Barkley stiffing Wynn Casino

If nothing else up here the popularity of casino gambling woke the tracks up to the fact you couldn't keep treating your customers like garbage.

Back in the days the old man was living at Woodbine, Fort Erie, Mohawk and Greenwood they gouged customers for admission, parking, programs and forms (you can download that stuff now), had lousy concessions, if you wanted a beer you were stuck in these awful beverage rooms and customer service was a term they had yet to become familiar with.

They might simucast the Triple Crown races or the Breeders Cup but that was it and God help you if you needed to make a phone call in those pre-cell days. No pay phones in case somebody calls a bookie.

That's all changed with free admission and parking, beer sales all over the place, customer sevice kiosks to help newbies bet etc. and a variety of concessions. Woodbine simulcasts races from all over NA as well as Hong Kong. The old man wouldn't recgnize the joint today.

 

Gambling isn't about money, as I'm sure most of you know - it's about the extremes of winning and losing. Stiffing people is actually <i> part </i> of the addiction, not a byproduct. Getting the lights shut off at your house for nonpayment - same thing. It becomes of an issue of "fuck it, this is bottom - I'm coming all the way back from this." And a lot of gamblers actually do. Then they sorta crave that bottom, like, how bad can it actually get? Many gambling addicts really want to find out.

About four cycles of that kills just about anybody. They don't OD on casino chips or markers, though - they die of heart attacks, alcoholism, severe diabetes, suicide, or lung cancer (a lot of addicts are 3-and-4-pack-a-day types). I once knew an addict who lived on Planters' dry-roasted peanuts and Hostess blackberry and apple fruit pies for a month. I mean - that was all; it provided some perfect combo of energy and complimented the flavor of his Newport cigarettes. And let me tell you; about one gas station in 100 carries the Hostess blackberry fruit pie - I dare you to go find one. But he found them. After a month, though, his feet were the size of shoeboxes thanks to the gout the peanuts gave him. Couldn't go to the casino; had to play online with a nearly maxed out credit and bet football games from his couch.

He's dead now from, as Ralph Wiley once called it, "Green Death." That is, the Newports got him.

 

I was wondering, anyone know who gave Barkley his nicknames "Round Mound of Rebound" and "Sir Charles." Haven't been able to find it on the Web.

 

Norman Chad