The walk along East Avenue toward the main entrance of Saratoga Race Course is an immediate reminder of the sheer diversity of the summer racing crowd.
Stable workers lead their horses in and out of their barns while a truck carrying bales of hay pulls out from the busy feed store.
Next door, men in dark suits and a startling number of women with bouffant hairdos gather outside the Fasig-Tipton pavilion where three horses, a trainer and popular jockey Edgar Prado have just been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Across the street, on a narrow strip of city-owned grass that lines the sidewalk, teenagers, and even a few tweens, hawk bottled water, soda and homemade cookies to the general admission crowd.
Soda, $1, $3 inside, says Phil Krisson, 13, of Saratoga Springs. It’s Krisson’s second year selling water and soda. Where other teenage salesmen have their own staff and tent, Krisson simply sits in a folding lawn chair behind two large coolers.
Krisson said he makes about $80 a day, not bad for a kid who can’t legally work at a fast-food restaurant for another two years. Krisson said he buys soda and water at grocery stores or convenience stores and sells them for a profit. He sets up his wares about three or four days a week along the East Avenue strip and thinks he’ll make $1,000 by the end of the meet. He’s saving for a go-kart.
Many of Krisson’s best clients are his neighbors, he says, but he also said he has regular customers who seem to follow the same ritual everyday.
The young salesmen on the strip have a certain appeal to families who stop and buy sodas from the boys as if they are little kids running a lemonade stand. But one gets a sense that some of these soda salesmen are more like used car dealers.
Fifteen-year-old Nicholas Byrne, of Saratoga Springs, has dealt drinks on the strip since he was 10. His coveted spot on the corner of East and Union Avenues makes him the area’s top salesman. He brings in more than $100 per day. Byrne also sells souvenirs and has a crew of his friends work for him.
`It really varies day to day with the weather, but I made $400 my first summer, which wasn’t bad for a 10-year-old, and I’m doing a lot better than that now,` said Byrne.
Byrne said he’s had a good morning. It’s Monday, Aug. 4, and its one of the first days of the meet where rain isn’t likely. It’s a sunny 75 degrees and the general admission crowd continues to pour in. Most in the crowd are oblivious to the induction festivities going on across the street. They have one thing in mind:get in the gates and find a place to plop down their lawn chairs. If they’re lucky, they might find a picnic table, but only because it’s a Monday. On the weekends, families arrive as early as 6 a.m. to put down their tablecloths and stake out a spot.
These general admission folk, who pay $3 a piece to enter the racing grounds, drag rolling coolers full of cold drinks. A preponderance of the men wear polo shirts with cargo shorts. Some of them smoke cigars. The women are harder to stereotype. Some dress up in sun dresses and topped with the broad-brimmed hats that are part of an iconic Saratoga style. Others simply wear a T-shirt and shorts. A number of them sport `Saratoga` T-shirts that were given away free with admission during previous seasons.
Most of these people chase a dream. They buy tip sheets and The Daily Racing Form and spend an hour or two before the 1 p.m. post time to make their decisions.
When the crowds cross Union Avenue and approach the gates of the track, they are swarmed by the tipsters who make their sales pitches.
Zack Chapman, 20, of South Glens Falls, sells `The Edge,` which is touted as Saratoga’s only local tip sheet, a claim that may or may not hold true.
Chapman said he and his cohorts, mostly college-aged kids wearing bright yellow T-shirts and money belts sell a combined 200 sheets per day for $2 to $5. Picks from `The Edge` use a computer program, which compiles previous performances and workouts to determine which horses are most likely to cross the finish line first.
`We’re the only sheet that’s honest about how we’ve done the day before,` says Chapman, who’s in his second summer as a salesman for the paper. `It’s been around for 30 years.`
Chapman said he only knows his boss by the name Jim the Edge. Mr. the Edge serves as handicapper, owner and sales team supervisor. Chapman said his boss sells his sheets inside the gates, just outside the clubhouse.
`The Edge` isn’t the only track character with a nickname. `Brother John,` who looks like a long-lost member of the band ZZ Top with his white beard, dark sunglasses and leather jacket also sells a tip sheet for $2.50.
Brother John, 60, says his sheet, `The Jewel` is based on a book he’s writing about a woman with the ability to travel in time. John’s original artwork of the woman, named Jewel, graces the cover of the tip sheet.
But John doesn’t insist that his picks are the culmination of supernatural visions.
`I make my picks using The Daily Racing Form, I just use the psychic thing to get people interested,` said John. `I don’t make much money off of this, but I use it to promote my art.`
Asked if his picks were successful after a few races, John points to his picks in the first race ` he’d picked the trifecta.
Some regular gamblers though, aren’t quick to spend money on tip sheets.
`I’d say it’s about 10 percent statistical and then 90 percent what the horse looks like in the paddock,` says Joe Esola, who’s barely missed a day of Saratoga racing in 40 years.
Esola, who also goes by `California Joe` and `Handicapper Joe` follows tracks all over the country and teaches handicapping classes in Florida.
Esola, who now calls Upstate New York home, also runs a part-time contracting company called Post Time Construction to help pay for his gambling losses.
He says he puts about $10 down on each race and that he always looks to the paddock area before placing his bet. It’s the paddock area where the horses and their owners are paraded in front of the general admission crowd before making their way onto the main track.
`I like to make sure their ankles aren’t taped up, that their head is up and that and they aren’t foaming or all worked up,` says Joe, who claimed to have been down a total of $6 since the start of this year’s meet.
Some in attendance don’t bet at all. There are plenty of family activities at the track ranging from a kid’s area to musical entertainment to a variety of food stands, including the new Restaurant Row, which features a number of downtown’s most famous restaurants.
And other bettors aren’t nearly as technical when making their picks.
Amateur bettors might bet on a name they like, or on the color of a jockey’s silks. Others simply play the odds.
Like Handicapper Joe, Lorraine Christman has been coming to the track for 40 years. But unlike the professional gambler, Christman comes once a year, making the trip from her New Jersey home, to spend the day with her family. Christman, her daughter and three small grandchildren sit in the picnic area under the shade of a tall tree.
The children hold crayons and coloring books while Christman digs into a cooler for a snack.
`We just pick the horses by their numbers and make $2 bets,` she said. `Then we go to the rail to watch them race. The kids like that.`
A number of the picnickers and folding-chair general admissioners head to `the rail` just before each race to catch a glimpse of the horses as they come down the stretch and near the finish line.
As the horses come across the finish line in the day’s third race, one young cargo-shorts wearing man, Chad Pinkowski, of Kinderhook, let out a great wail of exuberant proportions. Along with his wail, Pinkowski pumped his arm into the air, raising his can of Bud Light high above the crowd.
He’d hit the trifecta, picking the first, second and third horse in exact order.
Pinkowski says he and his wife, Cassidy, go to the track once or twice a year, but rarely win. This year, he’s already made two visits to the track and says he’s been surprisingly lucky.
His $2 bet won him $33.40. And his dream, like the dreams of the other lucky attendees, lived on for another race.“