John, age 59, is president of the Brooklyn Concourse Association. He thinks that throwing the Chico is the best part of a race. That's when he sees his pigeons coming in from a race, and throws a companion bird from the coop in the air, to draw the returning birds back to their home coop below.

My cousin was into racing since 1952, and I used to go watch him clock the birds. And I used to tell him, if ever I got my own house, I'll put up a loft and race. I was about 16 then.

When I was a kid, I didn't have the coop at my house, because my mother wouldn't let us; she said pigeons, they drew rats. So a bunch of the kids from the neighborhood went over to my friend's house about 4 houses down, and his mom let us have it, it was about 12 of us was partners. We all took care of them, we all chipped in and bought the food. We had a little bit of everything: we had Flights, Tiplets, Rollers and Tumblers, fancy birds that do tricks in the air.

But I always liked the Racers. So I bought my house in 1970, and 6 months later I built the loft, and my first race was in 1971. I won my first race in the pouring rain in 1971. It was raining so hard, I stayed in the coop, and I just heard the bird hit, like a thump, on the landing board, and I looked out, and it was just sitting there in the rain.

The biggest thing is throwing the Chicos. On race day, when you see birds coming, you don't know if they're really yours. So you take the Chico (or some guys call it a Dropper), but when you throw them, you can throw 'em any which way, you can throw 'em in the air like a baseball, they'll just take one turn and come right down on the landing platform. The other birds see that, and it entices them to land faster.

So that's the biggest part: you sit in the yard, and you say, Here they come! and you throw a Chico, and one bird pulls out, locks just like a plane, and they rock up and down, and they come down, Boom!, and hit the landing platform. And then you walk 'em in and clock 'em.

Racing pigeons is a dying sport. Even though it's dying and it was much, much bigger, there's still people out there, alls they hear is “pigeons” and they go, “What? Them dirty things?!” But it's not so! No offense, but I probably give my birds better stuff than you and I eat: vitamins, everything!