I spent a few days in Atlantic City shooting video and interviewing everyone from casino industry analysts and laid off casino workers to long time gamblers about the crisis facing the city in the wake of the closure of four of city’s 12 casinos.

In the Ledger Live video I posted, I chose to focus on how casinos for the past three decades have, largely ignored the beach and ocean in the design and marketing of the resort.

However, as is always the case when I spend time reporting in AC, I drove west across the expressway with my head spinning, full of more moments and impressions than can fit in a four minute video.

Here's five additional takeaways I gathered with my eyes, ears and camera lense.

1. The streets feel sketchy - but not dangerous.

On story after story, commenters on nj.com are constantly citing how dangerous they feel in the blocks off the boardwalk, citing the lack of safety as a reason for Atlantic City's woes. Here's my take: If you spend time in the downtowns of any major city in New Jersey, Camden, Elizabeth, Newark, you'll encounter your fair share of folks who are down and out: the mentally ill, the drug addicted, the homeless.

But in any of those places, the vast majority of people you see in those areas are just everyday BUSY folk - waiting for a bus, commuting to work, leading typical workaday lives. Those downtowns feel bustling.

Atlantic City does not feel bustling.

In the first 10 minutes after parking my car on Pacific Avenue, I had three conversations with people who appeared to variously troubled - destitute, intoxicated and mentally ill - and I encountered not a single other person - on a sparkling gorgeous late summer day. The percentage of down and out folks may or may not be higher than in other cities. But it at least feels higher because of the eerie emptiness of the blocks just beyond the boardwalk.

And yes, it may actually higher. Which brings us to item Number 2 on my list.

2. The social costs of gambling have to be part of the conversation - and they never are.

The creation of casinos in Atlantic City was seen as a way of creating revenues and jobs that would ease the social ills created by poverty. But there has been little discussion of the social ills created by casinos themselves. In other words, the casinos were supposed to help clean up Atlantic City. But maybe the a sleazy activity like gambling just brings in more sleaze.

Economists and sociologists have never been able to calculate the social costs of gambling on a community. But, as one longtime, loyal gambler tells me in the video below, they took a seashore resort town and "turned it into a place that ruined people's lives."

saturation of casinos in the region consists of this: building more casinos.

This time, lawmakers are pushing a plan to build casinos in North Jersey.

What they don't grasp is this: over the past several decades, nearly all the new wealth being created in the country has fallen into the hands of the top 10 percent of wage earners.

If a middle class family is sitting down with their monthly budget to decide what needs to be cut, in most cases the absolute first things you're going to stop doing is gambling.

And that - along with the saturation of the casino market - is what's hurting AC. A casino in Jersey City or the Meadowlands is just going to make things worse for everyone.

Brian Donohue may be reached at bdonohue@njadvancemedia.com Follow him on Twitter @briandonohue. Find NJ.com on Facebook.