calherewecome

After we had lunch on Sunday, we decided to take a ride up to Inglewood to visit Hollywood Park on its last day of operation. Hollywood Park closed after about 75 years of operation, a victim of way too many opportunities to gamble.
 

So, I asked Paula, expert on all things California, she being a native Californian, “why is it called Hollywood Park, not Inglewood Park?” Her answer was that the park was built by Tom Warner of Warner Bros Studio along with investments by many Hollywood Movie stars of the late 1930’s. So it was named “Hollywood Park”
 
 So we headed up the 110 to Inglewood on a beautiful December day. We arrived late enough so that the ticket takers at the gate weren’t interested in my $20, Woo-Hoo! We arrived in time to watch the 4th race.
 

 We watched the 4th race from down by the winner’s circle where we could see the horses coming onto the track. Picture taking was a challenge. The finish area was in shadow, while most of the track was in bright sun. Then we went up into the grand stands for a better view of the goings on.
 
 It was interesting to watch the many people studying their racing forms trying to intuit who the next winner would be. One man we talked to asked if we were betting? I said, “No, I’d rather throw a $20 bill over the railing.”
 

So it was 30 minutes of boredom followed by 90 seconds of action. No wonder all the action has moved to the sports book operations at casinos. You don’t even have to go all the way to Las Vegas anymore. So we stayed for about three more races and then headed for the gates. We didn’t want to be stuck in the traffic getting out of there.
 

So for the price of gas, we had a fun afternoon. No parking fee, no admission fee, no gambling. Done!
 
 – Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Inglewood, CA

This entry was posted on December 23, 2013 at 6:58 pm and is filed under California, Los Angeles. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Hollywood Park, Horse Racing, Horses