| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
 Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 12:48 pm Post subject: The Big Apple |
 |
|
The Big Apple:
Gotham
A History of New York City to 1898
By Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
New York City, the town that never sleeps, offered plenty of razzle dazzle diversity in the many gambling venues that flourished there throughout the city's rich and somewhat checkered past. Here are but a few samples of local color featured in this massive epistle on Gotham as it was before 1900:
...from the top of the heap...
| Quote: | Hot to Trot
Many of the newly moneyed flocked to the New York Yacht Club...When such wholesome diversions paled, gentlemen could gamble at any of a dozen new luxury casinos, equal to Europe's finest. Here one could dine in splendor -- the sumptuous meals and choice wines were free -- and then repair to the glass-domed, velvet-carpeted, rosewood-furnished gaming rooms for high-stakes faro and roulette. (Belmont reputedly lost sixty thousand dollars in one night). (p. 954) |
...all the way down to the dregs...
| Quote: | On the Bowery
Men played as hard as they drank in the working-class wards. Though official opposition had almost eliminated the baiting of bulls and bears by 1820, cockfighting disturbing photos from Bali continued to thrive as did ratbaiting, a blood sport even more suitably scaled for urban life. Patsy Hearn's Five Points Grogshop, across from the Old Brewery, had a "Men's Sporting Parlor" famous for its rat fights. Seated on pine planks around a railed-in sunken pit, fifteen feet square, two hundred men at a time watched while an escaped slave named Dusty Dustmoor released packs of rats collected by the neighborhood youths. While the rodents engaged in losing combat with trained terriers, spectators wagered furiously on the number of rats the dogs would kill. (p. 486) |
...and a few places inbetween...
| Quote: | Artisanal Wards
Montayne's became an informal neighborhood headquarters, a place to read a newspaper and talk over the latest news, a rendez-vous for personal or public celebrations, a magnet for canny politicians, who appeared on election day to buy a round for the voters. Its clientele could play at dice and cards (ignoring the provincial law that promised to fine innkeepers who let youths, apprentices, journeymen, servants or common sailors gamble). They might also take a chance, between beers, on one of the "private lotteries" that were springing up (also illegal because they encouraged "Laboring People to Assemble Together at Taverns where Such Lotteries are usually Set on Foort & Drawn"). From time to time, as well, they could take in the display of a live leopard, a waxworks show, a bullbaiting and other entertainments hosted by the proprietor. (p. 188) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1496#1496
Last edited by editor on Thu May 28, 2009 8:13 am; edited 11 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 1:26 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham
Volume 2
The World Over
Hardcover
| Quote: | | ...But here his good sense is obvious. "Twenty years of experience in the city of New York, both professionally (you must not forget that he is an actuary and counsellor-at-law) and as a student of social life, satisfy me that the average American gentleman in a large city has not over three thousand dollars a year to spend upon amusements. Will it be fair to devote more than one-third of this fund to cards? I do not think that anyone will say that one-third is not an ample allowance for a single amusement. Given, therefore, a thousand dollars a year for the purpose of playing Draw Poker, what should be the limit of the stakes, in order that the average American gentleman may play the game with a contented mind, and with the certainty not only that he can pay his losses, but that his winnings will be paid to him?" Mr. Blackbridge has no doubt that the answer is two dollars and a half. (From The Portrait of a Gentleman, p. 158). |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=1972#1972
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 12:46 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Legs
Paperback
By William Kennedy
| Quote: | I didn't have anything to do with him after that until 1929 when I represented Joe Vignola in the Hotsy Totsy case. And a story, which I pieced together very painfully from Joe, Jack, and half a dozen others, goes with that. It begins the night Benny Shapiro knocked out Kid Murphy in eight rounds at the Garden in '29. Jack, a serious fan of Benny's, won two grand that night taking the short end of seven to five.
"Stop by the club later," Benny remembered Jack telling him in the dressing room after the fight. "We'll have a little celebration."
"I got to meet a guy, Jack," Benny said.
"Bring her along."
"I'll try to make it, but I might be late."
"We'll wait," said Jack.
Herman Zuckman came hustling toward the bar as Jack walked into the Hotsy Totsy Club with Elaine Walsh, a singer and his special friend of the moment, on his arm. Fat Herman had been sole owner of the Hotsy until Jack Diamond decided to join him as a fifty-fifty partner. The club was on Broadway, near Fifty-fourth, top of the second-floor stairs, music by a six-piece band, and tonight, Joe Vignola, the singing waiter, doubling on violin. (From the chapter entitled, Jack Sauce, at p. 20). |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2057#2057
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 12:49 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 1:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Guys and Dolls
The Short Stories of Damon Runyan
Hardcover
Introduction by William Kennedy
Ah, gees, what a swell lug that Runyan was! His work is a Broadway celebration of all things gambled, lost and won. Besides teaching America how to talk like a bunch of two-bit thugs, Runyan immortalized Manhattan's most famous delicatessen, which opened in 1921 with a forward thinking Leo Linderman behind the counter.
| Quote: | Of all the high players this country ever sees, there is no doubt but that the guy they call The Sky is the highest. In fact, the reason he is called The Sky is because he goes so high when it comes to betting on any proposition whatever. He will bet all he has, and nobody can bet any more than this.
His right name is Obadiah Masterson, and he is originally out of a little town in southern Colorado where he learns to shoot craps, and play cards, and one thing and another, and where his old man is a very well-known citizen, and something of a sport himself... (From The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, p. 14) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2114#2114
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 12:52 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Jazz
Paperback
By 1993 Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison
| Quote: | | Breathing hurts in weather that cold, but whatever the problems of being winterbound in the City they put up with them because it is worth anything to be on Lenox Avenue safe from fays and the things they think up; where the sidewalks, snow-covered or not, are wider than the main roads of the towns where they were born and perfectly ordinary people can stand at the stop, get on the streetcar, give the man the nickel, and ride anywhere you please, although you don't please to go many places because everything you want is right where you are: the church, the store, the party, the women, the men, the postbox (but no high schools), the furniture store, street newspaper vendors, the bootleg houses (but no banks), the beauty parlors, the barbershops, the juke joints, the ice wagons, the rag collectors, the pool halls, the open food markets, the numbers runner, and every club, organization, group, order, union, society, brotherhood, sisterhood and association imaginable. The service trails, of course, are worn, and there are paths slick from the forays of members of one group into the territory of another where it is believed something curious or thrilling lies. Some gleaming, cracking, scary stuff. Where you can pop the cork and put the cold glass mouth right up to your own. Where you can find danger or be it; where you can fight till you drop and smile at the knife when it misses and when it doesn't. It makes you wonderful just to see it. And just as wonderful to know that back in one's own building there are lists drawn up by the wives for the husband hunting an open market, and that sheets impossible to hang out in snowfall drape kitchens like the curtains of Abyssinian Sunday-school plays. (-- pgs. 10-11) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2176#2176
Last edited by editor on Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:13 am; edited 6 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Hoodlum
DVD
| Quote: | | Immortalizes the Harlem numbers racket of the 1920s. Laurence Fishburne as the legendary Bumpy Johnson. Tim Roth as the Dutchman. The trailer is better than the movie, except for the bit when the boys put something besides their cards on the table |
.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia
Paperback
By Jerry Capeci
| Quote: | | Numbers is one of the simplest and cheapest games to play. Mafia members make money from this racket in two main ways: owning all or a piece of a numbers operation or extorting a cut of an independent numbers business. Numbers comes in many varieties, but an explanation of one version will suffice for our purposes. A player picks a three-digit number from 000 to 999. On a wager of $1, if his selection is correct, the bettor gets $600, a 600-to-1 payoff. In the past, a host of methods were used to pick the winning number, including methods that could be manipulated. Numbers became popular around 1920 when operators began using a system for picking the winning number that was seen to be out of their control and not susceptible to being fixed. (From Chapter 9, Gambling Makes Mobsters Smile, pgs. 127-128) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2178#2178
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 1:03 pm; edited 4 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 12:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
Two's Company
Short Story By Jonathn Franzen
May 23/05
| Quote: | | Paul's childhood had been the stuff of comedy. His father was ordained as a Presbyterian minister but left the Church to work in human resources at Raytheon and devote his leisure time to sports betting and solitary drinking while Paul's mother found Jesus, moved to Colorado, and started a second family with an Air Force colonel whom Paul, as an adolescent, dreamed of murdering with a hatchet. At boarding school, he took to wearing all black and smoking black Sobranies, and he helped form a literary comedy troupe that played scenes like the tsar's near-execution of Dostoyevsky for slapstick. Paul's favorite role was a cheerful Jehovah's Witness who kept tapping on Sylvia Plath's kitchen door while she was trying to kill herself; he also liked to play Sartre's alter ego, Roquentin, and stare at a tree root until its disgusting raw existence made him barf. (-- p. 79) |
Woof! Further evidence, if more was required, of the collapse of the American short story writer.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2210#2210
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 1:08 pm; edited 3 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 11:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
Personal Matters
Five premieres at New York City Ballet
By Joan Acocella
June 6/05
| Quote: | | Like a poker player laying down a royal flush, New York City Ballet, at its spring gala, on May 4th, staged five ballets new to the company. What they added up to, though was maybe a pair of sixes. Several of the ballets were just brief pas de deux, made by dancers in the company: Benjamin Mellepied, Edwaard Liang, and Albert Evans... (possibly the longest lead paragraph in the history of journalism but still... at p. 102) |
Is it just the poker explosion or are the editors baiting us, we wonder?
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2221#2221
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 1:09 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:34 am Post subject: |
|
|
The Intelligent Investor
Hardcover
By Benjamin Graham
| Quote: | | The newspaper employed the word "investor" in these instances because, in the easy language of Wall Street, everyone who buys or sells a security has become an investor, regardless of what he buys, or for what purpose, or at what price, or whether for cash or on margin. Compare this with the attitude of the public toward common stocks in 1948, when over 90 % of those queried expressed themselves as opposed to the purchase of common stocks. About half gave as their reason "not safe, a gamble", and about half, the reason "not familiar with." It is indeed ironical (though not surprising) that common stock purchases of all kinds were quite generally regarded as highly speculative or risky at a time when they were selling on a most attractive basis, and due soon to begin their greatest advance in history; conversely, the fact they had advanced to what were undoubtedly dangerous levels as judged by past experience later transformed them into "investment," and the entire stock-buying public into "investors." (From Chapter One, Investment versus Speculation, at pgs. 2-3) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2276#2276
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 1:11 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2006 11:01 am Post subject: |
|
|
The Mayor of MacDougal Street
A Memoir
Hardcover
By Dave Van Ronk with Elijah Wald
| Quote: | | Clarence (part owner of the Gaslight cafe) was one of the most extraordinary figures to come onto that scene. He had been quite prominent in the Truman administration, as well as becoming a self-made millionaire three times and each time losing it all. He was a gambler and knew how to take his losses with a smile. God, that man was a great poker player! There were regular games all the time, and one night I was bumped out early on -- I was clearly in a different league from the guys he liked to play with -- and Clarence let me kibitz his hand. I sat there and watched him fold hands that I would have held onto for dear life. Once he threw away a straight! And he was right every goddamn time. He had come from a completely different world, and suddenly was just picked up and dumped on MacDougal Street, in the middle of this kind of nonstop carnival, and he dealt with that situation as though he had created it. That man had more capacity for enjoyment than anyone I have ever known; he could have found something amusing about Hell. (-- pgs. 154-155) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2431#2431
Last edited by editor on Sun Jun 28, 2009 3:11 pm; edited 6 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 10:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
Live at Sir George Williams University
CD Audio
Recorded live in Montreal, 1967
Gambler's Blues
By The Mayor of MacDougal Street
| Quote: | Gambler's Blues (aka St. James Infirmary Blues, most often attributed to Gabriel hisself, Louis Armstrong)
It was down in Old Joe's barroom,
On the corner by the square,
The usual crowd was assembled
And big Joe McKinney was there.
He was standing at my shoulder.
His eyes were bloodshot red;
He turned to the crowd around him,
These are the very words he said:
"I went down to the St. James Infirmary
I saw my baby there,
She's laid out on a cold white table,
So so cold, so white, so fair."
chorus
"Let her go, let her go, God bless her;
Wherever she may be
She may search this wide world over
She'll never find a sweet man like me."
Oh, when I die, bury me
In my high top Stetson hat;
Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain
God'll know I died standin' pat.
I want six crap shooters for pall bearers.
Chorus girl to sing me a song.
Put a jazz band on my hearse wagon.
Raise Hell as I roll along.
Roll out your rubber tired carriage,
Roll out your old time hat.
Twelve men going to the graveyard
And eleven coming back.
Now that I've told my story,
I'll take another shot of booze.
And if anyone should happen to ask you,
I've got those gamblers' blues. |
Best version:
| Quote: | Lou Rawls
LP Recording 1960?
Recorded live in Chicago
We got ours in a Safeway $1.50 bin
about 1964) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2465#2465
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 1:16 pm; edited 5 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 10:22 am Post subject: |
|
|
Hot Water
The Autograph Edition
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Mr. Carlisle regarded *the human python feverishly. Questions rained from him. But when the other finally spoke, which was only when the coffee had arrived and he had drained his fifth cup, it was not to reply to any of these but merely to put into words a dream, a sort of opalescent vision, which had come to him in the silent watches of the night.
"All I ask," said **Mr. Slattery with feeling, "is that some day -- I don't care when it is -- just some day-- I meet ***that white-haired bird down a dark alley with no cops in sight."
A shudder of reminiscent horror passed through him.
"Putting a fellow out on a window-sill!" he continued with growing vehemence. "I ask you, is that nice? Cheese! And me scared of heights ever since a girl I knew betted me I wouldn't lean over the edge of the Woolworth Building] and spit into Broadway. If I get over this by the time I'm a hundred, it'll be soon." (-- p. 142) |
*Oily Gordon Carlisle, Confidence Trickster supreme
**Soup Slattery, expert safe-blower
***Senator Opal, secret gin swiller elected on the Prohibition ticket
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2466#2466
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 1:24 pm; edited 6 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Breakfast at Tiffany's
A Short Novel and Three Short Stories
Hardcover
By Truman Capote
| Quote: | "Well," she said, with a mouthful of apple, "you may have read about him in the papers. His name is Sally Tomato, and I speak Yiddish better than he speaks English; but he's a darling old man, terribly pious. He'd look like a monk if it weren't for the gold teeth; he says he prays for me every night. Of course he was never my lover; as far as that goes, I never knew him until he was already in jail. But I adore him now, after all I've been going to see him every Thursday for seven months, and I think I'd go even if he didn't pay me. This one's mushy," she said, and aimed the rest of the apple out the window. "By the way, I did know Sally by sight. He used to come to Joe Bell's bar, the one around the corner: never talked to anybody, just stand there, like the kind of man who lives in hotel rooms. But it's funny to remember back and realize how closely he must have been watching me, because right after they sent him up (Joe Bell showed me his picture in the paper. Blackhand. Mafia. All that mumbo jumbo: but they gave him five years) along came this telegram from a lawyer. It said to contact him immediately for information to my advantage."
"You thought somebody had left you a million?"
"Not at all. I figured Bergdorf was trying to collect. But I took the gamble and went to see this lawyer (if he is a lawyer, which I doubt, since he doesn't seem to have an office, just an answering service, and he always wants to meet you in Hambug Heaven: that's because he's fat, he can eat ten hamburgers and two bowls of relish and a whole lemon meringue pie). He asked me how I'd like to cheer up a lonely old man, at the same time pick up a hundred a week. I told him look, darling, you've got the wrong Miss Golightly, I'm not a nurse that does tricks on the side. I wasn't impressed by the honorarium either; you can do as well as that on trips to the powder room: any gent with the slightest chic will give you fifty for the girl's john, and I always ask for cab fare too, that's another fifty. But then held me his client was Sally Tomato. He said dear old Sally had long admired me a la distance, so wouldn't it be a good deed if I went to visit him once a week. Well, I couldn't say no: it was too romantic." (From the title novel at pgs. 25-26) |
Breakfast at Tiffany's
DVD
| Quote: | | Filmmakers who have run out of story lines - and they have! - are warmly invited to re-make this New York classic. Poor Capote reviled the first effort mostly for its inept casting with the exception of Buddy Ebsen as Doc Golightly, but the usual Hollywood sugar coating also managed to devastate both character and plot. Hit Re-try someone. Please. |
Better:
Breakfast at Tiffany's
CD Audio
Featuring Henry Mancini's lush movie score.
And better still:
Motions and Emotions
CD Audio
Featuring Oscar Peterson's jazz version of
Mancini's Sally's Tomato.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2592#2592
Last edited by editor on Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:03 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 1:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Home Alone 2
Lost in New York
DVD
| Quote: | More about our preferred venue, the Algonquin Hotel, a New York landmark favored by the discriminating Dorothy Parker, its most distinguished resident and founding member of the celebrated Round Table.
|
| Quote: | (From the old, black and white Cagney-esque gangster flick our now 10-year-old protagonist Kevin McCallister watches on TV during an unexpected stay at the newly-redecorated (then) Plaza).
Gangster's moll (who's been caught smoochin' with every one of the boys, including Little Moe with the gimpy leg): You got me all wrong...
Johnny: All right, I believe you...but my tommy gun don't!
Moll: Johnny! You're the only duck in my pond!
Johnny: Get down on your knees and tell me you love me.
Moll: Baby! I'm over the moon for ya!
Johnny: You gotta do better than that.
Moll: If my love was an ocean Lindy'd have to take two airplanes to get across it.
Johnny: Maybe I'm off my hinges but I believe you. That's why I'm gonna let you go. I'm going to give you to the count of three to get your lousy, lying, lowdown, four-flushing carcass out my door!
Kevin (to the waiter adding toppings to his gi-normous room service sundae): She's rat-bait.
Johnny: One....two..... (sound of heavy machine gun fire) ... Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal, and a Happy New Year. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=2649#2649
Last edited by editor on Wed May 27, 2009 9:59 am; edited 5 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ 
Search 
Memberlist 
Usergroups
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
![Woolworth Building]](http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://museum.woolworths.co.uk/wwbuildonwayup-med.jpg&imgrefurl=http://museum.woolworths.co.uk/1910s-wwbuilding.htm&h=302&w=302&sz=8&tbnid=1iMZlT7arLJe3M:&tbnh=112&tbnw=112&hl=en&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3DPhoto%2Bof%2BWoolworth%2BBuilding%2B%2BBroadway%2Bin%2BNew%2BYork%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DX){kind=link}