Paddock Bar (Inside the Aqueduct Racetrack)
Gambling, shmambling; I only buy lottery tickets every blue moon and play the odds by betting I won't get shot on my murder-prone block. Then the Post spat an 80-point headline: "Dope Fix is in at Track."
"Seventeen people were busted yesterday on charges of operating a mob-connected ring that doped horses at Aqueduct and Belmont," a January 14 article read.
Intrigue! Drugs! The mob! Now this was reason to gamble. I pack a pocketful of dollars and hop the A train. During racing days (11 a.m. -Ê7 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday), the MTA assists state-sponsored gambling by dropping folks at Aqueduct, one stop before JFK. Last Saturday, I exit the train with Adrianne and men with shar-pei skin.
After a short stroll down a concrete path, we reach the Aqueduct. It's a mammoth complex saddled with a misguided 1970s facelift-it looks like a hangdog disco. We pass through gates (free, until March), then ride the escalator heavenward one floor. Our terminus is a mall food court with Best Buy tendencies.
Televisions colored by horse races hang from the ceiling and sit in walls in multiples of two, four and eight. Gathered beneath are men with affinities for cheap white athletic shoes and puffy jackets advertising sports teams. Women and children are scarce. A nearby Nathan's sells $3.75 hot dogs.
"It's like Port Authority, but with horses," Adrianne says.
And more booze.
At Aqueduct, beer and liquor are legal. Patrons are supposed to purchase alcohol at a food stand or bar. There are enough brown-bag drinkers and furtive flask sippers to prove otherwise. Man, this is a gold necklace-wearing crowd I could love. Gambling is another story.
We are transfixed by a scoreboard flashing numbers. There are sevens. Twos. Fives. Plus words like "trifecta" and "show." The words are English in construction, but Latin in definition: useless unless you're a specialist, like a doctor or Satanist.
We could stand there forever, befuddled, if not for Adrianne saying, "Just pick a number, any number." I walk to the betting windows. A high-haired woman helps me place a two-dollar "win" bet on No. 2-Tale of Woe, as I later discover. Hope in hand, we step outside into the winter chill.
Rows of benches sit empty while seagulls scavenge for pretzel and hot dog chunks. A gentleman wearing a fedora lights a cigarette. On the track-an uneven dirt oval outfitted with jumbo TV screens-horses neigh and buck, then enter gates. A shot-they're off!
Dirt kicks into air. I shoo a seagull from my bag. "Win, baby, win!" someone hollers. Ninety seconds later, the race ends with a roar-No. 2 is No. 1. "Tale of Woeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" I scream, then rush inside to collect my winnings. A woman with dreadlocks hands me $7.50. It's time to pony up for booze.
Separated by a glass window from the paddock-an enclosure where horses are assembled, saddled and paraded before racing-is, appropriately, the Paddock Bar. It's a concession stand crowned with more TV's. Liquor bottles line a counter, each capped with a regulator to ensure one-ounce pours ($6 premium, $5.50 well). A clear fridge contains Bud, Miller Lite and Coors Light tall boys ($5.25), next to a Budweiser tap. In front, benches are filled by men with thin mustaches drinking see-through cups of beer.
All Beer Must Be Poured, reads a stop sign-red placard. Beside it stands a gaunt bartender with a nametag: John. He has parted gray hair, a beard and glasses slipping down his nose.
Flush with success, I order a large Budweiser draft ($5). As John pours, I wonder why cans and bottles are verboten.
"Damned if I know," he says. So much for investigative acumen. I tip two bits, then drink in beer and a parade of societal stereotypes: wannabe Guidos wearing parachute pants; straw-haired women in sweatshirts; stooped Chinese men carrying well-creased gambling forms. The scene is dive bar crossbred with OTB, with drinkers downing endless tall boys, either celebrating victory or drowning defeat.
Like any solid watering hole, no one is judged-as long as money remains to cover the tab. What more can you ask for, miles from home? There's nothing particularly memorable about Paddock Bar except here, the losers and winners are pretty interchangeable.
"I just lost a race. I need to drink rum," says a man rushing up to the bar. He's chewing a wet cigar log like it's Juicy Fruit. "No ice," he adds in a hardened Caribbean lilt.
The bartender nods and pours cheap white rum, mixing it with a pull-top can of reconstituted orange juice. The loser sets down six singles. In one thick gulp, he swallows the courage to place another bet.