TurfRuler
09-16-2008, 05:58 PM
Cry for Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and watch your money go down the drain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/13/AR2008091302213.html?hpid=sec-metro
The closing of the backstretch marks the passing of an unlikely patch of urban horse country, one that drew its grooms, hot-walkers and stable hands largely from the surrounding inner-city neighborhoods of Baltimore. At most tracks, the resident army of low-wage workers who keep the thoroughbreds ready to run is now made up mostly of Latino immigrants. At Pimlico, about half of the workforce was black.
"It's the end of an era around here," said Gail Boozer, who has run a corner grocery across the street from the stables for 17 years. "It's so quiet. We used to hear the horses all day long."
"Miss Gail," as the Pimlico hands called her, would come out from behind her Plexiglas windows several times a day and cross Belvedere Avenue to sell cigarettes and sodas through the high chain-link fence separating the equestrian world from the city streets. She has already felt the drop-off in business, she said, and has decided to close on Sundays. "I feel so sorry for them. They treated those horses like they was their kids. Some of them are too old to do anything else."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/13/AR2008091302213.html?hpid=sec-metro
The closing of the backstretch marks the passing of an unlikely patch of urban horse country, one that drew its grooms, hot-walkers and stable hands largely from the surrounding inner-city neighborhoods of Baltimore. At most tracks, the resident army of low-wage workers who keep the thoroughbreds ready to run is now made up mostly of Latino immigrants. At Pimlico, about half of the workforce was black.
"It's the end of an era around here," said Gail Boozer, who has run a corner grocery across the street from the stables for 17 years. "It's so quiet. We used to hear the horses all day long."
"Miss Gail," as the Pimlico hands called her, would come out from behind her Plexiglas windows several times a day and cross Belvedere Avenue to sell cigarettes and sodas through the high chain-link fence separating the equestrian world from the city streets. She has already felt the drop-off in business, she said, and has decided to close on Sundays. "I feel so sorry for them. They treated those horses like they was their kids. Some of them are too old to do anything else."