Well, hey now. Excuse me while I wipe the dust off my sleeves. That was one creepy dark implosion on the Boardwalk tonight. See ya later Sands, imploded after an oddly quiet, yet strangely disquieting fireworks display emanating from inside the rooms and out the broken out windows, followed by a series of heart thumping booms that led to the finale every fireworks display yearns for: the building itself brought to its knees, obliterated. So why were people, like, walking away kind of disturbed? This was not so much thrilling, like a roller coaster, but scary like a horror flick. Maybe because it was nighttime, the white Sands building lit up like a ghost. Then the fireworks came out from inside, like there were little troublemakers setting off sparklers inside, like it was possessed or something. It was cool and pretty at times, but putting life in a lifeless building through fireworks only to then destroy the thing like it had been taken over by demons, by the undead, by the _ I'm not kidding, this is what it felt like watching it. Some teens nearby worried that somehow, someone could be inside. Or some other kinda thing. Maybe it's that after 9-11, there's nothing particularly fun about watching a tower collapse in a heap of inevitability. Or maybe it felt too much like an poor-taste imitation of a middling apartment building being taken down during wartime. Whatever, "It was creepy," was a reaction I heard more than once from spectators leaving (and the beach and Boardwalk were packed like the Fourth of July). Ah well, it definitely gave meaning to the phrase bit the dust. I've watched the 1978 implosion of the Traymore Hotel on the Boardwalk at the beginning of Louis Malle's Atlantic City a bunch of times, and it always looked grand and gallant and breathtaking, but regrettable. This building, no one will miss. But the implosion felt, well, haunted. A goth time was had by all. All witnesses invited to describe their reaction to the implosion in the comments section.
Meanwhile, here's a before picture:

And an after picture: That's dust there.