Hey, there! Log in / Register
A last visit to Suffolk Downs
By adamg on Wed, 09/24/2014 - 7:33am
Lorianne DiSabato muses on what she now knows is her last visit to the Suffolk Downs race track:
When J and I arrived at Suffolk Downs the weekend before last, there was a little girl loudly cheering for her favorite jockey as she made her way into the Winner’s Circle: Janelle Campbell, the same jockey I’d photographed last year as she sat beaming atop her mount. Being a jockey, I explained in that post, is every horse-crazy girl’s dream job. After Suffolk Downs is shuttered, who will horse-crazy little girls cheer for? Their favorite poker stars or blackjack dealers?
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Nice Read
I was going to go to Suffolk on Monday, a final visit (and maybe a chance to reclaim a few bucks lost there via writing a column about it), but I decided not to at the last minute. Still three racing days left, I believe, so maybe I'll still go on one of them, but the overall feeling I assume I'll have by visiting there one last time is depression, more than anything else, so I'll probably still skip it.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I was hoping SD would get the casino
Purely for location reasons, I was hoping Suffolk Downs would get the casino. It would have been a good way to re-purpose that site. The horses would stay, there was public trans - just seemed right.
They should have
The residents of Eastie voted to cut the nose off Charlestown residents' face instead.
You can't hold back the tides and you'd think people who live next to a harbor would understand that.
The rest of Boston lost - and it's amazing that vote was even legal.
Whatever will you all do
..if this turns out to be an expensive pipe dream that doesn't pan out.
I know the fantasy of tax offsets is pretty arousing to tax dodgers and wealth hoggers but what if it lays an egg?
I'm a big fan of plausibility and sound risk assessment over attractive pipe dreams that imagine addition will somehow be coaxed from subtraction.
More casinos mean fewer people in the casino pool per place. That is highly likely.
I'd be delighted to see some sound provable data that suggest this shrinking pool of gamblers will make up for their smaller numbers by helpfully losing more money so the Grover Norquist pig circuit can hog more wealth.
Residential
Honestly, that's such a great location, I think that residential/mixed use is a far better use than a casino.
I honestly did not know
I honestly did not know Suffolk Downs was still open. Until the casino discussion, I thought they'd been closed for years. OK so maybe I'm slightly clueless/didn't go looking for info - but my point is more that their marketing / PR branch certainly did a shite job and maybe THAT is a small part of why they have gone down the tubes. I do certainly wish that the casino had gone to Revere.
Losing Money or not making enough?
Why is Suffolk losing money? Or are they breaking even and the owners would rather close and make more money selling off or repurposing the property?
The whole thing stinks of bad business decisions with owners sinking all their money into the hopes of getting a casino instead of making their property more appealing as-is without additional gambling. Suffolk has great public transportation access and a large plot of land -- things most other business are desperate for.
I don't buy the argument that they couldn't figure out a way of making the site more popular and still have horse racing. The owners are too greedy. They are the ones to blame for Suffolk's closing, not the casino commission.
Times change. The lottery and
Times change. The lottery and scratch tickets piled on a changing culture of gambling. The action ambiance wasn't enough to fill the place, even with the dog track down the way closing. Maybe they should have created a vice complex, with a classy strip joint on premise, and an action lounge. Just saying,not advocating. The days of stogies and Fortissimo and the racing form are gone. Just horses won't carry the day.
Horse racing is dead
Maybe because nobody goes there. Except for a few select venues, horse racing is dead. Nobody cares.
It's not the owners, it's the business. This was a last gasp to keep the track alive and it didn't happen. The business is already subsidized by the state and it still can't survive.
Subsidized by the state?
Citation, please.
The industry is dying, but it has itself to blame. Places like Emerald Downs and Canterbury Downs market and treat it like an event with gambling involved. The CA, NY, FL, and KY circuits will do well regardless.
Suffolk Downs went all in on casinos, to the detriment of their "core" business. They basically shut down their marketing department save talking about the one armed bandits. I mean, Keeneland is the destination, hard core race meet, yet they come out with ads for their meetings, which are the months of April and October on Wednesdays through Sundays. However, I had to track down the opening and closing dates for Suffolk Downs myself.
Citation for state subsidies
Citation for state subsidies to Suffolk Downs:
http://www.greyhoundnetworknews.org/backissues/02/winter02_cover_a.html
I don't know how long they received the taxpayer subsidies, but they definitely did receive this 5 million dollar one, I remember when Swift signed that (as she was cutting lots of other programs). And the casino law has language that takes a cut of the taxes from casinos and diverts it to horse tracks. So there is a long term subsidy in the language of the gambling bill as well.
Not a subsidy
It's a tax break.
Unless you are willing to concede that the Commonwealth subsidizes the motion picture industry and the financial services industry. Of course, I could also go further and say that the federal government subsidizes home ownership through the mortgage interest deduction, but that is not the same as what happens with the motion picture and financial services industry.
I definitely agree that
I definitely agree that taxpayers subsidize the film and financial services industry as well as Suffolk Downs and other horsetracks. I think that it is generally accepted by most people that all of those are subsidized by taxpayers.
It is generally accepted
That the earth has been in fact cooling down over the past decade. However, scientists, with the ability to provide statistics on the matter, think otherwise. That's the difference between opinion and fact.
You might not like tax credits, but they are not a subsidy.
Distinction without a difference
Distinction without a difference.
Yet a distinction
Look, I don't mind if people lump this creative use of the tax code in with what the motion picture industry or Fidelity (or Raytheon back in the day) get, but there is a big difference between tax credits (I get them for mortgage interest and charitable donations) and the Commonwealth writing checks for the tracks.
The T is subsidized by tax dollars. Non-motorists subsidize drivers via their tax dollars, which make up for the deficiencies in the funding of road construction and maintenance via the gas tax. Suffolk Downs gets a tax break.
This crowd doesn't do nuance well.
Tax credit incentives are laced through the system for everything from a furnace purchase to a windmill build.
It's kind of funny to watch people struggle with this, despite your usual clear summary.
End result is the same: the
End result is the same: the state had $5 million dollars less and Suffolk and all had $5 million dollars more.
Not quite the same
Look, I'm not going to say that tax credits are good or bad, but I get the theory behind them. The theory is that the people who get the credits will be able to produce or do whatever, and that will bring more taxes through employees earning income and the business purchasing taxable items. Therefore, the state would be out more than the $5 million it would not have gotten from Suffolk Downs otherwise in addition to not getting the income tax from the idle employees and whatever sales tax they would have gotten.
Where would the final line be, I do not know, but the loss to the state would be less than $5 million when all of that is accounted for. I don't see how the City gets anything from the developer deals the BRA was throwing around, since the City basically only gets property tax and whatever the state feels like giving it. The state can figure these things out, which is how we know how much we are being fleeced by the movie industry.
Could the right movie make horse-racing hip again
sort of like The Big Lebowski did for bowling?
Eggs, 1 basket
I'm not going to fault the ownership for being 'too greedy' - they're not running a charity, and they're entitled to seek a certain return on their investment.
But betting everything on getting a casino license seems foolhardy (in hindsight). They could have tried diversifying and using the space for some other source of revenue - host some concerts, festivals, whatever.
RIP, horse racing in MA.
Technically...
... horse racing isn't dead in Massachusetts. Thoroughbreds, maybe, but I believe Plainridge still operates a standardbred harness meet.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Ran out of options
They had no choice. This was the only option to keep the business going - period.
Lack of "handle" the problem
A track is profitable based mainly on its handle, or how much is being bet into the pools. The track receives a percentage of that. Suffolk had small fields, becuae of less-than-average purses, which generate less money bet into the pools, and less handle. They used to have a contract with TVG, the major horse racing network, so the races were shown on a national basis to people who had access to the channel, usually available on cable networks, but horse players do not like to bet small fields as the payoffs are usually less. I follow horse racing, wager recreationally, and I did not play Suffolk. The quality of the horses were generally poor, and their form, which means how well they are currently running, was erratic.
That is why they were depending on slots to improve the quality of the horse fields, the Massachusetts breeding program, and the purses they would offer. As an example, Philadelphia park, which relies on casino money to supplement their purses, held a big day of racing last Saturday, with the Kentucky Derby winner racing, and the top female racehorse running in another race. A large crowd attended, and the handle was high.
There are racing fans in Massachusetts...when they held the MassCap, Suffolk would get big crowds, and, except for the days of Cigar, these were not the top horses running in the race.
Her parents can take her to
Her parents can take her to horseback riding competitions to watch horses...no betting involved
Regional fair road trips.
Go back in time to when horse events were rooted in place.
Topsfield fair used to have racing but still has horses in more interesting situations.
There are other fairs that may still have a race or two. It's the focus of a special occasion like an autumn road trip for apples, cider, fairs and horses..
And what of Rockingham? http://www.rockinghampark.com/
I always thought it was a more honest track, anyway.
Back in the day....
The local fair circuit had horse racing - Marshfield, Weymouth and Brockton come to mind.
There are lots of ways to encounter horses.
I was in Sherborn a few weeks ago along the northern side of the Bay Circuit Trail there and it passes through a fairly elaborate dressage farm. https://flic.kr/p/pnH2MB
And then the Hamilton Wenham section passes near the Myopia Hunt Club,Here's a place near the trail. https://flic.kr/p/nX15kZ
The horse riders I meet are very nice. And the animals are great. It's important to be sort of low key and serene to not spook or annoy them but otherwise they are very smart.
There's another, a polo field at the Julia Byrd Reservation in Ipswich. https://flic.kr/p/pnHj3T
I may rail against wealth inequality but I've known old money yankee blue bloods for my whole life and they are not the problem.
People will find a way to gamble on anything.
Why not keep the jockeys employed by sticking a bit in their mouths and have someone slap them with a crop while they run around the track. Then it would open up the "sport" to everyone regardless of size. People would love to bet on which "horseless jockey" has the breeding to win. They can have an Open Paddock amateur night even! More gambling by those who can least afford it! More low-paying jobs! Think bigger!
Yes, there are some things I'll miss about Suffolk
The trackies who used to buy us booze at O'Brien's when we were kids. The almost vending machine like availability of any prescription drug of choice from the many degenerate gamblers there who were always willing to part with OC's, Perc's, and Vikes. I"ll miss seeing Wacky and the rest of the cheap cigar smoking, Member's Only jacket wearing degenerate gamblers down there wondering when the guy with the hot cigarettes was going to show up with their Montclairs.
Oh, and I'll miss the hats at Masscap, Other than that, fuck that place, I'm glad it's going.
Outstanding color writing.
You are describing a Revere I remember well. There was the Valium craze with the beach wimmen.
You probably even knew my nutbag friend, Mad Al, who would get a different gun for each season, derringer for summer and a service automatic for winter.
And then there were those strange fluorescent cut off tank tops that were a 70s body building thing.
Yeah it isn't much to miss.
I'm not just talking about the seventies!
Most of the guys I'm talking about still hang there. You can usually tell them by the shitbox cars held together with Dan Rizzo bumper stickers.
At least Louies is gone.
And I bet the Trampers are gone. Louies is just some nonentity building.
It was the scariest place I ever visited. Retired cops and hitmen by day, Trampers by night. There were a pair of sandblaster women who once went nuts and beat everyone up in some crazy fracas.
Were you around for Uncle Tannous?
That may have been the first Arabic food place on the North Shore. There were a lot of great salt of the earth people there too, who stayed on the sidelines through all the old school gangland battles.
No, I don't remember
Uncle Tannous. My old man probably does, I was more of a Lou's Fried Chicken kind of kid. And Trampers! Last time I saw a Tramper, my brother had just stated seeing a sober girl from Nahant and asked me to go to an NA meeting with her in Lynn.
Two Trampers started mixing it up in the meeting and the chair threw them out and the girl they were fighting about too. Ten minutes later the girl comes running down the stairs screaming "He fucking stabbed him! He stabbed Joey!"
So we all go running out to the street and there's some asshole Tramper bleeding all over the hood of my car from a gaping neck wound. Apparently there was a struggle for a knife and they ended up rolling all over my car in the melee, the victim's arterial spray adding a fresh coat of red paint on top of my blue. Worst part was the cops holding my car as evidence for six hours and I had to stay there the whole time. The guy died too, so there was that.
I then turned to my brother's new girlfriend and said, "Now you know why there's a higher rate of relapse in NA".
They were said to be
..behind the Blackfriars massacre, a coke rip off gone bad. A long complicated string of killings followed and probably intertwined with Whitey messes eventually.
The Cardinals Nest was another focal point. "Step in the Nest and hope for the best."
Nice column
What Suffolk represents to racing fans.
http://espn.go.com/horse-racing/story/_/id/11543900/goodbye-old-friend
Thanks For This
The first paragraph said it all for me.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Hope they open up off track
Hope they open up off track betting now that Suffolk is closed.
Live racing extended to Saturday, October 4
according to their home page and their news page.
I assume they're also racing on Wednesday, October 1, but they haven't updated their calendar page. Until last week, their scheduled last day had been Monday, September 29.