Yesterday The New York Times published a photo essay about Aqueduct, “Where Horses Race, but No One Wins.”
It was the typical Aqueduct article: the weather is terrible, the customers are losers, the place is a dump. Among the scenes pictured in the photos: a man asleep in a chair, a littered betting carrel, losing bettors. Apparently the photographer, Theo Zierock, didn’t take pictures of anyone who cashed tickets.
The accompanying text is, according to its author John Leland, not about the track itself but about the photographer’s “subjective experience of it.” To Zierock, Aqueduct is “a decaying building populated by lonely old men” bereft of both “sanitation and security.” So bad is the situation that the photographer said of the customers, “There’s a lot of serious psychological damage there…Not all of them should be free on the street.”
Aqueduct disdain is nothing new; built in 1894, the track was barely 10 years old when the Times noted that “in spite of the many improvements that have been made on the course since was racing begun there…[Aqueduct] makes slight appeal for fashionable patronage…the gathering was one that suggested more the hold that racing has on the speculatively inclined” (April 16, 1904).
Still, some racing fans were affronted at the depiction of the Big A, among them David Bruder, who took to Twitter to express his umbrage:
But the intrepid Bruder wasn’t content to leave it at that. He e-mailed the author, who responded promptly with an explanation of how the article came about:
Leland confirmed in an e-mail to me that while he’s been to Aqueduct, he did not visit it for this story. Zierock, the photographer, said that he visited Aqueduct more than 30 times between December 2013 and April 2014, which is when the pictures were taken.
On his website, Zierock takes a more affectionate stance than he does in the article. Calling Aqueduct “Americas [sic] roughest racetrack,” he notes a “strange balance of respect and competition” among the customers, observing that “the language, the signs, and the habits at Aqueduct are uniquely American, and worth preserving.”
As the Times story made the rounds yesterday, John Durso Jr, NYRA’s director of media and communications and an infrequent Twitter presence, posted this video and an October 2014 press release detailing $14 million in recent upgrades to Aqueduct.
Coincidence? You decide.
Brooklyn Backstretch 
Aqueduct looks surprisingly very much alive and doing well! High-fives to the NYRA for sprucing the old place up. It looks very inviting….
I thought the article was disgraceful. The NY TIMES has no use for people who do not meet their demographic profile. It’s the height of arrogance to attempt to belittle people that they think they are better than. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s read Joe Drapes garbage for years. I don’t know which was worse- the amateur photography or the brilliant social commentary by the24 year-old “photographer”.
Dear Mr. Arlington,
I did my best to understand the place and the people at Aqueduct. My last winter I was always there and all the regulars saw me hanging out every weekend. I was insulted, spit on and people have thrown cups and sandwiches at me because i “did not fit their demografics”…
In the article nobody was belittled. It shouldn’ t have mentioned my comment about mental health maybe, but not everywhere people get raped in the bathroom. Compared to what regulars say about the track and their fellow gamblers, the article was a compliment. People at NYRA say its a shithole, the gamblers say it a “retirement home for crazies.” I love the track, racing and how people interact there. I worked for two years on the decay of racing in Italy, NYRA might have invested 14M, but if you go to the bathroom you still stand in piss as you did last year.
Fortunatly photography is subjective and I might suck, but you on the other hand seem to be a very brave web hater. Maybe you should spent a winter learning about something new, Mister Arlington. And only because you did not know how to engage with the world when you where 24, that doesn’t mean that I am some stupid kid from the block. I speak 5 languages, studied political science in 3 nations and came to New York to take interest in your culture.
Please be more respectful, I am a person, not a product of your society.
best,
Theo Zierock
Dear Mr. Arlington,
I did my best to understand the place and the people at Aqueduct. My last winter I was always there and all the regulars saw me hanging out every weekend. I was insulted, spit on and people have thrown cups and sandwiches at me because i “did not fit their demografics”…
In the article nobody was belittled. It shouldn’ t have mentioned my comment about mental health maybe, but not everywhere people get raped in the bathroom. Compared to what regulars say about the track and their fellow gamblers, the article was a compliment. People at NYRA say its a shithole, the gamblers say it a “retirement home for crazies.” I love the track, racing and how people interact there. I worked for two years on the decay of racing in Italy, NYRA might have invested 14M, but if you go to the bathroom you still stand in piss as you did last year.
Fortunatly photography is subjective and I might suck, but you on the other hand seem to be a very brave web hater. Maybe you should spent a winter learning about something new, Mister Arlington. And only because you did not know how to engage with the world when you where 24, that doesn’t mean that I am some stupid kid from the block. I speak 5 languages, studied political science in 3 nations and came to New York to take interest in your culture.
Please be more respectful, I am a person, not a product of your society.
best,
Theo Zierock