Friday Night at a Dog Track in Florida

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Friday Night at a Dog Track in Florida

Christmas in Orange Park, Florida, is as sad as you'd imagine. It's even sadder when you spend the night at the Kennel Club, a dog racing track teeming with the sort of hard luck cases that make the Sunshine State the Bummer Capital of the World.

Orange Park, Florida. The day after Christ's birthday. The eerie silence of degenerate gamblers, vacantly staring up at tube television screens filled with numbers they've attached importance to. Hundreds of numbers. Their numbers. Outside, young parents in track pants drink Pepsi products and smoke cigarettes while the children they brought into this world and into this dog racing track scream and flail and eat and scream. Upstairs, in the Clubhouse, the televisions are flat, not tube. The windows are floor to ceiling, giving you an unobscured view of the muzzled dogs as they're trotted out, one by one, by bored looking teenagers. In the Clubhouse, you can't hear the sound of emaciated mutts howling in the distance. Outside, next to the young parents and their Pepsi products and their cigarette smoke and their incorrigible kids, you can. It costs a dollar to ride the escalator up to the Clubhouse.

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