You know I can’t remember whom the individual was, or the thread it was posted in here, as it was quite awhile ago. What that post stated covered what you say in your post here and how it occurred, so I’ll paraphrase it here as I remember the gist of it.
That poster explained that until the mid late 1950’s, there was no such thing as a bar box. That in fact bar boxes were not even invented by the pool and billiard industry, but by an amusement company that made things like pinball machines. That they were marketed to bar owners, the selling points being a smaller footprint that would fit inside of a bar, giant pockets that made it easy for anyone to pocket balls and have fun. That this would be something fun for the bars customers, and that if people were having fun, they would come to the bar more often, stay longer, drink more, which would make the bar owner more money, not only from the additional alcohol sales, but from the revenue of the coin box on the table.
That this led to the weakest players at pool halls leaving pool halls and playing at bars on the new smaller table with the bigger pockets, it was more fun. That this in turn led to mid level players following after the weaker players and hustling them and others at the bar. That this mass exodus of low and mid level players from the pool halls, resulted in loss of revenue to pool halls resulting in pool halls closing 1 by 1 until areas such as yours no longer had pool halls to play in, only bars with bar boxes.
That’s the gist of it, what he basically said was that these areas that only have bar boxes available, were a direct result of choices made by individuals from those areas over time that had abandoned pool halls in favor of bars with the tiny tables and big pockets. That essentially it was a self created issue.
