Sad to announce that Club Billiards in Wichita is closing. Citing increasing costs and slow business they are closing. This is horrible. One of the coolest old-school rooms in this part of country. They are trying to find new owners but as of now they're done.
RIP Club Billiards.....
- Thread starter garczar
- Start date
saw about this in the svb vs. iceberg thread..bummer to hear about any room closing
especially one that's been around
maybe somebody will step up and help the place stay open?
especially one that's been around
maybe somebody will step up and help the place stay open?
Why nobody comes in.
this one looks like a good example to make a point.
Well maybe they should of just "posted something" using their phone like this. "We are just to stupid to run a business in today's day and age."
From what I have seen so far most pool halls have zero control of their internet cue ball.
Yes folks here goes another one and not because pool is dying but because the hall operators in this case are living the "we have a Facebook page" idiot life. They have done ok with that though. almost a few thousand likes out of the half million people living around them. How much do you want to bet a waitress made the Facebook? Oh sorry shes the manager now, that's right.
Seriously past that, they never claimed their google world, the yelp listing and from the looks of things they might of had problems maintaining a website.
And OMG they have SVB lined up to play. How can you not pre sell the hec out of that. Personally I bet they could of rented a large conference room and thrown a table in and charged 10, 20 a head and killed it.. but no.
They have a creepy little area to sit around and a Facebook page and they are hoping to get what 30, 40 guys in for the event? What a joke.
Moral of the story here is if their living the "we have a Facebook page" life then their idiots and I'm not going to feel sorry that they are going out of business or really just finally admitting they can't run one in today's age.
This hall is located between two schools in a downtown area and wouldn't take a lot of my time to build enough of an internet presence to bring people in on a regular basis and depending on the schools and area who knows, they might of had to move to a reservations model with the right marketing.
If your tired seeing halls close then you might encourage them to get the web work done and find someone not the waitress, wife, brother in law, accountant, son or daughter, customer, drunk guy at the end of the bar everyday, bartender, POS company, the managers, the general managers (except maintenance), someones buddy, someones friend, and so on to do it. Get a professional like me or there are many others out there.
The money is there for the taking
Maybe if they replace the house cues with revo's they could hit something.
Or call me. That works too.
this one looks like a good example to make a point.
Well maybe they should of just "posted something" using their phone like this. "We are just to stupid to run a business in today's day and age."
From what I have seen so far most pool halls have zero control of their internet cue ball.
Yes folks here goes another one and not because pool is dying but because the hall operators in this case are living the "we have a Facebook page" idiot life. They have done ok with that though. almost a few thousand likes out of the half million people living around them. How much do you want to bet a waitress made the Facebook? Oh sorry shes the manager now, that's right.
Seriously past that, they never claimed their google world, the yelp listing and from the looks of things they might of had problems maintaining a website.
And OMG they have SVB lined up to play. How can you not pre sell the hec out of that. Personally I bet they could of rented a large conference room and thrown a table in and charged 10, 20 a head and killed it.. but no.
They have a creepy little area to sit around and a Facebook page and they are hoping to get what 30, 40 guys in for the event? What a joke.
Moral of the story here is if their living the "we have a Facebook page" life then their idiots and I'm not going to feel sorry that they are going out of business or really just finally admitting they can't run one in today's age.
This hall is located between two schools in a downtown area and wouldn't take a lot of my time to build enough of an internet presence to bring people in on a regular basis and depending on the schools and area who knows, they might of had to move to a reservations model with the right marketing.
If your tired seeing halls close then you might encourage them to get the web work done and find someone not the waitress, wife, brother in law, accountant, son or daughter, customer, drunk guy at the end of the bar everyday, bartender, POS company, the managers, the general managers (except maintenance), someones buddy, someones friend, and so on to do it. Get a professional like me or there are many others out there.
The money is there for the taking
Maybe if they replace the house cues with revo's they could hit something.
Or call me. That works too.
You're a professional... I'm very curious on what you would do that would be beyond the scope of a static page with a few media tags for a pool hall. Are you going to drop in a db and PoS web client just for ordering hot dogs and beer over the net? Hire a gaggle of Chinese SEO trenders for a local room, that again, sells beer and hot dogs. All this for a room that probably has a legally posted capacity of about 100 people?
Well, go get a free dev bucket from AWS and put it on a .tk or something, let's see a professional sample. But, I hope you consider that it was most likely that it was the physical footprint that needed work, not the virtual. With a full researched guess, I'd say this is the reason for 99% of pool halls closing.
Do you know who Tiny is? That he passed away? Do you know how much he loved the game, helped tourneys around the country? Do you know how much he helped players? If so, no matter what you know about running a business or making money, you are worth less than the shit that passes through sewer pipes.
Hey looser that can't afford $2.95 to support this forum and uses the dead to make a point. Crawl back in your worm hole.
BTW that stuff saves lives and has value.
https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/sell-your-poop-13k-year-and-help-worthy-cause/
He might of, but that dead man proved his support more than you have, or me, or probably most on here (98%?).
But you're point was web presence, which I barely agree with in this case (but can as a dying breath). However, without proof of you're support, you're just creating FUD in an obit thread of a good name for you're own business. So, are you yet another script kiddie or what... we want to see a sample of professionalism.
Totally agree. Its why that d^*#he is on my Ignore list. Doesn't have a clue apparently how to run a room. Rooms are closing everywhere. NO amount of web bullshit can reduce the overhead these places are facing.
First let me sincerely express my condolences on your friend and the hall. I am very sorry to hear of the passing of both.
No I date back to before script kiddies existed.
> web presence
In the old days a business would get a phone line and I mean a wire run to the building by now AT&T which would include a listing in the phone book and a listing in the yellow pages, also know as the world wide web for many of us. People would use this book when they were looking for something and if it was entertainment then hopefully the hall was listed there and bingo, customer.
That was so easy anybody could do it.
Now nobody uses the yellow pages. Now we have everyone with a phone in there hand and an endless list of things to do in order to get that customer even if they were thinking about something else. anyway.. gotta claim the yelp, the google, the bing, and so on. I do have a secret for google love too.. anyways lots to do and ways to entice people into the game which nobody does, that I have seen..
I've pretty much given up on most of the billiards world at this point. I've tried, I don't know how many things. Built several sites, Hec, that could be a thread all to it's own. Would you like that?
Would you like to hear my billiards internet development story? It's not a great one and I'm pretty much down to just talk to me about pool and no business please.
Where's the guy with the popcorn? can the others have some?
I fixed up several quite embarrassing grammatical errors. For a nominal fee I could edit your posts here, or any correspondence relating to your extremely important internet ventures, bar table 8 ball booklets, etc etc.
Having a top-notch "internet presence" will not: lower brutal and ever increasing rent rates, prices of supplies and employee wages, or produce new players. One of, if not THE, main reasons rooms are folding is just a lack of players. VERY few sub-40 players in most rooms.Having a great web set-up is NOT going to magically make people take up the game. I live in a part of the country that used to be a MAJOR hotbed of pool playing. Between all the casinos opening and a general aging of the players pool is a mere shadow of its former days. Wichita, where Club is, is no different. Once a home to good spots and a lot of play is now a non-factor poolwise. Some slick internet campaign is not going to change it.
Pool halls around here....(big sigh). I (we) watched it happen before my eyes over a 20 year period. Raising rents, and owners not able to adapt. Adapting takes money. You need a great consistent kitchen. You need a full liquor license. Excellent customer service. Oh and another thing..I would have wristbands. If you aren't here to rent table time or have a drink, you need to go somewhere else. (Having a wanna-be hustler knitting circle waiting for people to walk in to "play sum" is NOT cool.)
TOTALLY agree on the "idlers". You ain't spendin' $$, hit the door. No free water either. Sell bottle water, no free ice water.Gotta get rid of the cheap-ass deadbeats. They're almost worse than not having customers.
The people who keep our local open play 6 days a week and drink like fish. They gamble, but mostly among themselves. The food is standard bar-fare and it's mostly the college and university kids who eat it, not the regulars. They're not around in the summer when on a Saturday night (the one night the regulars don't come in) the hall is usually empty.
The website hasn't been updated in years and the social media presence is mostly abandoned and overshadowed by a private Facebook group for local players. That's where most of the talking is done; whether it be buying and selling cues, or players looking for matches.
The owner was smart enough to buy the building a few years ago thanks to a sweetheart deal on square footage when he was renting that allowed him to save enough for it.
The tables are 25-30 years-old and the cloth is 3-4 years into its life. There isn't another pool hall for about 250 miles in any direction so your options are, "limited", to say the least.
Our local government was kind enough to open a, "safe consumption", site 1 block away so every night you can look forward to used needles littering the alley, being pestered by junkies, or having your car windows smashed while they scrounge for change you might have left behind.
This is the state it's in. I was tempted to start my own room but the reality of $10/sq-ft rent (if I got an incredible deal) and a $15/hr minimum wage brought me out of that little daydream. A website (I used to build them myself) isn't going to earn me $2755 a month, per table, without any lights, supplies, or staff.
The website hasn't been updated in years and the social media presence is mostly abandoned and overshadowed by a private Facebook group for local players. That's where most of the talking is done; whether it be buying and selling cues, or players looking for matches.
The owner was smart enough to buy the building a few years ago thanks to a sweetheart deal on square footage when he was renting that allowed him to save enough for it.
The tables are 25-30 years-old and the cloth is 3-4 years into its life. There isn't another pool hall for about 250 miles in any direction so your options are, "limited", to say the least.
Our local government was kind enough to open a, "safe consumption", site 1 block away so every night you can look forward to used needles littering the alley, being pestered by junkies, or having your car windows smashed while they scrounge for change you might have left behind.
This is the state it's in. I was tempted to start my own room but the reality of $10/sq-ft rent (if I got an incredible deal) and a $15/hr minimum wage brought me out of that little daydream. A website (I used to build them myself) isn't going to earn me $2755 a month, per table, without any lights, supplies, or staff.
Yeah well Gar, I think we grew up going to the same places, possibly runnin in the same circles. Lets say there was a "shady" pool hall in our area that got bought out by a solid guy and kept it a pool hall but made it like a small H.T. Guys like Parica and others would come through. After playing there awhile and getting to know the owner. He was like..."Man you know how much my rent is?" It was like 8gs a month for a strip mall space. I was just like....damn.
The 2 out of the 3 pool halls I visit give free water to paying players or someone who just walks in and ask for it, but then leaves. That seems just fine to me. But 1 of the 3 I play in can at times have more idlers than shooters. It seems odd to me to sit in ANY building with a pool table and not playing on it. Even if the table is on another floor, I'm going to inch my way to it one way or another. So to sit in a building dedicated to nothing but shooting pool without shooting pool... say what?
Maybe there's another angle to these idlers I'm not seeing, but seeing a pool table just sitting there without anyone playing on it seems crazy. I don't care if it's up on blocks, has 50 year old cloth, missing a rail and a few mismatched balls shy, I'm going to have to play on it.
Maybe there's another angle to these idlers I'm not seeing, but seeing a pool table just sitting there without anyone playing on it seems crazy. I don't care if it's up on blocks, has 50 year old cloth, missing a rail and a few mismatched balls shy, I'm going to have to play on it.
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Some are just killing time.
Some are waiting on action.
Some are dealing.
Some are waiting on their dealer.
Pool halls draw all kinds.
But no business should tolerate loitering from non paying customers.
Sometimes they shouldn’t tolerate it from some of the paying ones either. :thumbup:
