T A B L E_T A L K How do you save money when you travel? Share your tips on being a thrifty tourist in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The cheapest air ticket around By Dawn MacKeen Couriers fly halfway around the world at half (or less) the normal price (09/22/98) Paris' cafe renaissance By David Downie There's a lively new scene in the City of Caffeine (09/21/98) The heart of a tourist hustler By Lisa Dreier Lonely in India, she befriended the local playboy. Who could know what would happen next? (09/18/98) In shackles with the Freedom Bag By Carol Lloyd The perfect luggage -- for a pygmy (09/17/98) Where am I gonna go today? By Aaron Paulson Finding a job overseas through the Internet (09/16/98) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		-------------swimsuits ---- A N D  M O R E ! Past and present collide at Atlantic City's annual Miss America extravaganza. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY BEVERLY GAGE There she is, Miss America, There she is, your ideal, The dreams of a million girls who are more than pretty, May come true in Atlantic City. -- Miss America anthem, written by Bernie Wayne ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Nicole Johnson, Miss America 1999, believes in God, perseverance and Elizabeth Dole. According to the official pageant program, she is 24 years old, a Roanoke, Va., native, and hopes some day to be a "national news anchor." Her hair is brown; her "talent" is "jazz vocal." Her "best compliment" was being told that "she has a special light that shines through her smile and her eyes -- a light that shows her heart." As a diabetic, she hopes to use the "power of the crown" (one of this year's pageant slogans) to raise awareness of that disease -- making her, in the judges' estimation, the Miss who best represents this year's pageant theme of "self-expression." She is not, as former title winners repeatedly reminded last Saturday's television audience, simply a bathing beauty. In a bid for respectability, the Miss America Organization has tried in recent years to distance itself from a flesh-peddling, flesh-pleasing past. "What's Hot" for women this year, according to the official pageant program, is "being a role model, healthy living, swimsuits with sandals, a natural look, volunteerism, brains." "What's Not!" includes "being an idol, fad diets, swimsuits with 'pumps,' lots of makeup" and "being worshipped." The "platform" issue -- Miss America's chosen social concern -- is the buzzword and focal point of the pageant, with 51 young women crusading for causes from the vague ("Promoting Character Development," "Youth Motivation") to the of-the-moment ("Freedom Through Choice: Teenage Sexual Postponement," "Privacy Rights for Public Figures") to the ultra-specific ("Literacy: St.A.R.T. -- Students and Athletes Reading Together"). The perennial swimsuit debate notwithstanding, the public makeover of Miss America from a "passive beauty queen" to a "dynamic, relevant community activist" seems to be proceeding with the utmost sincerity and determination. Yet, somehow, Miss America is not a woman of the '90s. The very ethic of the Miss America pageant -- wholesomeness, perkiness and smiles good; ennui, sarcasm and worldliness bad -- seems to beam out over ABC from a time long past. It does not simply recall a pre-feminist era when some considered swimsuits proper attire for a scholarship interview. It also harks back to a disappearing tradition of community boosterism and shameless optimism, a tradition once perfected and exploited in the pageant's hometown of Atlantic City. Each September, that tradition briefly flares to life again, as 51 Miss America contestants descend on the city for a full two weeks of rehearsals and preliminaries capped by the effervescent telecast and a gala parade down the boardwalk. Atlantic City's first Miss America pageant, held in 1921, was more a business proposition than a social statement. A post-Labor Day presentation of pretty girls, the city elders supposed, might extend the summer tourist season in what was then the freewheelingest resort area on the Eastern seaboard. They came up with an "inter-city" beauty contest as one segment of Fall Festival '21, which culminated with a parade down the famous boardwalk. In the 78 years since then, Atlantic City has changed far more than the pageant itself, evolving from summer hot spot to ghost town to casino capital of the Northeast. The annual tradition of the boardwalk parade, however, has survived; for a single night each year, Atlantic City's -- and Miss America's -- past is on display for all to see, to explore and, perhaps, to enjoy. In 1921, as now, the parade was an exercise in community support, patriotism and corporate promotion, a chance to make a buck while displaying what some folks thought was best about America. And now, as then, the parade draws locals, passersby, pageant supporters and glory seekers to a full-blown bonanza of marching bands, tap-dance girls, honor guards, baton twirlers, giant floats and, most importantly, 51 (albeit increasingly clad) contestants for the title of Miss America. Last Friday, each begowned contestant rode in her own car, each displaying, according to tradition, a pair of shoes specially chosen for their wackiness: plastic pancakes and maple syrup on heels for Vermont, Swedish troll slippers for North Dakota. While the Miss America organizers might worry about the pageant's "relevance" for American society, the roll-by persuaded at least one tiny spectator of the glamour of the crown. As each young contestant passed, a 6-year-old girl standing on a wall above the crowd, braids flailing, piped out, "I want to be like you! I want to be like you! I want to be like you!" Aside from contestants and their miniature fans, the three-hour march down the boards drew a wide range of participants, from Vanna White, the Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders and the New Jersey Lotto ("It Pays to Dream!") to lesser-knowns such as the Original Pitman Hobo Band from Pitman, N.J., the Chattanooga/Rocket Mania All-Stars ("30 cheerleaders from Tennessee and New Jersey celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Cheerleading"), the Casino Career Institute of Atlantic Community College ("reflecting 20 years of casino gaming, 20 years of casino training") and the Utah Express Clogging Team. It also included a stunning, overwhelming stream of no fewer than 32 mostly high school marching bands, mostly grim-faced and sweating, mostly in sync. Local businesspeople turned out, too, heeding the call first trumpeted in 1921: "Join Up! Be a Wise One! Mr. Business Man, Show Your Faith in Your Home City -- Make the Pageant a Representative Civic Demonstration." Despite lingering traditions, it would be easy to overstate the continuity between the Atlantic City of the past and that of the present. It is no longer the frenetic mix of amusements high and low that inspired Theodore Roosevelt to declare that "a man would not be a good American citizen if he did not know of Atlantic City." Today, it is a one-industry town, and that industry is gambling. The boardwalk is lined with massive casino hotels, and the patrons who once crowded the planks in expensive evening wear are more often inside, in the air-conditioning, playing the slots or perhaps grazing at the buffet. The boardwalk itself likely smells and sounds much as the boardwalk of the past, with that peculiar mix of damp wood, sea air, gull cries and human chatter. But the exuberance so evident in photos of an earlier Atlantic City is largely missing in the 88- or 99-cent tchotchke stores that fill in the space between, say, Trump Plaza and the Hard Rock Cafe. N E X T+P A G E | Atlantic City's innocent era