Dear Dr. Skorton,
You and I don’t know each other, but
we have at least one thing in common. We are both willing to state in public
that we “do not know much about horseracing.” Since I go to the races all the
time, and you are nominally in charge of reforming horse racing in New York, I
don’t know which of us should be more embarrassed, but I will leave that to
others to figure out.
Last Saturday I attended the races
at Aqueduct Racetrack on the occasion of the Wood Memorial. I have been coming
down from Boston for the Wood for the past several years. I enjoyed the
sunshine and I actually made money at the mutuel windows, so this is not a
letter from a sore headed loser.
You had a big crowd (I actually
enjoyed mingling with one of the broadest cross-sections of humanity available
to the unincarcerated), and the races were almost all well run. The owners of
Freedom’s Child in the Wood have no doubt already been in touch.
But given that
The New York Daily News reported that “Resorts World Casino brought in a record
$71.2 million in revenue during March,” I have to ask:
Would it kill you to:
Get the City of New York to put in a
left turn arrow for patrons coming off the Van Wyck and down Rockaway Boulevard?
Clean the restrooms? The ones in the
casino are immaculate. Yours are embarrassing.
Provide more than one place for a
patron to get a hot dog and a beer? The food court in the casino is a long way
from the mutuel clerks.
Wipe the guano off the few remaining
grandstand seats?
Let people leaving the track know
that they don’t
have to pay the $5.00 in the machine at the garage when they leave? There are
enough ways to feel like a chump at the races. Paying unenforced parking fees
should not be a patron’s last memory of the day.
See you at Belmont!
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