It’s Autumn in New York. You Can Smell It.
The ginkgo trees’s yellow pods stink like rancid butter.
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Ginkgo trees in Central Park
PHOTO: ALLAN RIPP
New York
There is an unpleasant odor in Central Park these days—and I’m not talking about the marijuana smoke wafting everywhere. It is the offensive smell of ginkgo nuts blanketing the ground, an annual fall event. I spend most of my outdoor time in the park, which means a lot of unpleasant blows to the nose.
I shouldn’t rag on ginkgoes. They are among Earth’s hardiest trees and flourish in urban environments. There are ginkgo fossils 270 million years old; individual specimens have been estimated to live 3,500 years. Deep-rooted and impervious to cold winters, disease and marauding insects, ginkgoes have endured earthquakes, meteor strikes and human abuse.
A group of ginkgoes survived the explosion of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. All were within the burn zone and were exposed to extensive radiation, rain blackened by ash and contaminated soil. Although their bark was charred, the ginkgoes’ internal phloem cells regenerated and they blossomed the following spring. The trees are alive today, marked by plaques acknowledging their fortitude.
Ginkgo nuts
PHOTO: ALLAN RIPP
But with all due respect, ginkgos stink. Though the male tree doesn’t bear fruit, the female’s pulpy yellow pods emit a foul smell that evokes a locker-room hamper. One gardening writer described it as “akin to vomit or rancid butter.” The pods contain butyric acid, a fatty acid found in butter and also used in dietary supplements to treat stomach disorders. Some scientists think the rank smell appealed to herbivorous dinosaurs, which devoured the fruit and helped propagate the trees by passing the seeds, eons before the ginkgo was first cultivated in China.
Around 10% of Manhattan’s trees are ginkgoes—they line city streets and are especially plentiful in Central Park. Their fan-shaped leaves are lovely, but in case the stench isn’t enough to knock you over, the fallen fruit rots into a mushy paste that sticks to your shoes and is a slip-and-fall hazard.
Amazingly, some chefs regard the cherry-sized nuts inside the fruit as a delicacy. Asian men and women gather in the park with latex gloves, buckets and supermarket grabbers to yank nuts from branches. I’ve seen families use ladders and coolers to harvest them. The smell supposedly fades when they are cooked, but I’m not angling for invitations to come over for ginkgo stew or dumplings.
My dog is a ginkgo fan, which adds to the challenge of walking in the park this time of year. I try to keep his snout elevated as we slog through one mashed minefield to the next, yet he often manages to snatch a nut or two, and they miraculously pass through his system whole.
I’m trying to keep the ginkgoes in perspective this year. Consider all those who lost their sense of smell from Covid. I wouldn’t trade places even if it let me breathe freely as I pass foul-smelling pod piles. Every fruit has its day, and even an apple orchard turns putrid by season’s end. By the time the ginkgo gunk is gone, winter has arrived. That really stinks.
Mr. Ripp runs a press relations firm in New York.
No comments:
Post a Comment