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People Feature
The Ace Point social club
In New York's backgammon clubs, the five-day gambling week is just another grind.
By Jeremy Weintraub
[05/08/00]

People Feature
My perversion
The love that dare not cluck its name; a few words about dirty words in Mexico; and the prize that is Consuela.
By Carlos Amantea
[05/06/00]

People Feature
Department of hell on wheels
A DMV nightmare: The other, evil David Goodman was on the loose.
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[05/05/00]

People Feature
Amy Sedaris digs wigs and baking
The star of "Strangers With Candy" likes "small woodland creatures" and wants to play Angie Dickinson as "Police Woman."
By Rex Doane
[05/05/00]

Nothing Personal
Dampened spirits
Sharon Stone's got a bone to pick with Cindy Crawford's baby; Björk storms off Lars Von Trier's set.
By Amy Reiter
[05/04/00]

Complete archives for People

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"Go six. Go six. Run, you motherfucker," one of them, a short, middle-aged fellow with no teeth, screams at the screen. There is a sea of men around him, pawing at his shoulders. As one, then another, starts to yell, the small man jerks back and forth, his hair lifting from his scalp in greasy clumps as he violently shakes the newspaper in his hand.

"SIX. SIX. SIX. SIX."

Behind him, a group of elderly Italians slouches in a row of black leather chairs, lined up movie-theater style along a giant plate-glass window separating them from the busy street. Some watch halfheartedly, while others bury their faces in white, pocket-size books, diligently studying the fine print while the crowd swells around them, expanding like a giant lung.

"The six is a bum." A short Puerto Rican, with immense buckteeth and a pair of oversize glasses that make him look like Jiminy Cricket, stands in front of the Italians. "I had him two weeks ago. That bastard can't run to save his life."

"Shut your trap," someone yells from the back of the crowd. Jiminy Cricket laughs.

Near the doorway, a cripple paces back and forth before hobbling toward the crowded semicircle of onlookers with the aid of a cane. His hair is a sulfurous orange, and his mouth opens to expose a gold tooth. Flashing a grin at an old Latino man with a face like Hemingway's protagonist from "The Old Man and the Sea," he shuffles over to the group glued to the TV. As he fights for an unobstructed view, shouts and curses bounce off the walls and the crowd grows louder and wilder until the tension in the room becomes unbearable. Then, as if on cue, a great silence falls over the room, expanding like a giant soap bubble until it is burst by a terse yelp from the toothless man.

"Fuck!"

With that, tiny pieces of paper are thrown to the floor, feet shuffle away from the screen and mouths explode in chatter. The room hums again.

Welcome to the world of off-track betting. Or, rather, welcome to a betting parlor in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, one of dozens around New York's five boroughs, and a mecca for the local gamblers and diehard horse racing fans of my neighborhood. This is home plate for the kind of hard-luck pricks whom life has shortchanged from Day 1. Every day they plunk down a crisp bill, crossing their fingers for luck, on one of those magnificent, powerful beasts in hopes of hitting it big and changing their lot in life. It's an act as futile as pissing into the wind.

Spending my Saturday and Sunday afternoons at OTB for two months now, I have joined a cast of characters who look like they walked off the pages of a Nelson Algren novel, a dozen Frankie the Machines and Sparrow Saltskins in the flesh. I've landed the plum role of the wayward kid they try to set straight.

"You should go to the park or visit a museum. This is a rough game," they say. "Don't start betting; you'll never stop."

Judging from the turnout at the OTB parlor, they may be right. It is open seven days a week and, unlike other businesses, has no trouble holding onto its customers. Even a Monday evening bubbles with energy, and on weekend afternoons the joint is positively electric. Italians, Poles, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans -- a half-dozen languages bounce off the walls, spoken by a half-dozen nationalities all focused on one thing: What horse will win the next race?

The OTB on Court Street has eight TVs broadcasting races. Not more than three ever show the same race at once. This means when one race ends, someone can walk across the floor and bet on the next race about to go off -- and the next, and the next. It's like a cafeteria line for gamblers.

The regulars bet on races piped in via satellite from places like Gulfstream Park and Hialeah in Florida and Santa Anita Raceway in California nearly 365 days a year. Some places even stay open until 3 a.m. to catch races going off in Australia. It's been five months since the Breeder's Cup, two days since the Kentucky Derby, but for the diehards, the Derby and the Cup -- the marquee events of the racing year -- are no different from any other day of the year. If you're holding a winning ticket it'll pay off, and that's what matters.

Next page | "OTBs have ruined racing"