Fargo Billiards is closing?

I found a video online, Fargo is mentioned

, but it didn't have great photos from Fargo Billiards in action.

If anyone knows or has photos or clips of Fargo, I can reach out to the producers and maybe they can put something together for you. They owe me a favor, so I am just looking for good photos of Fargo Billiards to be turned into a low budget youtube short film.

sorry for the repost I am learning a lot about the internet.
 
DaveK said:
Small market's are a tough go, that's for sure. And the Shack is a special place. I got the impression that Fargo Billiards was also a special place, I am sorry to hear of it's troubles.

Dave
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Lot of 'special' places. That doesn't guarantee payin' the bills.
 
If I lived nearby I would be pretty sad, looks like it had it going on.
Best of luck to Mike and all the staff.
 
I'm pretty sure Mike would agree that on top of the loss of events due to C19, finding quality staff to dish wash, clean, cook, serve, etc. is next to impossible. The youth that you hire, if you even can, aren't into customer service jobs at all. They'll show up when they want, leave when they want, not treat customers well and usually just disappear without any notice. And yes, I'm generalizing but it comes from a lot of experience. One of my absolute best staff is about 27 but she's a true rarity. I would not even consider opening a business that relied on a lot of manpower for customer service. You would be doomed to fail.
 
its hard to find good hard working people for below living condition wages. if your service people are not doing a good job and it seems clear that they werent here, then the only option is to replace them with better people at a higher wage that value that job.
if you are going to combine your poolroom with great food it better be great food. for a regular that place seems like a fantastic place to hang out and play pool. but for the average date night person not so, as they value the food and service more than the condition of the pool tables.
 
Where i live, a number of restaurants, bars, and pool halls have closed. With the pandemic, people were staying home. Some of the owners said it's almost impossible to keep going with no customers, bank payments, rent, and insurance. They seemed to have a particular hate on for insurance companies and banks.
 
if you are going broke because of payments then you might as well reduce them fast. like dropping insurance as a corporation is only liable for its assets and if going broke it may pay to gamble on savings.
rent can always be negotiated if you are moving out as the owner unless he has a new renter may forgo rent or part of it with a makeup at a later date.
and of course shut down the areas of the business that are not self supporting.
but some businesses are doomed at any case and its best just to move on in life.
 
lfigueroa said:
I see the maggots didn’t take too long to land on the corpse of Fargo Billiards.

From all reports, Fargo Billiards was the finest pool room in America. Great ambiance, great food, great beer, great pool, and great people. Tournaments, leagues, and lessons and it was all a passion of love by long standing, and highly regraded AZ member, Mike Page.

As I recall, Mike used to travel a fair bit. And at every stop he’d visit local rooms and note the bestest features and qualities of each room. And finally, in a retirement of sorts, he took on creating his perfect pool room.

So now, the Harvard MBAs wax poetic about the failure of the business with scant knowledge of the particulars and zero knowledge of the people involved. But that is as it is on AZ.

For Mike, his wife Adele, and the staff at the late, great Fargo Billiards I offer my heartfelt condolence upon your closure. It was always my dream to eventually make it out your way and bask in what was certainly pool heaven on Earth.

Lou Figueroa
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Some of these people make me sick.
 
DaveK said:
Small market's are a tough go, that's for sure. And the Shack is a special place. I got the impression that Fargo Billiards was also a special place, I am sorry to hear of it's troubles.

Dave
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I'm of the opinion that any city with a population of 50,000 (maybe even 25,000) or more can support a good sports bar, done right. Of course not now, but in the future when things open back up. People will always want to go out and socialize. No one wants to stay cooped up at home all the time. Provide people with a clean, fun atmosphere and you will have a winner. I always liked variety - Pool, ping pong, foosball, darts, arcade games (pop-a-shot, air hockey, topflight golf, racing, pin ball, shooting games), juke box, big screen TV's with sports, sports, sports! You build it, they will come! There is a reason why Dave and Busters has been going strong for decades now.
 
maha said:
if you are going broke because of payments then you might as well reduce them fast. like dropping insurance as a corporation is only liable for its assets and if going broke it may pay to gamble on savings.
rent can always be negotiated if you are moving out as the owner unless he has a new renter may forgo rent or part of it with a makeup at a later date.
and of course shut down the areas of the business that are not self supporting.
but some businesses are doomed at any case and its best just to move on in life.
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In normal times, maybe. But with Covid, there were politicians claiming 'turning the corner', 'soon, they'll be no cases'. If you run a business, when do you decide that the politicians are just making things up. Now, with the pandemic at record levels, and with North Dakota the worst hit state in the country, (and even that developed pretty quickly), Fargo may have just decided to cut their losses. Hopefully, when Covid is a distant memory, they'll be back.
 
i would like to see them stay in business and prosper. and maybe this thing might give them a good reason to rethink the way they are doing things. unfortunately most people blame things on something other than themselves .

their food and service ratings are terrible on yelp and not having done something about that is a big red flag.
 
Its a shame to lose another room. Mike is a real pool player, that does a ton for the game. Does anyone know if business was jumping before Corona? I've seen so many swings in my short 25 years of playing pool. When I started in the 90's, the rooms in Phillly you had to get on a waiting list to get a table every night of the summer, and during the winter, same for the weekends only. Then in the lates 2000's all the rooms about closed up. Now they were picking up again right before Corona hit. When business was the best, these rooms were filled with teens and early 20's that would come in groups of 10 and stay a few hours. When they were dead, all the groups had "grown up" and now only singles would come in. I can see even if a town didn't have Corona business restrictions, if the groups went away due to personal choice, that would kill a room where that was a big portion of their business.
 
Here is a concept which is critical to the survival of our sport and pool halls: "Recruitment".
We have to attract people, particularly young ones, to our sport and then keep them -- hopefully for life. We need a constant resupply of players to make up for what we are losing.

I have always thought that pool leagues for young folks on Saturday morning and the introduction of pool as a school sport would be two great steps forward. To me, accomplishing either of these would require some organization like the BCA or AZB spearheading the project. What do ya'll think?
 
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maha said:
their food and service ratings are terrible on yelp and not having done something about that is a big red flag.
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I was curious and looked at the Yelp reviews.

39 reviews in 9 years.

Number of reviews less than 3 stars:
2012 - 1
2013 - 1
2014 - 1
2015 - 1
2016 - 1
2017 - 3
2018 - 2
2019 - 3
2020 - 2

That's 16 poor reviews out of 39, in nine years. I wonder how many customers they had in nine years, and how many would bother to write a review on Yelp?

Yelp is a pretty weak platform anyway, and I don't think the Yelp reviews generally have much value as a predictor of business success. And with so few reviews here, it looks like junk data to interpret them that way.
 
gerryf said:
I was curious and looked at the Yelp reviews.

39 reviews in 8 years.

Number of reviews less than 3 stars:
2012 - 1
2013 - 1
2014 - 1
2015 - 1
2016 - 1
2017 - 3
2018 - 2
2019 - 3
2020 - 2

That's 16 poor reviews out of 39, in eight years.

I don't think the Yelp reviews generally have much value as a predictor of business success. And with so few reviews here, it's junk data to interpret them that way.
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I've never based a go/no-go decision on a Yelp rating. Especially places that serve alcohol. Someone has a few too many and gets pissy about something and leaves a crappy review.
 
Biloxi Boy said:
Here is a concept which is critical to the survival of our sport and pool halls: "Recruitment".
We have to attract people, particularly young ones, to our sport and then keep them -- hopefully for life. We need a constant resupply of players to make up for what we are losing.

I have always thought that pool leagues for young folks on Saturday morning and the introduction of pool as a school sport would be two great steps forward. To me, accomplishing either of these would require some organization like the BCA or AZB spearheading the project. What do ya'll think?
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You are right on here! I've been saying this for years. It would be easy to introduce Pool as a high school sport. You only need one room with maybe two tables. The cost of equipment is cheap compared to other scholastic sports. The BCA should have been working on this for the last 20 years instead of pursuing the Olympic dream.
Biloxi Boy said:
Here is a concept which is critical to the survival of our sport and pool halls: "Recruitment".
We have to attract people, particularly young ones, to our sport and then keep them -- hopefully for life. We need a constant resupply of players to make up for what we are losing.

I have always thought that pool leagues for young folks on Saturday morning and the introduction of pool as a school sport would be two great steps forward. To me, accomplishing either of these would require some organization like the BCA or AZB spearheading the project. What do ya'll think?
Click to expand...
Check out the Junior International Open that OTW Productions and Diamond Billiards is putting on Jan. 7-9, 2021. They get it!
 
jay helfert said:
. . . It would be easy to introduce Pool as a high school sport. You only need one room with maybe two tables. The cost of equipment is cheap compared to other scholastic sports. The BCA should have been working on this for the last 20 years instead of pursuing the Olympic dream.
Click to expand...
Here's an idea: Diamond, Predator, and AZB give Dr. Dave a grant to develop a high school pool program/curriculum in conjunction with the Fort Collins School System with a goal of creating a model program which can then be utilized to involve BCA and other school systems. Consider the potential instructional possibilities given our sport's intersection with math, science, hell, even literature. How about it Dr. Dave?
 
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Biloxi Boy said:
Here's an idea: Diamond, Predator, and AZB give Dr. Dave a grant to develop a high school pool program/curriculum in conjunction with the Fort Collins School System with a goal of developing a model program which can then be utilized to involve BCA and other school systems. Consider the potential instructional possibilities given our sport's intersection with math, science, hell, even literature. How about it Dr. Dave?
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Believe it or not, this has been done in select cities in the past. Bart Mahoney did it in Sacramento. The Birbeck twins formed school leagues in Pennsylvania, and there were others in different parts of the country. There was never any national organization (like the BCA) that got behind it though.

I gave free pool lessons to kids on Saturday mornings in two of the rooms I owned (Bakersfield and Inglewood, CA). I also taught a Billiards course in the Extension Program at UCLA back in the 1980's.
 
Biloxi Boy said:
Here is a concept which is critical to the survival of our sport and pool halls: "Recruitment".
We have to attract people, particularly young ones, to our sport and then keep them -- hopefully for life. We need a constant resupply of players to make up for what we are losing.

I have always thought that pool leagues for young folks on Saturday morning and the introduction of pool as a school sport would be two great steps forward. To me, accomplishing either of these would require some organization like the BCA or AZB spearheading the project. What do ya'll think?
Click to expand...

How about start with wanting people to be interested in billiards?

In other groups I know people are coming off addictions and billiards is a good place to channel that energy.

There are parents that have never wanted their child to play billiards because what does it lead to?

The paradox is people sign their children up for more popular group sports, but most parents won't pay for billiards instruction.
Billiards instruction is one on one, that is really good for children that get distracted easily.

Joining a billiards community can be helpful for everyone because it has people of different ages and stages of life. Unlike other sports where everyone is chasing a standard as a group. Pool is more focused on individual performance. That is great for people that like being responsible for everything,

I have posted some videos trying to promote pool for both older fans and people just checking out what it has to offer. In other industries the fan support is much more visible. I think that has mostly to do with the "brainwashing" by other industries.

Attracting the youth is super competitive, today's youth are targeted by ads from day zero. Most of the ads are good messages, young people just confuse it often.
 
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