Read Related Article: OTB Back On Track
Janice Boyd slowly made her way around the Liberty Avenue Off-Track Betting (OTB) outpost, her long black hair bouncing against her back as she stooped to pick up a stubborn racing stub. Around her, men pumped their fists and screamed: “Open ‘em up! Open ‘em up! Go with that horse!”
Boyd, at first, seemed impervious to the spectacle, which, after almost three years’ employment for OTB has become routine. However, Boyd is single with no other source of income and her unemployed daughter will soon give birth to a second child who Boyd will have to support. Without her job as a junior building custodian for OTB, Boyd said she would likely have joined the unemployment line.
And so it would have been for many of the 1,500 citywide OTB employees who would have lost their jobs were it not for a last-minute deal on Sunday that resulted in a state takeover of NYC OTB.
“I’ll be 53 years old. What do you think would happen?” Boyd asked rhetorically, while on shift Monday at the OTB in Ozone Park, one of the many she works in across the city.
After pausing for a beat she added, “I’d probably be on public assistance, right?”
Working her way around a room strewn with failed racing tickets that resembled confetti, Boyd said she was overjoyed when she heard the news of the OTB reprieve.
“It’s a good job - a great job. I love it,” she said, weaving in and out of seasoned veterans yelling at horses that galloped across wall-mounted screens.
Not all within the Liberty Avenue establishment were relishing in the ticker tape, however.
Mike Mazzullo has been placing bets at one southern Queens OTB or another for thirty years.
“I been gambling all my life and I don’t want OTB around,” Mazzullo said, poring over his racing program. “I don’t wanna be able to come here with my $200 and lose it all.”
For Mazzullo and his pals, the return of racing programs on Monday after NYC OTB discontinued them a few years ago was the first tangible sign of new management. Many of them believed that an arrangement to save OTB was in the works all along.
“Bloomberg is steadfast and knew they had to make a deal,” said Bob Spangenberg, an OTB regular from Glendale. “He’s not stupid,” Spangenberg said, winking.
“I think with this system now, Bloomberg did the right thing because the city’s gonna start seeing some money,” he said, explaining that city schools were initially supposed to benefit from OTB.
John Kohout, manager of Austin’s Ale House, one of OTB’s restaurant locations, said he, too, was optimistic that OTB would be saved.
“Such a big enterprise as OTB, it just can’t stop. All the people that work there,” he said, trailing off as he looked around his Kew Gardens restaurant, which was filling in with a lunch crowd of casual diners chatting over burgers and men with noses buried in newsprint racing forms.
“We would’ve had less people here during the day,” Kohout said, “but I’m glad we didn’t have to find that out.”
While the resurrection of OTB was celebrated around town, Mike Mazzullo maintained his air of incredulity, conscious of his gambling “sickness,” a pandemic he said affects those with little to do and less to lose.
“There is not a winner alive in this place,” he said, loud enough for his friends to hear but just quiet enough to blend into the usual din of a weekday afternoon in an OTB. “Because if they were winners they wouldn’t be here,” he continued, glancing up at a race and quickly returning his gaze to the floor.
“It’s a shame,” he muttered.
