Tag Archives: gambling

The Haunted New Sheridan Hotel (Telluride, Colorado)

Text:

“What is the New Sheridan?”

Interviewee: “It’s a hotel and bar.”

“Why is The New Sheridan Hotel considered haunted?”

Interviewee: “Why? Because Telluride used to be an old mining town, and the miners would work in a small town called Tomboy up above Telluride. They would come down to the new Sheridan and get drinks and, like, get with prostitutes, and there would be fights. Like, people would die and stuff.

“Why would they die?’

Interviewee: “I mean, it was just, like, an old Western town. Like, there were no laws, people would just shoot each other. Like, if you lost a poker game and couldn’t pay your money, you would just be killed.”

“So, the ghosts who died are apparently the ghosts of people who would kill for, like getting with the prostitutes or losing poker?”

Interviewee: “Yeah, and also just, like, minors who died. Like, I think their ghosts supposedly hang out at the New Sheridan, because that’s where all the minors hung out.

Context:

The interviewee lives and grew up in Telluride, CO.

The New Sheridan Hotel is a historic hotel in Telluride, an old mining town. The interviewee explains that the hotel is considered haunted because of its history during the mining era, when miners traveled from nearby towns like Tomboy to socialize, gamble, and visit prostitutes. Violence, accidental deaths, and shootings were common in this lawless period, which contributed to the hotel’s reputation as a haunted site.

Analysis:

This is an example of a legend tied to historical events. The tales of miners dying from gambling disputes, fights, or other misadventures function as a way to connect visitors to the town’s dangerous and lawless past.

The ghosts’ presence is tied specifically to the New Sheridan Hotel, where the miners congregated. The narrative blends real historical practices (gambling, prostitution, and violence) with supernatural belief, showing how folklore can preserve memory and transform past events into entertaining ghost stories.

Drake Curse Legend

Text: The interview below captures a student folk performance of the Drake Curse legend.

Interviewer: Do you have any MMA or fighting beliefs?

Interviewee: So, for, like, the UFC, I don’t know if it spans across other promotions, but, for the UFC specifically, there’s a betting system. You can see who bets what on which fighter, uh, and there’s basically this thing called the Drake Curse, wherein whichever fighter Drake, the rapper, singer, uh, puts his money on, that fighter will lose, and that has uh, only a few fighters have broken the Drake Curse, but most of the fighters who he’s bet on have lost their fights.

Context:

This interview was collected from a college student, raised in São Paulo, who is captain of the school’s MMA(Mixed Martial Arts) club after a practice. The interviewee heard about the legend from UFC fight commentary and social media

Analysis:

MMA(Mixed Martial Arts) fights inherently have a lot of randomness. One stray punch, or one awkward position can lead to an upset, so betting on fights contains a lot of risk. Because of this uncertainty, folklore is used to explain and deal with that unpredictability. Now, the winner of the fight is determined by one factor: whether Drake put his money on him. The staying power of this folk speech is evident, as even when Drake does win some of his bets, the reputation of the Drake Curse still endures. The belief is able to permeate multiple folk groups, because Drake bets on a lot of different sports. The interviewed bearer of the legend heard about it both from official fight commentary, and from social media posts. This origin showcases the fight commentator engaging in folklorism, as they take the humorous legend from the digital folk environment, where it originates, and repeat it on the official commentary broadcast.

Kpop Pull Rituals

Text:

[i.e. having someone else pull K-pop merch for her as a lucky charm]

Alright, so if you listen to k-pop, and you buy something called, buy physical albums, they tend to come with physical inclusions that are more than just the CD or just like a small lyric book. There is usually a photoshoot book, sometimes there stickers, sometimes there’s like extra random like goods. But they almost always have something called a photocard which is like a small card that people like to um trade or buy after pulling it. It’s kind of like the same concept as a baseball card, for example, or Pokemon cards, where you basically, it’s like a gacha system where you can get one of the members in a group, or if it’s just a soloist then you just a soloist card. But there are generally different versions so collectors really like to collect all of them, similar to how like people like to collect all of the Pokemon cards or try to get certain rarities. 

So, in this case, what it means to be rare is to try to get the card that you want in particular, um which usually tends to be either a member you really like or a card from a set.

Um, so I guess in terms of like, ritualistic things that happen with this, I would say uh

one of my friends has really good luck with getting pulls that she wants and so recently, my friends have all been making her choose which albums we choose to purchase. Just because her, the chance of her getting the card we want has been… quite high in terms of like um which one what our pulls end up being. Most recently, she and I were getting the same album, but I wanted different cards from her. She didn’t really have a particular card she wanted, so she manifested for me instead. And I was wary, so I decided to switch the albums over. And the one she opened had all the cards that I wanted that she had originally given to me. So,…it’s been kind of interesting because if she is really sure about wanting a certain card, that card tends to appear. So um I guess that’s an example.

Context:

Context of Performance: In-person conversation

Me: Do you see any other cases of other K-Pop pull groups doing this, like having a specific lucky pull person?

Informant: um I have seen on like TikTok, that there’s this one guy who apparently. This one person’s boyfriend who also pulls what they want. I don’t know since I’m mostly referencing it from my group of friends.

Me: Do you think having her pull truly increases your chances?

Informant: I didn’t think so, but the coincidences have been kind of high as of late. She’s been able to get other people their pulls if she thinks hard enough about it. I don’t know if it’s really real or just a lot of coincidence, but it has happened enough that I’m suspicious.

Personal Thoughts:

The idea of having someone else participate in a heavily luck based thing is not unique to my informant’s experience, or K-pop pulls. There’s an entire genre of games referred to as Gacha games where players gamble to obtain playable characters. In addition, characters or other gamble-to-obtain items tend to be heavily objectified. In all heavily luck-based games there is a common thread of having someone else pull for you because they are luckier (an example is linked below). This is some that correlates with the past – for example gamblers having lucky rabbit’s feet. However this practice has also changed as we have moved into the modern era. Now, because we can SHARE our luck based experiences, people have lucky PEOPLE instead of lucky charms.

Additional Notes:

For another example of having a lucky person instead of a lucky charm:
Komemos. (2022, April 22). My best pulls ever???? Ayato and venti pulls … – youtube.com. Retrieved April 28, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGrNpwNzAq8 

Gambling: Winning a 50

Nationality: English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch
Age: 76
Occupation: N/A
Residence: Arkansas
Performance Date: 28 April 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: GC’s father used to go and play dominoes and gamble on that. She said that she “always liked it because [her] daddy would give the 50 dollar bills to me,” because he was superstitious that winning a 50 dollar bill and keeping it was bad luck. GC said that her father would never keep or spend a 50 dollar bill he’d won gambling himself, he would always give it away. Whenever he won a 50, he would leave the game immediately so that his bad luck didn’t start during his next game.

When GC grew up and began going to casinos and gambling, she continued the superstition under the impression that it was bad luck. She’s never even “seen a 50 dollar bill in a casino, never, even on the slot machines. They’ll accept 5s, 10s, 20s, 100s, just not 50s.” She said that when she cashes out from a session, they’ll always pay a 50 with two 20s and a 10 rather than one bill. When she asked her husband, who also goes to casinos, if he’d ever kept a 50 dollar bill when he’d won one, she said he was shocked, almost offended. 

Context: This superstition applies to gambling either in a local community setting or a casino, when the winner of a pot gets a 50 dollar bill. GC is a 76 year old woman living in Arkansas. She goes to casinos with her husband semi-frequently.

Informant’s Thoughts: GC said that she would guess the tradition started due to the relative rarity of 50 dollar bills compared to other bills like a common 20 or 10. While she doesn’t know the origins of this superstition, this could be a reason why it started.

Archivist’s Thoughts: I think that this shows the common idea of gamblers being superstitious. So much of gambling relies on luck that it’s easy to formulate superstitions that attribute one’s bad luck to a misstep they made. Keeping a 50 dollar bill, because of their rarity, could have happened to precede a loss streak, and the tradition became so prevalent that even casinos couldn’t carry 50 dollar bills because it would lose them business.

Straight Pocket Bet

Nationality: American
Age: 72
Occupation: Lawyer / Executive
Residence: San Diego, CA / Wilmington, OH
Performance Date: 3/17/19
Primary Language: English

Piece:

Informant: “My grandfather loved the Reds, the Cincinnati Reds, but he didn’t hear well, so he had this radio that he would put up on a ledge at his house, it was just about your height. So he would go stand by that, with his good… with his better ear up against the radio and listen to a ball game from start to finish. And we would see them every Sunday, this was part of our routine, and he would always want to make a bet… I think I did this with you guys too… so we would negotiate a bet about the Reds or something and we would finally shake hands and he would say straight pocket bet. ‘Well, what’s that mean grandpa?’ I would say. And he always responded: ‘no matter what happens we each keep our money in our pocket.’”

Background:

The informant learned the expression “straight pocket bet” from his grandfather and their tradition of listening to Cincinnati Reds games together. To the two it was a way of instilling friendly competition without the actual need for financial stakes, and it allowed them to bond over sports, which has always been an interest for the family.

Context:

This expression and the conversation leading up to it were recorded during a scheduled meeting at my home in San Diego, CA.

Thoughts:

My initial reaction to this was that it provided an easy platform over which to debate sports topics, or anything that might be negotiated with a bet for that matter. However, another interesting potential use of this could be to deceive someone who has no knowledge of this expression into making such a bet, and only letting them know what it means in the case of a loss (although this might be potentially dangerous if used in the wrong situation).