I was talking with a friend today, a guy I've played with and against for almost 20 years now, and we got to reminiscing about the old haunts we used to play in and the stories of those places. Somewhere during our ramblings we got to our first pool hall.
So mine was an actual pool hall back in the mid-80's in south St. Louis, MO off a road called Mackenzie rd.
It was on the corner of an run-down strip mall across from a diner that advertised "Fresh Cow Brains!" I remember walking in there and thinking I'd really walked into a real pool hall, with it's dozen or so tables evenly mixed between bar boxes up front and the real 9 foot Gold Crowns towards the back of the room. And those Gold Crowns were all surrounded by those high-backed pool chairs with the notches in the arms for your cue to rest in, a small table between each pair of chairs with a lamp on each table. I had found the big time.
I was exclusively a bar box guy back then, so for about a year I played in the front on those battered bar boxes but they were all level for a wonder. One day I finally decided to check out the back and those big gorgeous GCs, which is when my pool story really began.
The walk to the back was dark, even during the day. It was about twenty paces or so past the long bar that didn't serve alcohol and then you were in GC land as I used to think of it. Back there were the same half dozen or so guys shooting games for cash. Usually it was four or five older guys (I'm probably as old now as some of those guys were then) and a couple younger guys, maybe in their mid-thirties. I quickly found out that to play a game with these guys it cost money. And if you couldn't play their speed, they'd run you out of there pretty quick, with empty pockets.
It took me about two years to find a good enough game to hang out back there, and another two years before I was decent enough to have my own chair. most of these guys had a chair they liked, or a chair that everyone thought of as that guy's chair. One day I guess I'd earned one.
It turned out that several of these guys were gamblers and hustlers. Shocker, I know. What I did know is that they all were better players than I was, and I had an obsession to learn how to play better. So I paid for my lessons $5 at a time, and when I ran out of money, I'd just sit and watch these guys play and talk smack to each other. And it was from that place on those tables, with those fine men/bastards that I learned to play pool.
So anyway, I was just curious . . . do any of you guys/girls have any stories or memories about the bar/pool hall/whatever you ever really thought of as the birthplace of your love affair with pool?
So mine was an actual pool hall back in the mid-80's in south St. Louis, MO off a road called Mackenzie rd.
It was on the corner of an run-down strip mall across from a diner that advertised "Fresh Cow Brains!" I remember walking in there and thinking I'd really walked into a real pool hall, with it's dozen or so tables evenly mixed between bar boxes up front and the real 9 foot Gold Crowns towards the back of the room. And those Gold Crowns were all surrounded by those high-backed pool chairs with the notches in the arms for your cue to rest in, a small table between each pair of chairs with a lamp on each table. I had found the big time.
I was exclusively a bar box guy back then, so for about a year I played in the front on those battered bar boxes but they were all level for a wonder. One day I finally decided to check out the back and those big gorgeous GCs, which is when my pool story really began.
The walk to the back was dark, even during the day. It was about twenty paces or so past the long bar that didn't serve alcohol and then you were in GC land as I used to think of it. Back there were the same half dozen or so guys shooting games for cash. Usually it was four or five older guys (I'm probably as old now as some of those guys were then) and a couple younger guys, maybe in their mid-thirties. I quickly found out that to play a game with these guys it cost money. And if you couldn't play their speed, they'd run you out of there pretty quick, with empty pockets.
It took me about two years to find a good enough game to hang out back there, and another two years before I was decent enough to have my own chair. most of these guys had a chair they liked, or a chair that everyone thought of as that guy's chair. One day I guess I'd earned one.
It turned out that several of these guys were gamblers and hustlers. Shocker, I know. What I did know is that they all were better players than I was, and I had an obsession to learn how to play better. So I paid for my lessons $5 at a time, and when I ran out of money, I'd just sit and watch these guys play and talk smack to each other. And it was from that place on those tables, with those fine men/bastards that I learned to play pool.
So anyway, I was just curious . . . do any of you guys/girls have any stories or memories about the bar/pool hall/whatever you ever really thought of as the birthplace of your love affair with pool?
