to one another, a group of intravenous drug users set up residence in the empty warehouse at 2231 Arctic Avenue, and the property began to fill up with syringes. The pathway between the warehouse and the neighboring Noyes Arts Garage—where last summer Mayor Guardian hosted a tie-your-own-bowtie event and kids played—became littered with drug paraphernalia. Earlier this winter, Mo Colon and Gladys Coppage, two artists who work out of the Arts Garage, noticed the spike in the number of syringes and took it upon themselves to do some cleanup around the warehouse. They found surgical gloves, ER records, tampons, needles, etc.

More about: Atlantic City

Boardwalk Beans: How a Quest for the Perfect Cup of Coffee Turned into a Business

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Damon Germano and Gabrielle Cianfrani just wanted to make a better cup of coffee. Somewhere along the line, their personal mission turned into a business. Now, from a corner of Pleasantville not far from the old Ireland Coffee Company plant, Boardwalk Beans is roasting small batches of carefully-selected coffee for retail and wholesale customers. Germano used to work for Ireland, back when Ireland had a small store in one of the Atlantic City casinos. “I was really into coffee, I had the beret, the turtleneck – the whole thing,” he said.

More about: Business, Route 40 Partners, Atlantic City, coffee, pleasantville

It’s No Longer the ‘Trump’ Taj Mahal

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Trump Taj Mahal

Our touchy president’s name (“Trump”) has been removed from Atlantic City’s Taj Mahal Casino, the Eighth Wonder of the World. The casino has been owned by Carl Icahn, who closed it last fall, out of spite (JK!). But Trump had an agreement to keep his name on the classy property. Apparently that’s changed. Here’s a facade of the Taj as it looked in August 2016.

More about: Business

Brown Park Update

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Last December, after years of false starts, renovation began on Brown Memorial Park in Atlantic City, which had become a hang-out for drug abusers, homeless and mentally ill. Now it’s fenced off and construction crews are at work. We stopped by to ask the neighbors what they thought of the changes. You can see our original interview with Councilman Kaleem Shabazz, who spearheaded the effort to renovate the park here.

More about: Voices

A Bistro With Big Ambition

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Michael Brennan’s first job out of high school was at Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia. He says he walked into the restaurant at age 18, in an ill-fitting shirt, to find Chef Georges Perrier standing in the door. Perrier hired him on the spot to work front-of-house, probably because restaurant week was coming up and they were about to get slammed. Now 24, Michael’s got his own restaurant, Cardinal Bistro, in Ventnor, but he still seems to have a sense of timing.In the middle of what was supposed to be a “soft opening” this summer, the restaurant critic Craig LaBan wrote a review calling him “one of the young chefs to watch this year at the Shore.” Suddenly, the kitchen was full-throttle.

More about: Business, Cardinal Bistro, Georges Perrier, Le Bec-Fin, Michael Fagan, Sherry McCracken, Ventor, Waiter Nation

Baltimore Grill Sale Close?

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The hot chat Saturday night during our bike bar crawl was that the “Wet Willie’s Consortium” is buying the Baltimore Grill—Atlantic City’s iconic, much beloved and completely miraculous spaghetti-and-pizza restaurant—from the Tarsitanos and Riches, who have owned it for decades. The Baltimore Grill is impossible to describe (for me anyway) objectively. It’s like a scene from Mean Streets (this one) has been lifted out of 1973 and carried forward through time to be dropped down across the street from the school where you went to kindergarten. It’s an institution. Wet Willie’s sells slushies spiked with high-octane rum out of big swirly vats, like you see on Spring Break.

More about: Atlantic City, Business