When I was a bartender there, we hosted the Michigan Alumni for their annual Michigan/Ohio College Football game; I think it was 2009. There were almost 700 people there; the bar was 8 deep with customers for over 10 hours. When someone ordered a drink, for example a bloody mary, I'd yell, "BLOODY MARY! BLOODY MARY! Who else wants a BLOODY MARY?" Suddenly, I was making 9 Bloody Mary's for everyone who raised their hands.
One of the guys I was working with said, "Now that's how you handle a bar with customers 8 deep!"
I also remember selling 6 packs of Corona for $48 and getting $20 tips just for handling them quickly. Corona at $8 a bottle in that place x 6: You do the math. We had 26 taps of draft beer with almost 3 kegs backup for every tap and, by night's end we only had 5 taps running.
That day, I made $800 in tips.
That was Hollywood Billiards on a good day...
Rumor was that, Jeff Bey regretted ever turning that place into a clubby nite-spot for pool and wished for several years that he could have turned back the clock. He cashed in though, when he sold the property which, is only now (9 years later) beginning to develop into medium density housing.
When it opened, it was unreal. It had a very good Northern Italian restaurant in it.
It turned out folks were not that interested in great Italian food while they play pool.
So the Chef quit after approx. the first year. Then the Italian food went downhill and it became more of a bar food kind of menu.
Still the food was darn good. The Cheeseburgers and fries were excellent.
The design was fantastic. It was two stories with a bow truss ceiling. You could look down to the first floor through an opening and see most of the pool tables on the ground floor. It was a design that had pool tournaments in mind. There were little couches that were built in along the crenelated railing. The bar on the first floor was huge and rapped around to a little club.
A lot of the regulars didn't pay for pool time.
I spent a lot of money in that place, eating and imbibing. It was like 5 minutes from my house.
Pool players always complain, we had no idea how good we had it. Over the years there was a lot of action there.
The old restaurant space was filled with TVs after the Italian food went belly up and then the rest of the entire building was filled with TVs.
When the Lakers were playing in the finals it was wall to wall with folks. Saw many boxing matches there.
The place was 23,000 square feet so you didn't bump other players very often while playing.
All good things come to and end. Max Eberle was the house pro for a long time.