The old lady in the blue parka starts talking almost before I set down my bag behind her. "You know," she says, like she's sharing something confidential, "I'm retired, I live alone, I got a big ol' apartment, and when those four walls start closing in on me..."

"Time to get out of town?" I finish for her.

"Right!" She says, and we both laugh. We're waiting for the 12:01pm casino express to Atlantic City, and as far as I can tell, we're in the happiest corner of the otherwise grim Port Authority Bus Terminal. There's a crew of white-haired regulars here at the front of the line, greeting each other with smiles and familiar jokes. They hug the ticket agent when she arrives. My line-mate turns to me again: "People say, 'oh, you're wasting your money.' I'm 88 years old, I worked for years, I've been retired for 22 -- what do you want from me? I might as well enjoy what's left."

I'm not even on the bus yet, and already Atlantic City is surprising me.

*

My two-night trip to Atlantic City completes the trifecta of American sin cities: I visited Reno for a night during a visit to the Bay Area in 2007, and spent four nights in Las Vegas last summer, a detour on my way back to New Orleans after an LA/Beijing/San Francisco combo.

Reno simultaneously amused, disgusted and saddened me; Vegas awed, repelled and seduced me. AC has the sadness and repulsion factors, certainly -- and the humorous kitsch, in spades -- but it's also the first one of the three that I have truly liked. And I'm not talking ironic hipster-love for the grotesque tackiness of the casinos, or a furtive, guilty-pleasure kind of liking, either. I am talking about a genuine enjoyment of and appreciation for the place.

Atlantic City, for me, is like a fusion of Reno, Coney Island, the state fair and the suburban outlet mall -- and if you know me, you know that's (mostly) a compliment.

You can't miss the casinos, of course: they tower over the boardwalk in a long-shadowed row, more imposing than Reno's collection of neon-lit buildings but without the no-holds-barred outlandishness of the Vegas strip. The Trump Taj Mahal is certainly loud and tacky, but it lacks the bizarre hold that New York New York or Luxor held over me -- I have no particular urge to take pictures of it. I don't even need to look at it for very long. The Caesar's here, too, is not quite as shiny, doesn't have the same glitzy edge; to put the difference in shoe language, the Vegas Caesar's has a Jimmy Choo boutique, while AC's has a Steve Madden.

Behind them, the real Atlantic City is easy to spot. Rows of dilapidated houses and apartment blocks peek out from between the hotel towers, just a few steps away. Young local women in casino uniforms push strollers on the boardwalk, kitchen staffers on smoke breaks shout back and forth to each other, and somehow, it all feels real. Even on the casino floor, I feel less like I've entered a bizarre vortex; the whirring lights and sounds are less dizzying, somehow, less hypnotic.

Maybe it's the ocean that does it. Even a wall of mega-casinos can't compete with Old Man Atlantic. The water's always there; the music blasting from the casinos out over the boardwalk might cut down on the sound of it, but there's nothing Donald Trump can do to spoil the taste, smell and feel of the cold ocean air. And away from the casinos, down on the beach itself, you can turn your back and pretend there's nothing behind you but sand; ahead of you, there's nothing but water.

It's a fact that no amount of glamming up can take all the seediness out of a port town -- and maybe, in Atlantic City, the reverse is true: maybe it's the ocean that stops the place from giving in to pure seediness, too.

And, probably more than anything else, it's the water that's driving my fast-growing fondness.

I walk the length of the boardwalk and back as the sun sinks behind the Hilton at the far end, past the shuttered standbys of an American beach town: funnel cake shacks, saltwater taffy shops, ratty arcades, and a silent, unlit ferris wheel. Almost everything is closed up -- only the odd gift shop, a couple of pizza joints and, of course, the casinos are open for business -- and I can't tell how much of the boardwalk's sleepy vibe stems from the off-season, from the fact that it's a cold Tuesday afternoon, or from hard times hitting hard. Or, hell, maybe a place like Atlantic City always has a touch of that semi-shuttered, seen-better-days vibe, even when business is booming?

A few bums hang around the edges of the boardwalk asking for change. A man combs the sand with a metal detector. Handfuls of tourists drift along, too, but the palm readers, ice cream vendors and miserable sandwichboard men -- the usual boardwalk flotsam -- are all absent.

Part of me hopes that, if I came back in the summer, AC would be unrecognizable, the wide white beach overflowing with happy families, the Days Inn filled to bursting, and the wily entrepreneurs fleecing them up and down the boardwalk. Part of me wonders if it's ever been like that, here, or if it's always been a place that feels like it's about to fall off the edge.

All along the boardwalk, metal plates on the benches have been engraved by private sponsors. When I'm almost back at my hotel, I pause by one and take a closer look. It reads: So many happy memories.