Neighborhood Joint | Bayonne
Off-Track Betting, Off Staten Island
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Winners, just across the Bayonne Bridge in New Jersey, lures many New York City horseplayers. More Photos »
By MIKE FLAHERTY
Published: June 27, 2013
As American migrations go, it’s not exactly the shame of a nation, but
it’s at least a somewhat tragic turn of events — a trail of torn
trifecta tickets — that many of New York City’s most devoted
horseplayers have been left to indulge their passion in New Jersey.
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Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Revenue from New York City gamblers is "vital to us," said Michelle Byrd, director of Winners. More Photos »
When the Off-Track Betting Corporation closed in December 2010, the city’s handicappers didn’t just lose a place to make their bets, they lost a lifestyle.
Now on race days (Wednesday through Sunday, generally) many of these
exiles find themselves traversing the Bayonne Bridge to their own
personal Elba.
That would be Winners, a betting parlor that opened last July on a
benighted stretch of Route 440. Sprawling over 25,000 square feet, and built for $18 million,
it’s almost unsettlingly clean, shiny and inoffensive. And its
proximity to Staten Island — it’s about 30 seconds by car into the
Garden State — was a decision calculated to lure New York action.
It seems to be working. On a recent weekday, nearly half the cars in the
parking lot had New York plates. Other players take advantage of a
shuttle van service operating twice a day from Staten Island (three
times on Saturday and Sunday).
“It’s vital to us,” Michelle Byrd, the director of Winners, said of the
revenue brought in by New York bettors. She suggested the feeling was
mutual. “Lots of these guys are senior citizens,” she said. “It’s too
far from them to go to the track.”
Looking at these guys — and they’re all guys — is a reminder-by-contrast
of horseplaying’s lost Damon Runyonesque panache and centrality in pop
culture. Shorts and polo shirts, some that look like they’ve been worn
more than once in the past few days, are popular. Fedoras are well
broken-in and worn un-self-consciously. The tattoos in evidence are most
likely half a century old, inked back when they signified more than
mere stylishness.
Michael Fundaro, 73, sat at one of the 150 or so nichelike work stations
fitted with personal television monitors and small goose-necked lamps.
These desks face a two-story wall of bigger screens broadcasting action
from tracks all over North America. A retired garment worker from Staten
Island, Mr. Fundaro said he was glad Winners existed, but he seemed
frustrated, even angry, that it was necessary. “They should be ashamed
of themselves,” he said of the city OTB, calling it the only bookmaker
ever to go broke. “You could have put the Three Stooges in there; they
could have made money!”
And don’t get him started about New York’s politicians. “They don’t care
about all these people who are unhappy about this situation,” Mr.
Fundaro said. “Meanwhile, we’re dropping our money in Jersey now.”
A couple of stations to Mr. Fundaro’s right sat a man who gave his name
only as Sonny, 86, a former bookie and another Winners regular, who
makes the trip with some friends from Brooklyn through Staten Island. He
has been betting horses for 65 years, but on this day he was here just
for the socializing. “When you’re this age and you have nothing to do,
and this is what you’ve enjoyed all your life, it’s important,” he said,
before waxing nostalgic about Hunters, an upscale OTB location he used
to frequent in Bay Ridge. “It was like a hangout — it was convenient, we
had our lunch there, and we bet the horses.”
Sonny glanced up at the big screen’s display of the next race’s odds at
Belmont and sighed, “New York is the greatest city in the world, but I
don’t know, it lacks in a lot of ways.”
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