Blanche The Singing Bartender

As regular readers of this blog doubtless know, my father-in-law died rather suddenly a few months ago. One of his great joys, and one which he has passed down to at least one of his children, was frequent visits to Atlantic City, and Al regarded the Tropicana Casino and Resort as one of his favorite haunts.

While in A.C. on other business, I visited the Tropicana for the first time in several years and was pleasantly surprised at some of the changes - and some things that have stayed blissfully the same.

When the Mackeys were regulars at the Tropicana, the management discovered a young vocalist who was singing while tending the bar at a local nightclub, so the wisdom was that this was a good thing and Blanche Travis Morro began her run as Atlantic City's Singing Bartender at a small bar built for her at the Tiffany Lounge in the Trop. She gained great fame doing this culminating in a national TV appearance on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show". About a year or so into her run, Blanche was taken out of the bar and onto a little stage. It wasn't the same. By the time we switched alliances to Caesar's, we had written off Blanche as a failed noble experiment. Apparently there was some sort of contretemps with a labor union over what she was doing, but that seems to have been settled in Blanche's favor.

Happily, my recent visit to the Trop found Blanche back where she belonged, behind the bar, serving beers and singing as she has for the past five years. You can visit Blanche at her official website, or better still, catch her at the Tropicana.

While some newer slots have been added, the Trop's video poker offerings remain as they have been, using mostly older-model IGT and Sigma machines (part of the place's charm is that they still hang on to these older machines - which still work quite well). The progressives remain where they have always been, but one bank of poker progressives seems to have disappeared for good. New areas have been added with a new hotel tower on the way.

Al would have loved it.