All or Nothing: Sailing Away to Gamble in Bimini

July 17, 2013

Sailing Away to Gamble in Bimini

Nice

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"Getting Shipping Could Bring 3000 people a day to its Bimini Hotel"

By Douglas Hanks dhanks@MiamiHerald.com

Genting hasn’t been able to bring a casino to Miami, but soon it will be able to bring a sizeable chunk of Miami to a casino.

The Malaysian company is preparing to launch a small cruise ship capable of whisking more than 1,500 passengers from Port Miami to its new casino two hours away in Bimini.Neither side was granting interviews Tuesday, but a draft port agreement posted Tuesday night on the county’s website outlined the deal. Genting will pay about $11 million upfront to fund the county’s refurbishment of Terminal H for the new ship, and then be reimbursed in the form of rent credits for the construction cost. The agreement, to be voted on by the County Commission next month, calls for Genting to pay the port about $7 million yearly in rent.

Genting executives had initial talks with port executives and county commissioners Audrey Edmonson and Lynda Bell, who heads the committee that oversees the port, during an April meeting in Singapore, according to a source familiar with the county-funded trip.

The new ship, which is already docked at Port Miami, is slated to make its first official run to Bimini on Friday, with a ceremony featuring Bahamian and Miami-Dade leaders and top Genting executives. Genting plans to offer two trips a day: the first leaving at 9 a.m. and returning at 7 p.m., and a second “Night Party Cruise” leaving at 9 p.m. and returning at 5 a.m. Tickets start at $49.

The launch of the Bimini SuperFast marks a big step for Genting’s entry into the local gambling market. The company purchased the old Miami Herald headquarters in 2011 but the Legislature did not provide the needed change in state gambling laws to put a casino there. Genting said it still plans to build a large residential and hotel complex on the site, and it will bear the company’s global brand, Resorts World Miami.

Last year, Genting announced plans to turn the Bimini Bay Resort into Resorts World Bimini, and is planning to officially open the casino Friday with the new boat’s maiden voyage. At 10,000-square-feet, the casino is tiny when compared to the 140,000 square feet at the Seminole Hard Rock casino in Hollywood and 67,000 square feet at the Miccosukee casino in western Miami-Dade.

Genting hopes the allure of a largely unspoiled Bahamian island and the fun of an ocean voyage will make Bimini Bay a sought-after day trip for locals and vacationers. And Genting is pointing out that its Bimini resort won’t be governed by the more restrictive gambling laws of Florida, and can offer “Vegas-style” gambling, including roulette, craps, baccarat and bets on professional sports.

But one veteran of the casino-resort industry said the location could be a challenge for Genting.

“There are some good gaming offerings already in South Florida,’’ said Howard Karawan, who once ran the Atlantis casino resort in Nassau and presided over the re-launch of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. “While Bimini has some nice offerings, there’s going to have to be more than just a little casino to attract them over there.”

1 comment:

Unknown said...: I may have missed the inaugural voyage but now that the Superfast is up an running, I am booking a
trip. There is no other mini-vacation with a price-point like this and look at all you get. A state of the art, high speed cruise ship with entertainment, a tremendous dining experience and then a visit to an exotic resort, all in one day. It's the greatest!; July 22, 2013 at 10:09 AM

Here's the plan . . .

Please email me at prestonthewriterallen@gmail.com with your gambling questions and your publishing world questions. I will use this site to post your questions and answer as many of them as I can.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see a list of Reading Group Questions for Discussion and a list of video interviews of writing heavyweights Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, J California Cooper and others.

Also, feel free to purchase any of the books on this site to support the best writing talent in the country.

Thanks,

Preston

My other blog, which has a wider range of topics, can be reached at http://www.prestonlallen.blogspot.com/.

Professor James Haskins

For those of us who had him as a teacher at the University of Florida in the mid 80s--you know why he is here on my page. What a teacher. What an experience.

I remember walking to his office for one of those jam sessions (I made some mistake or another in one of the essays that I had submitted to him), and I spied on his wall a poster for the Francis Ford Coppola movie the Cotton Club. I noticed for the first time that the words "based on the James Haskins book" were embossed on the poster.

I blurted out, "Oh, Professor Haskins, you're THAT James Haskins!"

He rolled his eyes at me and spit out, "So what are you telling me, Allen? That a black man can't write a book?"

I stuttered my apology as I would stutter many apologies to him that semester, and he launched into me for a half hour berating--reminding me loudly and sarcastically that in my introductory essay to his class I had indicated that my career ambition was to be a novelist. How then could it surprise me that he was THAT James Haskins?

I had no answer for him, as so often happened that semester. I was quite humbled.

He was a difficult man, to say the least, but over time I came to enjoy his class, though he often put me on the spot in front of the others. I was the only African American in the class besides himself.

He was my CHILDREN's LIT professor, and I must say I learned a great deal from him, though not about children's lit.

At some point in the middle of that semester, I began to give serious consideration to becoming a college professor when I grew up.

I thank James Haskins for that.

Rest in Peace.

All or Nothing Reviews

New York Times--". . . a cartographer of autodegradation . . . Like Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu — the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance. Like Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict’s daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand."

Foreword Magazine--"Not shame, not assault, not even murder is enough reason to stop. Allen’s second novel, All or Nothing, is funny, relentless, haunting, and highly readable. P’s inner dialogues illuminate the grubby tragedy of addiction, and his actions speak for the train wreck that is gambling."

Library Journal--"Told without preaching or moralizing, the facts of P's life express volumes on the destructive power of gambling. This is strongly recommended and deserves a wide audience; an excellent choice for book discussion groups."—Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., OH

LEXIS-NEXIS--"By day, P drives a school bus in Miami. But his vocation? He's a gambler who craves every opportunity to steal a few hours to play the numbers, the lottery, at the Indian casinos. Allen has a narrative voice as compelling as feeding the slots is to P." Betsy Willeford is a Miami-based freelance book reviewer. November 4, 2007

Publisher’s Weekly--"Allen’s dark and insightful novel depicts narrator P’s sobering descent into his gambling addiction . . . The well-written novel takes the reader on a chaotic ride as P chases, finds and loses fast, easy money. Allen (Churchboys and Other Sinners) reveals how addiction annihilates its victims and shows that winning isn’t always so different from losing."

Kirkus Review--"We gamble to gamble. We play to play. We don't play to win." Right there, P, desperado narrator of this crash-'n'-burn novella, sums up the madness. A black man in Miami, P has graduated from youthful nonchalance (a '79 Buick Electra 225) to married-with-a-kid pseudo-stability, driving a school bus in the shadow of the Biltmore. He lives large enough to afford two wide-screen TVs, but the wife wants more. Or so he rationalizes, as he hits the open-all-night Indian casinos, "controlling" his jones with a daily ATM maximum of $1,000. Low enough to rob the family piggy bank for slot-machine fodder, he sinks yet further, praying that his allergic 11-year-old eat forbidden strawberries—which will send him into a coma, from which he'll emerge with the winning formula for Cash 3 (the kid's supposedly psychic when he's sick). All street smarts and inside skinny, the book gives readers a contact high that zooms to full rush when P scores $160,000 on one lucky machine ("God is the God of Ping-ping," he exults, as the coins flood out). The loot's enough to make the small-timer turn pro, as he heads, flush, to Vegas to cash in. But in Sin City, karmic payback awaits. Swanky hookers, underworld "professors" deeply schooled in sure-fire systems to beat the house, manic trips to the CashMyCheck store for funds to fuel the ferocious need—Allen's brilliant at conveying the hothouse atmosphere of hell-bent gaming. Fun time in the Inferno.

Reading Group Questions for Discussion

ALL OR NOTHING
Reading Group Questions for Discussion

1. Based on her upbringing, her typical reaction to P’s gambling throughout All or Nothing, and her decision to nurse him back to health after the shooting, how would you describe P’s wife Hon?

2. Discuss the use of setting in the novel, particularly how Las Vegas gambling compares to gambling in Miami.

3. What aspects of P’s personality and his upbringing, including his relationship with his father, might have contributed to his becoming the kind of gambler that he is?

4. Using his wife (Hon), C.L., S’s wife, Missy and his fat girl as particular examples, discuss what role romantic love plays in P’s life.

5. How are P’s attempts to properly parent his children undermined, or otherwise impacted, by his gambling?

6. In what ways does E.V.’s gradual decline, which P is a witness to, affect his feelings about his own addiction?

7. What is meant by the quote, “The only addiction stronger than gambling is charity,” and how is it supported (or contradicted) by the actions of P? The professor? Missy?

8. P complains to C.L. about outsiders that “they don’t understand us.” What is it that outsiders do not understand about gamblers? How do outsiders view gamblers?

9. What explains Missy’s decision to come to the aid of P’s son?

10. To what extent are the gamblers in All or Nothing superstitious? Religious? Scientific?

11. Explain the professor’s theory of “roundness” and its connections to P’s epiphany after he shoots his son.

12. How do the quotes and the parenthesized headers at the beginnings of some of the chapters assist in the development of the plot? How do they assist in the development of P’s character?

13. How do gamblers feel about money? Where do they get it from? What is its purpose?

14. At the GA meeting, P calls himself "the sickest one here." What is the sickest thing, in your opinion, that P does in the book? What is the sickest thing any of the gamblers do in the book?

15. Why does C.L. partner with someone other than P to cheat the casino?

16. What important truth was P trying to teach our friend D about the nature of addiction after their fist fight at the GA meeting?

17. At the funeral C.L. tries to sum up P's life by exclaiming with tears in her eyes that P had a great life, he had fun. How does this sum up P's life? Gambling addiction?

18. Based on what you have learned about gamblers in All or Nothing, is it likely that P’s son will eventually gamble again? Will Missy?

All or Nothing

At the Pen Festival 2010

July 17, 2013

Sailing Away to Gamble in Bimini

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