1980s

Ai Weiwei lives in Queens, then Brooklyn, and finally moves into an unfurnished apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, but a chauffeur drives him to the casino in a limousine on account of his skill in blackjack. He covers the eighty miles to Atlantic City with his friend Vinnie, nicknamed “Snake Eyes”, several times a week. Vinnie says of their first meeting: “I was playing and losing bad, and then this Asian guy with a beard right out of the Kung Fu movies, playing next to me, starts telling me when to hit, split or stay. I don’t listen to nobody but every time I don’t listen to him, I lose the hand. So I start listening. I was up a few grand that night. I always listened when he explained smart strategies.”