Last stop Wonderland

Is a way of life ending at Revere's embattled dog track?

by Chris Wright

LOSING STREAK: the once-illustrious Wonderland dog track has hit hard times. "It's not a great business anymore," says owner Charles Sarkis. "It's sad."

Ask people at Wonderland to name a winner, and chances are you'll hear the name Gary.

Gary Dascoli is one of the Revere dog track's top semi-professional gamblers, or handicappers. And the regulars here will tell you his golden touch has little to do with luck. A humanities teacher at an Everett high school, Dascoli, 54, sees greyhound betting as a discipline, like golf or chess. "This," he says, "is a skill like any other."

Dascoli will spend hours studying replays of races, scribbling notes on little scraps of paper. "Tonight I'll go home and look at the charts," he says. "Tomorrow I'll go through them in detail." For years, Dascoli has been compiling a record of every dog that has ever won a race at Wonderland.

"If you do the work," he says, "you've got a chance."

With a head of frazzled, shoulder-length gray hair, a mouthful of disorderly teeth, a betting slip in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Dascoli doesn't look much like a schoolteacher, and he doesn't talk like one either. Asked if he's concerned about his students identifying him in this article, he rasps, "I don't give a fuck. I'm not selling heroin -- I'm going to the dog track."

Going to the dog track has been a favorite pastime of Dascoli's since his teens. "I'm here every night," he says. "Other than bodily functions, this is the thing I do the most."

In its heyday, during the '30s and '40s, Wonderland was teeming with people like Dascoli. Another handicapper, a chubby, soft-spoken guy named Bobby, can still remember the legends who used to come here, people like the dapper, 450-pound Tiny Dupre. "He was a real gentleman," Bobby says.

As recently as 20 years ago, by Bobby's estimate, there were a thousand handicappers at Wonderland. Today, that figure is closer to 60. "There aren't that many around any more," he says. "And the ones who stuck it out aren't doing so well."

The ones who stuck it out are the die-hard dog fans. Otherwise, local gamblers are trekking to

Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, or sitting in bars playing Keno, or scratching "Cool Million" tickets at home. And if Wonderland is struggling, so are its devotees. The money bet at a track goes into a pool. The smaller the pool, the more an individual bet affects the odds. In other words, the less money bet on a given race, the more a gambler is, in effect, gambling against himself.

Even Dascoli has felt the strain. Last year, he says, was the first year he recorded a loss. Tonight he's "oh-for-four," $140 down. "If you don't know how to lose," he says, flicking ash on the floor, " you don't know how to win."

It's a breezy, balmy Friday evening, and at first glance you wouldn't know Wonderland was on the skids. Against a magenta sky clotted with a few egg-drop clouds, the tote board blazes with blue and yellow light. The air is heavy with a strangely pleasant mix of sulfur, cigarette smoke, and dog. A decade ago, a night like this might have drawn a crowd of ten thousand. Tonight's attendance is in the hundreds.

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Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.