Category Archives: TSR

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There was lots of yelling and unproductive complaining as a few hundred voters waited their turn to get a ballot at the Christopher A. Santora school (PS 222) in Queens midday Tuesday.

Much of the confusion was rooted in the fact my polling place in Jackson Heights lacked any semblance of a plan for organizing an orderly entry path into the school.

A timid poll worker assigned to the task of crowd control outside the lunchroom where ballots were distributed was overwhelmed by a running free-for-all over various lines of people that had formed without logic. A NYPD school safety officer and a uniformed police officer looked on but appeared unwilling to intervene on a responsibility that they apparently felt best be handled by polling place leadership.

It was kind of a mess. Not horrible, but enough to make a few people walk away.

Voters from my neighborhood had previously voted at a charter school a little closer to home. This was the first contested election voters from my election district (Q45) cast ballots at Santora. By the looks of it, the city’s board of elections consolidated polling places.

After about a 40-minute wait, the flustered old woman who found my name in the book designed to cross-check voter signatures could be heard saying “When is this day gonna end?” She chastised fellow poll workers seated near her for no good reason and slammed her hand on the table a few times for effect. She was a nut.

And that’s the problem you get at the polling place here in Queens. A few clear-cut nuts staff the operation. There’s plenty of really sharp poll workers, too. But when the crowds get big on an election day with significance, the nuts drag down the sharps and the election machinery squeaks and freaks.

All in all, 50 minutes to wait for a 30-second procedure to fill in a few dots is a piece of cake. The only bummer was the carrying on by people already on edge from the events of the last week. One guy who looked like Fireman Ed shouted at line-cutters only to cut the line himself.

State senator Jose Peralta cast his ballot while I was there. He was accompanied by a child. Peralta shook his head at the disorganization but exited without any apparent effort to exert a solution. Both Peralta and assemblyman Francisco Moya were on the ballot on two separate party lines but neither had competition. I abstained from voting for either of them to protest their undeserved free ride to another term.

The only circles I filled were for the Green Party candidates challenging longtime Congressman Joe Crowley and US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

I thought long and hard about voting for Jill Stein for President but ended up casting my presidential choice for the incumbent. The only reason I couldn’t go Green on that line was because it seemed too much of a reach envisioning Stein stepping in to such a big job.

-One side note on the polling place: The Christopher A. Santora School is named after a Queens-born firefighter and former teacher who perished in the 9-11 attacks at the age of 23. The Santora school serves 320 students in the pre-K through second grade levels.

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Restoration of operations at New York’s airports came just in time for me to slip out of town to reach Los Angeles for the Breeder’s Cup.

I found an empty seat on a bird bound for San Francisco at the crack of dawn Thursday. A connecting flight from SFO to LAX had plenty of space.

I initially believed a massive backlog of customers trying to exit New York on an airplane after more than three days without departures would make it impossible for a standby traveler like me to leave. Turns out the broad post-Sandy chaos in the region altered life in ways that makes the airlines’ flight booking calculus out of whack. The no-show factor rises. Seats opened up.

When I met up with Cup roommate Jeff D from Nashville at LAX at midday Thursday, it felt good to arrive in such a beautiful place. The palm trees. The sunshine. For a few days, it felt like the Best Coast. We played the band that carries that name in the rental car with the windows rolled down. We sat in traffic on the interstate. We ate and drank well. We gambled with both fists.

That’s not to say I wasn’t shaken a bit by concern about what was happening in New York as we had such a wonderful time in La-la land. But I’m glad I got away from it all for a few days. It was a planned vacation that could easily have been messed up but wasn’t.

The luck involved with executing the trip’s logistics didn’t extend to the wagering effort, however. I didn’t cash a ticket over two days of exciting Cup races. My pick four plays on Saturday’s card were meant to net longshot winners Little Mike, Trinniberg and Fort Larned. Unfortunately, the betting slips were constructed in a way that missed capturing the entire sequence and its huge payoff. My final desperation bet of the weekend was a $25 exacta box Fort Larned/To Honor and Serve. No credit is given for partial correctness.

Our pal Carsoni got us great seats in a Santa Anita clubhouse box. The two-day event was well-attended and most of the races had drama. The only real logistical complaint heard Saturday was the length of lines for a cold beer. Otherwise, Santa Anita aces this event. This was the sixth time the legendary and stunningly beautiful 78 year-old track hosted the Cup. It will return there next year. Some have suggested Santa Anita should be the permanent home of the Breeder’s Cup. I personally object to that proposal. I favor a rotation that would include Belmont Park in New York at least once every three or four years. Yeah, there’s a chill in the air here in early November but Belmont is a more attractive place to run for the European horses. The sun at Santa Anita on Saturday was blazing. It surely weakens animals who typically run in temperatures at least 25 degrees cooler. The heat also hardens the Santa Anita grass course in a way that’s unpleasant to potential European entrants.

That said, the most visually impressive performance of the weekend came from an Irish gelding named Grandeur in a non-Cup race. The three-year-old stumbled badly out of the gate in Friday’s last race (the Grade 2 Twilight Derby) and was way out of it (13 lengths) halfway through the mile and an eighth run on the turf. With a furlong to go and still a solid four lengths behind, Grandeur had a sudden rush of acceleration at a rate I don’t recall seeing anytime recently. It was a sight to see. Grandeur won by a half-length.

There were many other great racing moments: Wise Dan’s record-breaking time winning the Mile turf. Shanghai Bobby’s slow but gutsy effort to win the juvenile dirt without the aid of lasix. And the Argentine nine-year-old Calidoscopo’s victory from way out of it in the much-maligned Marathon contest. Scope’s win as an unknown quantity brought dancing and flag-waving from his Argentine supporters adding to the international flavor that is so entwined with this event.

Breakfast at Rod’s Grill before the races on Friday and Saturday was excellent. We caught Bama’s comeback win over LSU while eating dinner at Chiquita Bonita in Pasadena after the card Saturday. The best meal of the weekend came Friday night in San Gabriel. Talented restaurant writer Jonathan Gold touted Golden Deli on Las Tunas. The hit here is the Phan Ga Gio. Crispy, tightly-wrapped Vietnamese egg rolls, the Ga Gio is dipped in a savory liquid. Serious wow! The line was out the door when we reached Golden Deli, tucked in a busy strip mall filled with Asian businesses. Guessing we had time to for a beer down the street, we scampered to Al’s Cocktails for a round. When we returned to the Golden, our number had already been called but they seated us anyway.

Our final meal of the weekend came at Andy’s Coffee Shop in Pasadena. We had a hearty breakfast at Andy’s Sunday morning before heading to the airport. The actor Steve-O has a veggie quesadilla dish named in his honor here. Several pictures of Steve-O making a goofy face with thumbs-up while visiting Andy’s can be seen near the front entrance.

No visit to the San Gabriel Valley would be complete of course without stopping into the Colorado Bar to see Johnny the bartender. We hit the Colorado (in business since 1964) on both Friday and Saturday nights. Johnny is working the early PM shift these days. He exits at 10 PM now to make way for a younger, female bartender. But Johnny remains in fine form and he appeared glad to see us after a three-year gap. When we asked him how he’d been in the meantime, Johnny offered this uplifting assessment. “You wake up. You come in. You throw out the assholes. You go home.”

Our lodging spot for this stay was again the Saga Motor Hotel. The timeless three-story structure on the Rose Bowl Parade route is clean and well-run. Our room was just $79 a night plus tax.

Yard signs expressing opinions on California ballot measures and local races could be seen as we moved around the area. Among a myriad of props that gained the half-million plus petition signatures necessary to make California’s ballot Tuesday is Prop 36 which would alter the state’s draconian “three strikes and your out” law. Cali’s three-strikes law was enacted via prop a year after the 1993 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. It has resulted in overly harsh life sentences for some 3000 felony offenders with third strikes considered non-violent. Prop 36 would soften three-strikes to allow for more sensible sentencing. It would have retroactive reach. Three-strikes laws often have popular support given worries about crime. But the financial strain of caging some of these inmates for life gives Prop 36 a good shot in California.

I returned to Queens Sunday evening. The flight’s final few miles into New York’s Kennedy passed at a low-altitude over the darkened Rockaways. Flashing red lights from emergency service vehicles dotted the peninsula. It was too dark to see the shoreline but as the Boeing 757 was about to land, you could see a cluster of high-rise public housing projects on East Rockaway. They were pitch dark.

The driver of the yellow cab that took me home said unavailability of gasoline in the five boroughs and Long Island had forced him to make middle-of-the night runs to fill his tank in Stamford, CT.