The strip of a city, 60 miles southeast of Philadelphia, isn’t so unique in this sense. And it was easy enough to do because casinos were paying all the taxes. “You got gambling, and you did become that auto town, you did become that mining town, or that factory town,” says Guardian, who was inaugurated in January. Casinos provided some relief for the city’s postwar economic malaise, Guardian says, but they created a far different challenge in the process.

Guardian doesn’t seem to notice, waving at onlookers and addressing by name the yellow-clad “boardwalk ambassadors” - like park rangers for the beachfront - lining the route. Fewer still stop to watch the small parade. Just a few visitors brave the rain on this section of the boardwalk, where restaurants and souvenir shops fill the gaps between the hulking casinos. The Mardi Gras-themed casino closed in August, and vacancy has made its sand-coloured exterior look desolate. The parade passes the 1,331-room Showboat, a boxy structure whose subsequent floors rise from the boardwalk like a staircase. “Sometimes, you need calamity to get back,” Guardian says. Atlantic City’s resulting fiscal quandary will come just as it grapples with the dual tasks of attracting a new brand of tourists and solving an old set of big-city problems. Still, thousands of residents are now unemployed in a town whose collective property assessment has almost halved since 2010.

Some have estimated the city will lose up to 10,000 jobs this year, though most casino workers live outside city limits, and a slice of those laid off will be rehired at other casinos. Photograph: Michael S Williamson/The Washington Post “Arrivaderci Roma” begins blaring from the float’s speakers, and the white-haired Guardian, wearing brown wingtips and a neon yellow raincoat, starts leading the procession south.Ītlantic City mayor Don Guardian passes the Revel Casino, which was heralded as a sign of revitalisation when it opened in 2012 but shut its doors in September. Though the promenade is quiet this blustery October Saturday, parade organisers motion for a handful of vehicles to fall in line. For 30 years, casinos created a veneer of glitz and glamour along its seaside boardwalk.

This town of about 40,000 has a long history of keeping up appearances. “Like it’s sunny and it’s beautiful and you want to be here.”

Guardian poses with the group for pictures in front of a float bearing Italian and American flags. The fast-talking 61-year-old shakes hands with one wearing a tiara and sash reading “Miss Columbus”, from a beauty pageant to celebrate its namesake’s arrival in North America. Drops of water patter against the town’s wooden boardwalk as Mayor Don Guardian approaches four young women shivering in gowns.

Atlantic city boardwalk and casinos