Yes, it gets more crowded in the summer because people come for the beach, but for most of the year it’s a pretty desolate place. “It was a warm day, but there weren’t many people around,” he says.

When Rose arrived in Atlantic City in November 2016, the glamour he remembered from the '80s had nearly all faded. Former President Donald Trumps shuttered hotel and casino in Atlantic City, N.J., was demolished Wednesday morning, collapsing amid gentle cheers from the crowd. Today, the Trump Plaza is closed, the Trump Marina Hotel is now the Golden Nugget, and the Trump Taj Mahal (the last property with the president’s name on it) is under new ownership. Although Trump boasts that he kept squeezing money out of the casinos until the end, thousands of people lost their jobs and dozens of contractors were forced to accept a fraction of what they were owed. Burdened by high-interest debt, disappointing revenue, and over-expansion-by the early '90s Atlantic City boasted the Trump Plaza, Trump Castle, and Trump Taj Mahal-the casinos started going bankrupt. The collapse of Trump’s casino empire was as dramatic, if not quite as rapid, as its rise.