As everyone knows by now, this week the last of the NYC OTB parlors closed their doors, probably for good. I was never a big OTB player, I had a telephone account with them, but I usually stopped in just to get the Daily Racing Program. Known as the “the book” to the tellers, for 3 dollars it carried each thoroughbred track that was being simulcast that day. Using the “book” is a learned affection (small type, cheap paper, etc) but it does carry 1st timer sire and trainer stats for the preceding 12 months which can be a nifty angle for MSW and MCL races. The book is hard to find now in our neck of the woods, but the magazine shop on Varick next to the old parlor below Houston usually carries multiple copies.
Now onward to the pictures! Last Wednesday (Dec 8th), the first day NYC OTB had closed its doors, I made my way back to the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection. A few months ago I posted here about the popularity of the OTB in 1971.
Here are more from the collection and a few of my own.
From the New York Times May 1, 1971 photo by Robert Walker
OTB Pallor 1977 location unknown (uncredited photo)
Unknown OTB location dated May 17, 1971
Shuttered OTB shop on 48th St between 5th and 6th (about 75 yards from the Rockefeller Center holiday tree) Dec 8th 2010
The sign over the flagship location on W 38th St and Broadway, Wed, Dec 8th 2010.
38th St and Broadway Wed Dec 8th 2010, not long after the last at Aqueduct.
And the sign says...
Tags: Horse racing, NYC OTB 1971, OTB, OTB closing
The May ‘71 picture is bogus, for sure.
I have the newspaper clipping, why do you think it’s bogus?
Man, thanks. Now I feel “officially” OLD.
These photos and captions depicting the emergence, decline and eventual disintegration of NYC OTB re-energized brain cells I thought I’d smoked away long ago.
In 1971 I was in the 9th grade at a Long Island, NY, junior high school. In my social studies class at the time, the teacher asked us for potential topics for a class debate “team exercise.” I remember throwing up my hand and volunteering the topic, “O-T-B” and how that was going to ruin live racing. (I was raised not too far away from BEL, and even at the tender age of 14 I was already hooked on the sport!) I recall an incredulous look from the teacher as he wrote the suggested topic, “O-T-B”, on the blackboard (and even more quizzical looks from my classmates. Neither teacher nor students knew what I was talking about.)
The other topics that went up on the board, I recall, were “Why are we building the World Trade Center?” and “The Concorde: Will supersonic transport take off?”
Needless to say I was the only one in my class who voted for the OTB topic. The class ended up debating the pros/cons of the WTC.
Great to see that NYC OTB ad — “Just call us the New York Bets” — in one of those photos. Ah, I’d forgotten that!
As long as I can remember there was New York. From 1970 to 1973 there was racing at the racetracks at Aqueduct and Belmont, close to me in Nassau County were I had come to live. Never having visited those tracks, I still new the fever that possed people that went to the on-site tracks and the OTB’s after they begain to exist. Not until the late ’80’s did I visit a OTB parlor. Was it strante. No. What was strange was the teller telling me that my selection was not going to win at 12-1. Of course she did on the turf. The problems with the OTB in New York has nothing to do with going to the track or playing to win. The problem lies with people who want to control or exploit a money making empire.