Spin Cycle
When it's time to update the place of horse racing in a recessed economy and a depressed citizenry, you head right for the local or regional slot machines with connections to the thoroughbreds or quarter horses.
Talk about part of an industry blessed by the angels of chance: imagine slot machines in Bank of America lobbies; imagine slot machines on airliners; imagine slots at Sears, next to washers and dryers; imagine slots in the lobby of a Hummer dealership; imagine slots in a Republican lunchroom; imagine them on the streets of Detroit, in the house of a general — General Electric or General Motors — imagine slots in Mondo Condo, Fla.
Horse racing is comprised of two states, the scenic landscape and the workmanlike grind.
Showtime is the Triple Crown sweep (as long as the Derby winner keeps winning), the Breeder's Cup, to be raced again on the lint in California, and the high-dollar stakes races in pretty places like Saratoga, Del Mar and Hot Springs. Where's there's TV, there's usually a decent enough live crowd that comes and goes. You will find the guts of the business in Pennsylvania on a sleety Wednesday, near the swamp on a sticky Cajun Thursday, in Hooterville on Tote Night, first 25 through the gate get one of those bags suitable for toting, well, grapefruit?
Style and grace and flowers and long shots and blooming hats and mountainous backgrounds and ocean backgrounds and challenges and thrills and color and power and celebrities and luck aside, the tracks hooked to slots seem fine, and the tracks disconnected to gambling by politicians seem pained.
Here's why.
One day last week I stood at the rail at Will Rogers Downs feeling something like Winthrop looking up the way for the Wells Fargo wagon carrying musical instruments promised by the Man, the Music Man. I was very hopeful as maiden special weight ran for about $25,000. Will Rogers Downs was named for the great humorist and statesman Will Rogers himself, who never met a man he didn't like; or, as it turns out, maybe a horse, either.
The Cherokee Indians bought this fine little race track and built a casino on the ground floor. So now on this particular day, thoroughbreds were racing from the left as I was almost alone near the wire, and slot players were lighting up the casino back and to the right. Who needs a private sky box when you can have a semi-private rail. It was an eerie situation whereby if you cheered — and, if I stand a good chance of winning money, I cheer — everybody in the grandstand might hear what you said.
As a female jockey brought me $16 on the win — there's no better play than a competent female jockey in the Good Old Boy Belt — there were three people to my left at the rail, and hundreds in the other directions, playing the slots as though they were punching bags in that the faster you hit, the more likely you might be to win.
Cuts from the slots aren't considered in a track's handle; but you can bet that the slot money pays the bills just the same.
So in response to the question, "What do gamblers do in a dangerous economy?" the answer near local slots is, "They keep gambling." They might gamble less. Horse race track take from the slots is off in places. But complaining about found money is like a school system saying they thought the lottery would fork over more.
Here are the offhand results of an unscientific survey concerning females and gambling, at least where I hang out. On any given day at the track or simulcast venue, there are more female tellers and riders than female horse players. At the slot machines, half the spinners appear to be women.
Slots have to be the most recession/depression proof gamble because intense thought is not required.
No matter the scope of the economic trauma, you can't cut back on relief.
In the heartland, slot machines and entertainment in Indian casino showrooms appear to be chief forms of relief from the politicians; imagine what Vegas must be thinking.
Don't newspapers wish their websites had slots.
