“Maybe if people see what’s going on to our f*cking beautiful home, they’ll want to do something about it,” says Erik Klemetti, at the start of an Atlantic City documentary he and friends from the @AtlanticCityCrust Instagram feed have put together. It’s a 40-minute mashup of videos Klemetti and the Crust crew filmed in Atlantic City, including interviews with all of your favorite AC characters. And in amid the chaos and confusion there are some wise words spoken about the Queen of Resorts.
We’ve written about Klemetti before. Earlier this year, he set up a GoFundMe page to help out Alex, who was sleeping rough behind an Atlantic City gas station for more than a decade. Lynda Cohen of BreakingAC also wrote about Klemetti and the Atlantic City Crust when they wound up capturing on film the aftermath of a shooting at Tropicana earlier this year. The loose-knit group, armed with phone cameras, have been capturing one of Atlantic City’s many realities for a while now. As one interviewee in the documentary says, “AC Crust is the real deal. It captures what’s really going on in Atlantic City.” And yes, it’s just one slice of the city, one sampling of interviews. But it really is an authentic slice.
Here’s the full documentary: