Queens Losing And Gaining a Street Art Canvas

This is a link to the Artists page on the Aqueduct Murals site.  There you can read about the artists who will be creating murals on the walls of the first floor, and see some of their work.  Obviously, this is quite a serious art event.

Chris Stein

Seems just completely out of left field as a marketing event by NYRA, totally out of the box.  Very excited to check it out.  (And this is the website of the curator, Joe Iurato.)

Faith47

In addition to the novelty of the event, interesting that it corresponds to the developments at the 5POINTZ site in Long Island City just a couple of blocks away from the office.  If you're not familiar, 5POINTZ is a building on which the owner has allowed graffiti artists to ply their trade freely for years, with quite stunning and distinctive results.  But now, he wants to cash in and construct luxury apartment towers.  Yeah, I'm all for art and free expression, and who needs another luxury apartment tower around here; but honestly find it hard to find to argue much.  It's his building after all.  In what the artists claim was an attempt to nullify their efforts to have the building declared a landmark, he had it painted over on Monday night.  I was there for an event a few months ago and this was just a partial view, just a tiny sliver of the canvas.

I walked over yesterday and this is the sad scene.

So, Queens is losing a cool street art site, but gaining what looks like will be another one, albeit indoors.  The buildings however may very well be facing similar futures.  The fate of 5POINTZ is now quite clear.  The fate of Aqueduct is not, but we all suspect that the future is not rosy.

However, as I said yesterday, the racing there has been superb, and the 7th is another inscrutable betting race, with a field of ten (which I personally find to be a perfect field size).  A couple of interesting contenders from trainer Linda Rice, both of whom about she's thought highly enough to reacquire after losing them at the claim box.   Quick Money (6-1), who she retook from Jacobson last winter, comes off a couple of disappointing efforts on dirt after a series of mostly good grass efforts. I'm willing to excuse the race two back because it came on a muddy surface which was favoring speed.  In his last, he dueled inside of a quick pace and faded to 5th.  That effort came after just 20 days, and this six-year old seems to prefer some longer spacing than that at this point in his career, which has spanned 42 starts.  Gets 40 days before this one, with a crisp half-mile work a week ago. Also switches back to jockey Cornelio Velasquez, who has ridden him with ample success in the past. The TimeformUS Pace Projector shows him again vying for the lead, in a race labeled 'Favors Horse On/Near Early Lead; and while I don't necessarily expect/hope for that to be the case for a horse who has done best stalking, and in a race with no clear early speed type, he has back figures well fast enough to take this and would represent good value at his morning line.  [UPDATE: Quick Money is scratched.]

The other Linda Rice entry is Wee Freudian (5-1), who she just claimed back after losing him for one race to Bruce Levine.  The latter barn has been ice cold around here of late, so just the re-change of scenery may do him good coming off a disappointing try at 5-2 for Levine.  Having tried him unsuccessfully on grass before losing him temporarily, Ms. Rice now switches him back to dirt.  His efforts on the main track at the Big A have been uniformly excellent; last two on the oval came last winter, earning TFUS figures against better horses that would handily beat this field.  Can't really decide which one of these I like better; will watch the tote and check out the exacta will pays.  Non Stop (8-1) has been quite keen since being claimed by David Cannizzo.  Majestic Number (3-1) is the Jacobson claim and the one to beat.  Best of luck and have a great day.