Results tagged “otb”

This is why we can't have nice things, or dogs in bars: An elderly Queens man says his sex life was ruined (and so was his knee) after he tripped over an "unleashed and unrestrained" dog in a Kew Gardens pub in April. Irving Grossman, 81, is suing Austin's Steak and Ale House, which is popular with gamblers because it has its own Off-Track Betting window. That's exactly where Grossman was headed on that fateful spring day when his luck took a turn for the worse.

OTB is really starting to resemble that schoolyard friend who keeps on losing a bet and immediately fires back, "Okay, how 'bout double or nothing?" In what he called an "unprecedented but necessary move," yesterday Governor Paterson issued an executive order authorizing Off-Track Betting to file for bankruptcy protection. Last year OTB was one of the forgotten beneficiaries in the Year of the Bailout, the money-bleeding agency rescued by the governor in a deal with the mayor. At its current pace, OTB would run out of money completely by next spring. Paterson said Tuesday's move was necessary to close failing parlors, and expand automated-betting systems to pay off the agency's mounting debts. The Times has an in-depth look as to just how much money the agency wastes by insisting on company cars for its city employees. One gray ponytailed OTB patron told the paper, “I tell you what my bookie in the Bronx don’t have this problem. He always has money. Nowhere else in the world does a bookie lose money.”

A Tribeca resident should thank Lady Luck for suffering only minor injuries after falling 30 feet through a sidewalk grating on Murray Street on Saturday. According to a Chinese food deliveryman who witnessed the incident, Vincent Riggio, 59, exited the OTB parlor near Murray Street, "He had a cigar, he stepped on the platform and he fell. I looked down the hole. He was down there, squatting down. There was a lot of dust."

Word is that some residents of Morris Park in the Bronx were not too happy when a vacant storefront transformed into an Off-Track Betting. On June 19th the Community Board's district manager, John Fratta, began receiving many angry phone calls from locals, after which he called the OTB offices to ask if they were opening a storefront in the neighborhood. They didn't know anything about it. By Monday, the confused community got some clarity when “We found out it was a movie, but they forgot to notify the neighborhood. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing. The outcry was unbelievable.” Bronx native Nick Sandow is filming his movie Ponies in the area, so take a deep breath Morris Parkers, we'd wager that everything will be okay. And OTB, don't get any ideas, Senator Jeff Klein says, “It is incumbent on all of us to ensure new establishments speak to the community before opening their doors"—and from the sound of it, the natives don't fancy you too much.

A last-minute deal was worked out between Governor David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to save Off-track Betting, but the road to the agreement was rocky.

It seemed like Gov. Paterson had managed to cobble together a deal for the State to take over NYC OTB yesterday afternoon and prevent its closing. A state takeover would require a vote by the legislature Monday, but Sheldon Silver and Joseph Bruno both seemed amenable to the idea. Mayor Bloomber, however, is holding fast on his insistence that he is going to close all of the city's OTB parlors tomorrow.

According to various sources, Governor Paterson has reached a deal to take over Off Track Betting (OTB) parlors from New York City, in order to prevent its total shutdown Despite handling more than $1 billion in wagers annually, the company lost $13 million last year.

After years of warnings, the city's Off Track Betting business may be out of luck as Mayor Bloomberg said the city may pull its funding and let the gambling business close. He told the OTB Board of Directors, "The City simply cannot take dollars away from schools and hospitals to pay for a gambling operation. We have no business subsidizing betting parlors at the expense of City taxpayers, particularly at a time when we're asking all agencies to cut their budgets." And what's more, the board agreed and approved the shutdown!