Every Picture Tells a Story: Rosecroft Raceway — Oxon Hill, MD (1985)
EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY:
ROSECROFT RACEWAY — OXON HILL, MD (1985)
Most gamblers have at least one lapse of degeneracy, unless our condition is permanent.
Ground zero for my low point was a low-life harness track in the Washington, DC suburbs during the mid-1980s. The graveyard of many dreams and inferno of betting bankrolls was called Rosecroft Raceway. It was a harness track in Oxon Hill, just south of the D.C. projects and nestled in the very heart of White Trash-central southern Maryland.
Rosecroft Raceway featured night racing. Each time I went to bet the trotters, the grandstands were always packed and the nights ended with lots of confetti — the floors littered with thousands of losing paper tickets. If horseracing is “the sport of kings,” then Rosecroft was the purgatory of the desperate.
Rosecroft Raceway was the most prominent “attraction” in Prince George’s County. It offered the only legal gambling options in the national capital region. Aside from racing PG County also had “charity” poker games and casino games like blackjack that were run by so-called “volunteer” fire departments. Daily, in small towns throughout PG County — Upper Marlboro, Bowie, Hyattsville, Capital Heights, Bladensburg — temporary casinos were set up. The stakes could get high. I played $20-40 hold’em there many times (meaning–you could win or lose thousands of dollars). Blackjack for up to $100 a hand was offered (and I had serious suspicions the decks were rigged).
I’ve played poker all over the country dating back four decades and I can’t remember scummier games than those PG County. The steel drab grey chairs were often as hopelessly bent out of shape as the broken men who occupied them. The tables were ringed with prickly jerks, mostly middle-aged divorced chain smokers stewing in resentment with their entire bankrolls on the table on any given night. Rick Bennet’s excellent book, King of a Small World (1995) perfectly documents the degeneracy of the PG County gambling scene. This small world was a cesspool.
But the stories of getting to and from Rosecroft are even better. When I lived in the District, parking was next to impossible. So, I parked my car across the Potomac over in Rosslyn and then took the metro to get around. Trouble was, there was no metro line to Rosecroft. Then, I learned about an illegal transportation racket where an unlicensed “gypsy” bus hauled people from D.C. to Rosecroft and back every night during the racing season. Pickup was on 7th and “Eye” and round trip was $7. Most people who rode the bus looked like they didn’t have a dime. You had to be careful sitting close to anyone, as there were pickpockets working the bus.
The whole trip took maybe 25 minutes each way. The drive was a radical change of race and economic extremes. This wasn’t the tour in the postcards. The bus began in the NE slums, tunneled under Capitol Hill filled with some of the most powerful people in the world, careened into SE Washington, then the murder capital of America, across the DC-Maryland line and I-495, and ended up in the heart of the old Confederacy. I mean, there’s a reason why John Wilkes Booth escaped *into* PG County and took refuge there after doing his dastardly deed at the Ford’s Theatre. Well, the people who ran and mostly played in these games were his descendants.
I lost every time at Rosecroft, that is to say, money I couldn’t afford to lose and had no business betting. This all begs the question — so, why did I go? Why go back again and again? This too triggers that same word again — degeneracy. It was the only game in town, except for the crooked casinos and crusty poker games in PG County. Besides, who wants to sit in broken metal chairs and breath second-hand smoke? Unless the game is really good, of course; then you know the answer.
A decade later, I was married, back living in Washington, and returned to see if things had changed. Rosecroft tried to boost it’s image. Sometime in the late ’90’s the track began marketing “dinner and racing” nights. The giant grandstand included a massive 1,100-seat dining room, which served steaks and prime rib for a bargain price. Every seat had an unobstructed view of the tote board and finish line. Of course, many $14.95 prime rib “specials” ended up costing double, triple, and quadruple that, and even more. That was the whole idea, of course, and we took the bait once.
Later, Rosecroft tried several new promtions, with mixed results. However, attendance continued to decline. Its fate was sealed. Rosecroft was sold at a fire sale price, then closed in 2010 (there have been attempts to revitalize it, which is unlikely since nearby MGM National Harbor is the 800-pound gambling gorilla of the Capital Region). I have no idea what happened to the gypsy bus. Maybe it’s running between the Convention Center and National Harbor now.
Take it from me: If the pickpockets don’t get your money first, the casino will, later. They say “the house always wins.” That’s usually true, except for Rosecroft Raceway. Like the rest of us, it lost. But it was a helluva’ fun ride while it lasted.
