Ellen Fox

NewCity News 5/25/00

Maybe it has something to do with that opening number in my high-school production of "Guys and Dolls," a thickly-accented junior strolling through a pasteboard version of Runyonland, warbling out "I got the haws right heah/his name is Paul Revere." But up until my first trip to the Arlington International Racecourse, I didn't have the best opinion of the track.

But let's face it, gambling is cool -- and that's due in no small part to the chompy, gritty aura that encircles it as surely as a haze of cigar smoke. Gambling's having a renaissance, particularly among folks in their twenties and thirties, and while you can point to the flush economy or the pace with which casinos are opening on riverbanks and reservations, its appeal boils down to authenticity.

Gambling bespeaks a certain glamour -- a knowingness -- something our Humphrey Bogart-deprived generation tries to nourish itself with through any amount of martini sipping, swing dancing and cigar sniffing. For women in particular, it carries the sort of sexy cachet that comes with being able to hail a cab by whistling through your teeth, or being able to stomach hard liquor like that bad-ass Karen Allen in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

I can't do any of the above things, but I'm pretty confident I can lose money. So it was with much excitement that I headed northwest to Arlington -- re-opened after a two-year hiatus and $10 million refurbishment, on Mother's Day, a day on which I imagined most upright families to be sharing breakfast in bed. I was wrong: You could have wagered on stroller races, that's how many kids there were.

You can get to Arlington by car, hauling it on the Eisenhower, or up the Kennedy to Route 53, or winding, as we did, through a patchwork of northwest suburban towns displaying signs and structures left over from the sixties. Or you can take Metra from downtown to Arlington Park for $7.50 roundtrip. It's about fifty minutes from Chicago either way, and the train pulls right into the parking lot, just steps from the airy entrance.

Everything at Arlington is green and white. Tinny old-time band music (decidedly Damon Runyon-esque) plays overhead as you pass through the turnstiles, where admission is $4.75. That includes a complimentary daily racing program -- the first few pages of which I should have taken more time to read.

The program lists detailed information on every horse in each of the races (nine this day) -- including daunting stats on how each horse did its last few times out. (I still haven't figured out how to read those.) It also has a "How to Play" page that tells you how to bet and how much you're likely to win depending on the odds, and there's even a page that teaches you how to read the pages, called "Understanding the Program." You can skim the "Horses to Watch" page, which lists horses of note in each race, or you can pick up a fluorescent-colored tip sheet ($1.75) from the guys who sell them just inside. These tip sheets are compiled by independent handicappers and supposedly list three or four good horses in each race, along with cryptic hints of their abilities, like "Stalks the speedballs" or "Rail and Lasix." (Lasix is a legal horse drug, which may or may not help.)

Afterward, I found that at least one or two of the horses on the tip sheet per race finished in the top four -- making it a worthwhile investment. If you're still baffled, you can always sign up for Arlington's new "Get in the Game" intro tours, or ask someone in a blazer (a "Gold Coat") for help. "Their job is to help you win," the program notes in bold print, and the folks at Arlington are more intent than ever on seeing that new visitors are not intimidated. Owner Richard Duchossois closed the 73-year-old park in 1997, complaining that riverboat casinos had siphoned off nearly $70 million in wagers from the track. Citing the "competitive reality," and backed up by steadily declining numbers -- average daily attendance had slipped 36 percent since 1991, the year the first riverboat opened -- Duchossois went two seasons without seeking race dates, before coming back strong this year. What changed? The state's 1999 gambling legislation eased taxes on Arlington's revenue from wagering, and earmarked 15 percent of all gambling revenue from the proposed Rosemont casino for Illinois racetrack subsidies. But only time will tell if, as the ads have been hearlding, "the track is back."

This explains why the track is so eager to differentiate itself from those menacing casinos by repeatedly reassigning blame -- reminding you, in programs and pamphlets, that here you are not betting against a Big-Brother-like casino, you are betting against all the other people in the stands. Just inside is a circular area of stalls -- the paddock -- where people watch the horses get dressed before they head to the track. And this is where the difference between races and casinos first sets in: It's open-air, blue sky, kids are pointing to the horseys like it's a 4-H fair, but people are still smoking and drinking beer and getting ready to gamble. It's essentially roulette with livestock.

But what roulette. Some bettors hit the paddock before a race to see if their horse is limping, wearing bandages or looking jittery. "You want to see what you're betting on," explains a veteran, who adds that he looks for a... regular horse. "I personally like to bet on a horse that I see poop. That means they're carrying less weight and are more relaxed."

Inside the first (apron) level are two sprawling banks of betting windows, which can hold up to forty clerks each, separated by a circular food court hawking Finish Line Ice Cream and Trifecta Pizza. (Only one of the big betting windows was open on a recent rainy weekday, when the crowd leaned more toward the stereotypical demographic.) There are banks of televisions displaying odds and payouts, and automatic betting machines at every turn. (The press room not only had a betting machine but a live, in-person clerk.) Restless bettors watch (and wager on) televised races taking place around the country; that's why, when placing a bet, one needs to stipulate that one is betting on Arlington.

The stands outside the first level are general admission seating, with clean park benches bolted into rows of concrete overlooking the vast, carefully-clipped greenery before the contoured dirt of the racetrack. On busy days, people stake these out with coolers and blankets, just as they do the two lawn areas on either side of the grandstand. But Arlington is truly a sparkling, world-class joint, so there are four more levels of dining, betting and seating above the general admission area, and the higher you go, the fancier it gets. (Head upstairs for shorter bathroom and betting lines.) Level two is where a lot of the non-smoking elderly congregate during weekdays (taking advantage of the Wednesday $2 admission), and weekend reserved seating starts at $3.

Level three has green carpeting and a wooden betting booth -- highly masculine compared to level four, where wicker and yellow napkin fans reign. Once you hit the top floor Sky Suites, it's Laura Ashley -- on walls and dresses. Up here, there are throw-rugs in the spacious ladies loo, and each suite has its own waiter and betting machine. Richard D's sprawling personal suite includes a king-sized bed and Jacuzzi, perhaps for visitors who wind up getting luckier than they had anticipated.

Post time is usually 1:05pm; on Fridays, it's 3:05pm. (Races are held rain or shine, but the track is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.) This is when the very first race begins, and you have to wager your bets for the first race before then. If you miss that, you can bet on the day's eight remaining races, which are spaced roughly twenty minutes apart. Displays that read "20 MTR 5" mean that there's twenty minutes until race five's post time. You can bet on as many races as you want at a single trip to the window, but maybe it's best not to bet too far in advance, as the odds change right up until the horses leave the gate.

And that's really what kind of sucks about horse betting: the more people bet on a horse, the lower the odds get. The lower the odds, the less you get back if your pick comes in. Maybe at the first race your third race horse is sitting pretty with 5-1 odds, but then everyone else catches on, and by post time your horse is down to 2-1. So even if you picked the winning horse, if a zillion other people picked it too, you might make as little as two bucks on a $2 bet. (Two-dollar bets are the standard, but, of course, you can bet as much as you want.) There are two types of bets: straight and exotic. In straight wagering, one bets that a horse wins (finishes first), places (finishes first or second) or shows (finishes in the top three).

The exotic bets include harder stuff like Daily Doubles (you pick the winners of two consecutive races); Quinellas (you pick the two horses that finish first and second); Exactas (you pick the horses that finish first and second, in the exact order;) and Trifectas (you pick the top three horses in their exact order). These bets may pay off more money, but, as usual, they're more difficult to get right. Some people consider them gimmicks: "Just bet on a horse to win and place," advised Mr. Poop. "It's hard enough to predict one horse to win, let alone two."

On my very first trip to the window, I wagered more than $21 in bets on the first three races before the aunt-like clerk asked me if I wanted to stop. "Maybe you should just take a minute to regroup," she nodded at me with eyebrows gently raised. (But fuck her! I won eight bucks on one of those bets, didn't I?) It was only later that I realized how patient so many of the clerks were, for I routinely neglected to place my bet in the preferred order: by first naming the track, then the race, the amount, the type of bet and the horse. (For example: "Arlington. Race five. Two dollars to win on horse number one.")

The clerk punches some buttons, takes the money and a machine pops out a lottery-sized ticket with bar codes, which can be taken back to the window and traded in for cash if my horses come through. Then it's time to head outside to the track. Just beyond the rail, John Deere tractors rake the dirt into neat, brown grooves, as if grooming a soon-to-be-trampled-on Japanese Zen garden. Winged water trucks follow, spraying it all down so the dust doesn't fly.

Within the track, nestled amid a verdant circle of shrubs and mossy willows and spouting pond water, is the largest TV screen of them all, accompanied by a monstrous scoreboard pulsing with quick-changing odds and payoffs. The horses amble out, minute jockeys perched on top. Each is accompanied by an outrider on a companion horse to keep him in check, and some strain and shake their heads as they make their way to the mobile starting gate.

By my second race, I still had not realized how many horses would resist being herded into the claustrophobic confines of the gate, the most willful of them requiring shoves from behind by quite a few men. Nor did I realize that as soon as the last horse was locked in, how quickly the gate would explode with a distant ring and a metal wham, and how they'd burst in a cluster -- all of those pounding hooves and hearts and hindquarters looking like nothing so much as a distant ribbon, smoothly being pulled along the track by some invisible hand.

But two-thirds through, when they round the final curve and begin heading towards us, everything begins to change: the fast-starters falling away and the sprinters picking up from the outside, or the favorites breaking ahead close to the inside rail. You can make them all out now, as they beat by the stands towards the demure, white finishing post. And the yelling begins, and the old guys and mothers and college boys find themselves pulled to their feet, as the jockeys race by whipping their crops against the horses' hinds.

I think I lost, like, thirty dollars. But who cares? I'll be back.

(05/25/2000)