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.
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.
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