119
Originally Written: December 8, 2008
Branch 119 is the quintessential, definitive OTB parlor. It’s one of the biggest, one of the busiest, one of the loudest, smelliest, angriest, disgusting, exciting places to place a place bet. If you really wanted to grasp the concept of everything I’ve been spewing forth up to this point, 119 is the one to visit. It’s not a coincidence this branch stands out from the rest—like most things in life, there’s a complicated, dialectic web of reasons for its organized insanity.
First off, it’s got branch 219, a teletheater, directly above it. The teletheaters are the few, “classy” joints designed specifically for higher-paying customers. Typically, there’s a five dollar cover charge, a bar and/or restaurant hopelessly prepared for consumers just looking for a good meal and no gambling whatsoever, a wall of television screens for easy multi-track viewing, full track prices (no OTB commission removed from winnings) and carpets. The place is a little cleaner, and most employees wear a uniformed vest, and in theory, are more pleasant to the customers. These customers are higher-paying on the average, some blowing thousands at a time on a single horse, but there’s also regular Joe the Plumber’s who pay the five bucks to avoid the grudge and grime of a typical branch.
Anyway, having 219 right above 119 means that any wealthier, quieter, classier, and/or nicer customers are weeded out, all taking the stairs around the corner rather than patronizing the lower floor. That gives 119 the distinct advantage of having pure losers, with some nice dirt poor customers sprinkled in, robbing me of the occasional moments of not wanting to kill myself that most other branches provide.
Secondly and perhaps just as importantly, 119 is a block from Times Square, one of the most densely populated spots in the entire galaxy. That means a lot more customers than usual. It also means a lot more dirtbag customers than usual, given Times Square’s ability to attract dirtbags and all. It also means the occasional tourist who should’ve stuck to the brochure and gets in way over his or sometimes her head (for some reason most of these tourists have Southern accents and many have cowboy hats.) Physically, 119 is one of the biggest branches in the city, with a ton of machines, more than twice the usual number of available clerks and two managers. Yet, it’s never empty.
Maybe because of Times Square or maybe not, 119 also boasts one of the biggest homeless populations. Unlike the other branches though, the homeless here don’t just take up three seats to make a bed/toilet. These bums bet, and they bet big. I’ll watch them through the doors, standing out on seventh avenue with a rapidly-deteriorating coffee cup, collecting change from passerbys. Within the hour, they’ve got maybe a hundred bucks in dingy coins, and they’re spending every last Monticello on a horse at Monticello.
These Vietnam Vets and their friends contribute to one of 119’s most defining characteristics: the stink. As soon as you walk in, it hits you like an aluminum bat made of ass. It’s mostly B.O. but there’s plenty of urine, feces, puke, and other stuff I don’t even wanna contemplate mixed in there. The fact that these guys are packed in there all day and all night rubbing against one another intentionally or not just adds to the nauseating atmosphere. Almost as bad as the stink are the weapons of anti-stink, the arsenal of Lysol cans at the full-timers’ windows. These are fired multiple times an hour, often right in the customer’s face, giving most of us a terrible headache that smells faintly of lilacs.
All this makes working there a huge chore; it’s a given that your shift will be nonstop, your end total will show you’ve punched well over 1000 bets and cashed over 150 tickets. We’d cash more if the customers weren’t so stupid. Like anywhere else, their impatience, ignorance and sheer idiocy will cause them to rip up or throw out winning tickets. There’s a dedicated team of customers who make their money solely on others’ mistakes, diving deep into our receptacles until you see only their legs, rummaging through the goblets of phlegm, emptied Old E’s and chewed up Orbits. One guy supposedly makes around a thousand dollars a day from the winning tickets he finds discarded.
And while 119 does everything big, it’s still at heart just another OTB, with its own slew of characters. There’s the Russian, this short man with a deep thick voice and slow, spelled-out Siberian accent, who calls you Boss every sentence, looks and sounds utterly miserable, but really is a pretty nice guy. There’s the Grandma from SoHo, who dresses and acts very upper-middle-class like. She spends the days in the quiet branch by Houston St. but when that closes at seven she inexplicably comes up to 119 to finish out the night’s races. She’s more of a television in the weeds than a diamond in the rough.
There’s Igor, this little old man who looks exactly like his namesake from the old Frankenstein films. You can’t help how you look, but he tops it off with a timid Eastern European accent that I can only assume is Transylvanian. His nickname isn’t Igor, he literally is the guy. There’s also Flopsweat, the ugliest man I’ve ever seen in my life, who has a giant bald head with weird skin-colored lumps all over. He’s also got a ridiculous amount of flopsweat, even in the depths of February, though they’re hard to distinguish from the lumps. In the ugliest branch in the state, he’s definitely top candidate for ugliest man in the branch. There’s Pizzaman, a flamboyant three-toothed Black man who buys a couple pizzas every night and then sells the slices to the customers for a small profit. He’s nice enough to offer us slices on the house, but the day I accept open food from a 119 customer is the day I contract some form of Hepatitis. Besides the standout characters, many of whom I’ve left out, you’ve also got the broadest rainbow in the system, with dozens of blacks, whites, chinese, koreans, latinos, native americans, arabs, indians, pacific islanders, gays, bis, transvestites and transsexuals. If Times Square is the melting pot of the melting pots, 119 is the melting pot of the melting pot of the melting pot. With discount pizza.
119 might sound like the biggest hellhole of them all, but it’s far from my least favorite places to work. It certainly has its perks. Time flies, since you work nonstop. Also, the staff there are really cool and down-to-earth, and staff conversation is a huge tool in speeding up that clock. By sheer statistics, the larger amount of customers means a larger amount of tips for me, which is also good for me. I could go into greater detail about the branch if I wanted to, but I don’t, so I won’t, and this is where I stop typing.
