Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1913 — NEW YORK’S BOWERY [ARTICLE]

NEW YORK’S BOWERY

Old timers Lament Passing of Famous Thoroughfare. No Longer Do Easy Marks With Plenty of Money Frequent Its Glittering Resorts—“ Dart Game " Passes Into Oblivion. New York. —“The Bowery's on the bum. Say, you can go out any night with a cannon and fire a grapeshot up and down the street and not -hit a sucker; there’s nothing doing. Strangers don’t come here any more,” was the first thing an old timer said when the report went up and dowir the other day that John H. McGurk, whilom proprietor of “Suicide Hall” and of other unsavory dives, was dying in California. Of course the Bowery is not entirely dead. There are still plenty of saloons with back rooms on it and on the adjacent streets and alleys where the underworld gathers and hatches gun plots and plans gang feuds, but the times when the street was thronged with sailors and countrymen apparently eager to be “trimmed” have gone and none know it better than the trimmers themselvea The dime museum used to flourish on the Bowery and the places were a source of great profit to their owners. You paid only a dime to get in, but unless you were' extremely lucky you paid a great deal more to get out. The blood testing apparatus, the phrenologist and the “envelope game,” with Its promises of valuable prizes, as gold watches, if you guessed right, separated you from the rest of your property. They flourished for years and did a big trade, but the police got after them and they gradually were forced out of business. Lately ■ three or four of them have started up again, but to judge from appearances and from the admissions of the “cappers” of the places themselves they are not making any money. They all display outside the same garish lithographs of scantily dressed women and underneath is the same old sign of “Men Only” which served to attract thousands for so many years and which never fulfilled the promise it seemed to make. Also outside some mechanical musical contrivance jangles noisily and tunelessly. A reporter went into three or four prospect was dreary. At one of the places, on the east side of the street, when the reporter was paying his admission, the ticket man Impressed on him the fact that “this Isn’t a moving picture show.” It certainly was not The "show" consisted of the old time hideous anatomical exhibit of diseases and freaks, ending with the “two-headed Chinese dragon brought to this country fifty-five years

ago and worshipped by the people of that heathen land. And now, gentlemen"—the reporter was the only visitor —“I have’shdwn and explained to you all these interesting specimens, and that Is all,” concluded the exhibitor In his sing song voice. “Isn’t there anything else?” “ "Totr can stay and look around again if you want to,” ■ replied the showman, as if surprised that any one should want to stay any longer. The paraphernalia for the “dart” game was in evidence, but there was no game. “The man who runs it.” explained the showman, “is at the bicycle show this week. He’s a bike fan.” In this pastime you throw a little winged dart and try to pin one of •

hundred or more tickets hanging on the wall. If you succeed you get as a prize some article corresponding to the number on your ticket On the wall also were hanging “gold" watches, opera glasses, bracelets and other things, and in old days these articles used frequently to be won—by the “cappers” for the game, until you had exhausted your funds in trying for them. The sport is first cousin to the “envelope” game, which was a swindle pure and simple. It’s victims, lured on by seeing the "capper" win watches or receive in place of the watches real money, were persuaded frequently to put up >5 or >lO on their sure chances. Of course they never won, and often if they protested they were roughly handled.