- The Head Chef and I were on a boat tonight, at a summer party held by my main consulting client. So maybe that's why the term "boat race" came to mind. I remember back in the day, during my Roosevelt and Yonkers years, people would refer to races they felt were crooked as "boat races." Remember that? I don't recall hearing that expression recently. I have no idea how it originated or what it means. It seems to impinge the honesty of ship captains indiscriminately.
I went to Google to try and find usage of the phrase in this context, and got just a couple of results. A website called the Urban Dictionary defines it as follows:
A fixed racing contest, especially as in crooked or rigged horserace.Figures they'd use the Big A as the example.
Race 7 at Aqueduct was a boat race.
So I took some pictures. That's the end of the commentary portion of this post, so you can split now you don't want to see them.
The Manhattan Bridge in the foreground and the Brooklyn Bridge behind it.
Underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.
The city is teeming these days with free concerts and events galore. We passed no less than three free shows and an outdoor movie too. Hopefully, the paddock at Monmouth will be this crowded before the Haskell on Sunday. This was a show on the East Side by Willie Colon.
New York, just like I pictured it....
....Skyscrapers....
....and everythang.
2 Comments:
The waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge is the only one that comes close to looking like the artist's renderings. There's a good view of it from the "pocket park" near the pier, which serves some good food off the grill ... suddenly, I wish I were downstate.
Alan, your "boat race" reference reminded me of an old timer I worked with many years ago who said that in his younger days he had worked on the starting gate crew at Monmouth in the late '50's, early '60's and he referred to holding back horses in the starting gate as "boat races". Not sure how far his stories were stretched, and still don't quite get the "boat race" figure of speech for holding back horses at the break?
P S Nice shots of the Big Apple skyline from the river! These remind me of an old Monday Night Football telecast from the Meadowlands when the intro cut away to a live aerial shot of the Skyline from the Goodyear Blimp and Howard Cosell intoned in his inimitable delivery: "This is it... say what ya' will... it's the Big Apple." /S/Green Mtn Punter
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