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Is NYC trying to go sin-free?

By David Freedlander, amNewYork Staff Writer
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| dfreedlander@am-ny.com

November 16, 2007

The Winner's Circle OTB at 515 Seventh Ave. (amNewYork Photo/ Lane Johnson / November 15, 2007)

First it was your cigarettes. Then it was your cheeseburgers.

Now they want your racing form.

The Bloomberg administration announced yesterday that it would not bail out its Off-Track Betting Corp., meaning that the city's OTB parlors may soon go the way of quarter peep shows on 42nd Street.

By June, all of the city's 73 betting parlors could be gone, once the city stops funding to the cash-challenged operation, which still makes a profit but must hand over much of it to the state.

While the fiscal argument for closure may be compelling, especially as the city faces harder financial times, there was an unmistakable moral undertone to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's announcement yesterday.

"I have always had reservations about city government being involved in gambling," he said in a statement. "But it is entirely wrong for the city to lose taxpayer money funding such a questionable endeavor."

Robert Borkowski, 49, of midtown and a daily visitor to OTB, disagrees.

"It makes me feel like I'm not in the right city anymore," Borkowski said as he watched the races at The Winners Circle OTB on West 38th Street. "You can't drink in public. They won't even let you smoke in some parks -- I think that's ridiculous. They're infringing on us."

Since OTB parlors first started springing up in 1970, they have been a public space of sorts, often for under-employed, usually older men, to while away the hours.

"OTB parlors were the kind of places where -- how do you say it -- life's winners didn't exactly hang out there," said Luc Sante, author of "Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York."

Philip Lopate, a life-long New Yorker and author of "Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan," sees sociological forces at work.

"The city used to be working class," he said. "OTB parlors were just a kind of cultural expression of that working class. I never went into one, but I always kind of liked them. They seemed like a kind of home to certain people."

Bloomberg is not the first mayor to take aim at vice. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani had many moral targets, including nightclubs, and in the 1960s, authorities routinely raided cafes where "obscene" poetry was being read. More recently, Bloomberg banned smoking and the use of trans fats in city restaurants and bars.

Even so, virtue has never been able to hold court in the city for too long.

"The city is resourceful and resilient," said Marshall Berman, editor most recently of the book "New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg." "If it's denied one thing, it creates another."

But former Mayor Ed Koch, who presided over the city's zanier days, applauded the mayor's recent efforts to improve New Yorkers moral fiber. "Look, I have fondness for the '70s and '80s. I was mayor, you may remember," he said. "If you prefer the edginess of the old 42nd street you need help."

Freelancer Kristen V. Brown contributed to this story.