Laughing about the general opinion of "new posters" playing abilities

jay helfert said:

One of my biggest pool scores was off the President of the local chapter of the Gypsy Jokers, a notorious biker gang in California. I made a nice little four figure score and won the title to his Harley! He owed me a grand on it and made good about a week later. The bike was kept chained up behind the bar until he could pay me. I had the key to the lock and the title.

This happened in a stripper bar on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. I look back on some of the places that I went to play pool and I must have been half crazy back then. All I knew is that there was a guy who liked to gamble in there and he didn't play that good. That was enough to get me going.

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None of them were ever playing for money when I went in the places I mentioned. They were playing for beers. I won beers off them and I never "stalled" to try to entice one of them into a game so I could get killed, so I had no problem playing run out pool on them for a beer. That even enticed them to play some more games just to see if they could win a game.

Another guy I used to play pool with in that Jelly Jar was some big dude who came in with the first Richard Black cue I'd ever seen. I'd never heard of Richard Black at that time and then I later called Richard to make my first cue from him.

This dude was down at the pool hall on Magnolia Blvd, (something like Mr. Cue's) late at night and there were some Mexicans standing in the only available parking spot and they didn't move when he approached with his car.

He honked his horn at them and they moved, but somehow after he got out an argument and then a fight started.

He ran in the pool hall and came back out with a house cue and swinging it like Babe Ruth. There were several of them and I think he was alone. He hit one of those Mexican dudes in the back of the head so hard with that cue, that he killed him right there in the parking lot.

He was out on bail and awaiting trial when I met him and played with him a few times before he left and I never saw him again. He may have went to trial and jail or something.

Back in those days it was like the Wild Wild West in some of the places I played...just like Jay says.

It wasn't like the civilized places you see now.

There was another place in Riverside called "Joe's Place" or something like that. A little bar that was all Mexicans. I had never heard of it, but I was downtown and I decided to stop in there to see what was going on. I didn't know it was a Mexican bar until the first time I went in and saw that I may have been the only non-Mexican in the place.

There were some dudes playing 8-ball for money on the bar table and I bought a beer and watched for a bit and then put my quarter up to challenge. It was a 7-foot table with the big ass cue ball and they were playing 8-ball. Lots of Mexicans used to like that big ball. After I got the table for a long while, I had all their money that they were willing to lose and they didn't make any trouble at all. I think I made about $300 and we weren't playing for big money to begin with.

I went back there several times and never had a hassle and I always used to travel by myself. They liked to gamble.

jay helfert said:

One of my biggest pool scores was off the President of the local chapter of the Gypsy Jokers, a notorious biker gang in California. I made a nice little four figure score and won the title to his Harley! He owed me a grand on it and made good about a week later. The bike was kept chained up behind the bar until he could pay me. I had the key to the lock and the title.

This happened in a stripper bar on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. I look back on some of the places that I went to play pool and I must have been half crazy back then. All I knew is that there was a guy who liked to gamble in there and he didn't play that good. That was enough to get me going.

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Jay, do you remember a bar on Sepulveda that had action? It was somewhere near LAX. Rough place, had a couple of close calls there. Would have been in the late 1970's. Players traveled to get there.

HawaiianEye said:

None of them were ever playing for money when I went in the places I mentioned. They were playing for beers. I won beers off them and I never "stalled" to try to entice one of them into a game so I could get killed, so I had no problem playing run out pool on them for a beer.

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Back then we played in a couple of bars in North Hollywood and an Irish bar on Ventura Blvd. that always had crowds. Even just the standing drink bet, of $3 or $5, these guys wanted to kill us at the end of the night because we weren't regulars. I learned to not overstay my welcome. It's like walking into a guys living room, grabbing the remote control, and taking up the TV for the evening. I'm pretty big, my friend was little, and they would threaten him, LOL.

TATE said:

Back then we played in a couple of bars in North Hollywood and an Irish bar on Ventura Blvd. that always had crowds. Even just the standing drink bet, of $3 or $5, these guys wanted to kill us at the end of the night because we weren't regulars. I learned to not overstay my welcome. It's like walking into a guys living room, grabbing the remote control, and taking up the TV for the evening. I'm pretty big, my friend was little, and they would threaten him, LOL.

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Maybe you didn't have the "personality" that they liked.

I use to play really fast and loose a lot and stalk the table like Keith and make it look easy and fun. I would be putting quarters in the juke box and giving away beers because I would win then faster than I could drink them.

People use to gather around every where I ever played. I provided entertainment ever where I went. When I was in Taiwan and the Philippines there would always be a dozen or more spectators that would always gather around just to watch. Even guys that weren't pool players would be standing there with their wives watching. The reason they were watching was because I was very seldom ever missing back then and the games were flying by real quickly. And at that time, we were always putting money on the table and changing money back and forth. Lots of dollars flying around and everybody would stop to see what was going on. Also, there was always a constant turnover of challengers at the table every couple of minutes and people would keep piling quarters back up and saying "you can't win every game." I use to keep the table for HOURS and HOURS.

I use to have people always tell me that I should go to San Diego and play Keith back when he played at his home bar down there. I can't remember the name of it. I'd never heard of him. He was a teen at the time. I never went down there and never ever saw him until several years later after I had lived in the Philippines and Japan for seven years and then came back to the US.

I met Ritchie Florence's old room mate once, too. He must have been broke because he was selling magazines, or something, door to door. He rang my doorbell and I opened the door and he started his story about how I should buy some magazines. I told him I didn't want any magazines, but since it was hot outside he should come in and have a beer and take a rest.

Once he came in and sat down while I was grabbing him and I a beer, he saw that I had a bunch of pool tournament trophies all over the place and he started looking at them. This was right after I moved to CA from Taiwan. He was looking at two trophies where I had won the Taiwan Island Championships in 1975 and 1976. He then told me I should go down and play Ritchie, but I never made it down to LA to play.

The BIGGEST dude I ever played for beers was in Japan, but he was no threat and he became one of my friends. Brian Adams who became a super famous WWF wrestler. He started out his career on the Japanese wrestling circuit. He was from Hawaii and we used to play for beers whenever I would run into him. He liked to play and drink beer, but I would always beat him so fast that I would have beers all over the place faster than I could drink them. The last time I played him, I was like 22 beers ahead and had to tell the girl to put them in a case and I would take them home. I was even sharing beers and couldn't get rid of them fast enough. He died of an overdose later after he became famous and I never saw him after I left Japan. He was a super cool dude and a nice guy to have as your buddy when you went to bars. He was one BIG SOB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Adams_(wrestler)