There can be a certain charm in traveling to deteriorating places. You get to play anthropologist and historian trying to imagine what once was. It’s remarkable how relative human development in certain localities, such as the rust belt or Russia, can decline precipitously in a matter of decades.
One of my favorite YouTube travel shows is called “Bald and bankrupt“, which is about a gentleman named Benjamin from England, who is a semi-native Russian speaker and who travels primarily around the former East Bloc. Benjamin travels in pursuit of uncovering relics of the glory days in the former Soviet Union, all while correctly exposing the humanitarian disaster that is communism, be it touring the Gulags or KGB torture facilities.
What I particularly like about this show is that there are no rose-colored glasses and beating around the bush as the audience gets to see a raw and authentic perspective about places that are not well known outside the 2nd world. Benjamin has many man-on-the-street segments where he asks locals unfiltered questions like “What’s your opinion on Gorbachev?”
In my final weeks living in New Jersey, I took some Bald and bankrupt-inspired trips. The first being a drive up to the Poconos and Scranton. I had been up to Scranton once before a couple years ago to see Steamtown, which honestly, aside from a couple famous steam trains, isn’t anything to call home about. Steamtown was a steam train exhibit originally created by F. Nelson Blount in the Lake Sunapee and Monadnock regions of New Hampshire, later moving to Vermont and then finally to Scranton, PA, as part of a pork-barrel spending project later turned National Park. The default train ride that Steamtown offers is pretty lame compared to other heritage railroads, such as those in the Delaware Valley or the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Right next door to Steamtown is the Electric City Trolley Museum, which I found far more interesting, and the main reason for a return visit to Scranton. They offer trolly/streetcar rides down a 5-mile track. The trollies reach speeds of up to 30 MPH, making this the fastest heritage railroad that I’ve been on. Amazing to think that less than 100 years ago, trollies were the primary form of transportation.
Adjacent to Steamtown is the Steamtown Mall, yet another failed government boondoggle to revitalize Scranton. The mall is full of vacant storefronts, a greasy pizza shop, and multiple discount cellphone carriers. Boost Mobile and Metro PCS tend not to set up shop in the nicest part of town.
I did manage to eat at a decent ramen restaurant in town called the Peculiar Kitchen. If for whatever reason you find yourself in Scranton and hungry for ramen, this is the place to go.
A week later, I continued my bald and bankrupt tour in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which was once the premier summer destination for city dwellers in Philadelphia, including both of my maternal grandparents. Immediately upon parking on a street next to casino, which towered above, I felt a seedy aura.
Again, much like Scranton, Atlantic City has seen better days. There were many abandoned storefronts as I walked along the boardwalk. Electronic billboards lined the boardwalk every 50 yards and flashed obnoxious ads. Perhaps the most striking thing about Atlantic City was the demographic of people in attendance. I felt like I was the only sober, height-weight proportional, Caucasian, young male. I felt very out of place to say the least.
After a stroll around the Bass Pro Shop, I made my departure for Ocean City, which at only 9 miles away from Atlantic City, felt like a world apart.