That would certainly help, but the APA was founded in 1979 and pool was already in it's heyday long before then. In the fifties and sixties, even before "The Hustler", in many parts of NYC you could barely walk a block or two without seeing a pool room, which brings up some interesting questions about the evolution of a "product's" popularity.
So, the questions are begging to be asked; Did the movies and pool rooms simply follow pool's popularity and not create it? Or did the movies merely stimulate a temporary resurgence of an already popular pastime on it's down slope?
And lastly, if the movies were poorly made and financed, unadvertised, "C" grade movies without star quality casts and not based on well written novels, would a resurgence have even occurred? I submit not.
J
Yes but it took them a few yrs to really start digging in and then came Tap ,, the leagues brought in so many players because it boasted that any skill level could be ,, this was a far cry from the dog eat dog world of pool before then ,, and the handicap system made it so you would have to get rid of players and find new players ,
The players who never played became a hot commodity and every team captian then became a sales person for the league ,, a truly brilliant concept ,,
I could not even count how many new players I plucked off of bar stools to play not to mention the leages I started ,, and there were thousands of people just like me
Now 90% of those places are gone ,, it's all about numbers ROI per square foot ,,pool simply does not generated enough cash ,, the ones now have all the teams from the ones that failed and even some of those are still struggling ,
So it's hard to imagin things changing anytime soon
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