Off the Wall
I also played off the wall. As I walked to the rack in a strange place my eyes were scanning the tips. My main interest was in a good tip and a shaft section that wasn't so rough it put splinters in my hand. Almost always the best looking stick was as crooked as a dog's hind leg. If it was only bowed in one direction that didn't bother me a bit. I simply indexed the cue with the bowed side turned down.
I always had a BRAD tool and a little piece of scotch brite or sandpaper in my pocket. The old BRAD tool had finer grit than the new one I purchased about ten years ago. I tried to clean up the shaft and tip when nobody was paying much attention. With those tweaks and indexing the cue most were quite playable. I would swap out if a cue was cracked or had a loose weight in it so I would give it a shake as I picked it up. I might seek out the lightest cue in the place later but that was something I didn't want people to notice either.
I very rarely missed a night gambling on a pool table for about ten years. During those years my hinged cue stayed on or near my pool table at home. A one piece house cue, especially when talking about cues from the seventies and eighties, played better than probably 90-95% of jointed cues production or custom so playing with a house cue wasn't much of a handicap. Playing on many different tables and with many different cues made me much more adaptive than I am today. Today I want my own cue and a nice table and balls. My game suffers without them. I am a hothouse player and I know it.
The longest run I ever saw was just running out a rack of eight ball from the opponent's break then seven more racks. A miss midrack then another few racks strung before the opponents gave up. It was with a house cue without the tip and shaft being touched, not sure the stick was even chalked.
Sometimes I still leave out without my case full of cues and gadgets, just sticking the Brad tool and Scotch Brite in my pocket. Somehow I feel lighter and freer like that.
Hu