Step right up, how about you mister?

[bobpbx]

Yeah, like we who live in Jersey didn't know. Actually, the basketball trick never occurred to me, but I'm always the skeptic anyway.

A gift article, so you can read it.

A Boardwalk Basketball Grift Conjured Out of Thin Air (Published 2023)

In the time-honored tradition of small-time schemes everywhere, the operator of a Jersey Shore game of chance is found guilty of deception.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Pan]

A few of us guys took the long subway ride to Coney Island from Inwood in Manhattan when we were about 14 or 15. CI was still the old fashioned place with side shows, fat ladies, tattooed wild men from Borneo, and all those grifters running their phoney games. We got victimized. I remember one game where u had to throw a baseball and knock over dolls, but the dolls were mostly hair sticking out.

I miss Nathans tho. They're the only place that knows how to make good french fries since Muldoons on Dyckman Street closed about 65 years ago. I liked their hot dogs with sauerkraut too.

Later on we'd go to the Jersey shore, like Belmar or Brielle or whatever it was, not the place with the grifters above, but about 30 years ago we were around there on the boardwalk early in the morning and 2 guys tried to rob me. Tried.

 

[bobpbx]

I learned my lesson when I was farmed out to Charleston Naval shipyard, where they put me helping to rework heavy metal sub components.

We all went to the county fair, and my buddy was sucked into this game where you have a ball on a string, and you have to swing it behind a bottle and knock it down coming at the bottle from behind. This was 1977, and he was down $65 on that one stinking game. I said, come on Jimi, let's go. He turned towards me with wild eyes, and a sweaty face; "no, I'm getting the hang of it". Well, I finally pulled him out of there. I felt bad about it, but he was a friend.