Pool: A Losing Game

Drivermaker,
I tried your link, they wanted name/rank/serial #/blood type etc.; I couldn't sign on. Maybe you could summarize for us.
 
Williebetmore said:
Drivermaker,
I tried your link, they wanted name/rank/serial #/blood type etc.; I couldn't sign on. Maybe you could summarize for us.
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Damn it...I forgot they started doing that. It's really worth the read. Go ahead and fill out the information sheet, just make sure you check the appropriate box that says you don't want any follow-ups. They won't send it to anyone else or put you on a spam list.
 
BazookaJoe said:
HA!!!!
Yeah. unfortunately, that's my home town.
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A pool lover coming from a town like that? WOW! You need to run for office yourself or become more active in the council meetings and do a war dance on the back of a couple of those idiots. (Hope I'm not talking about anyone that's a relative)
 
Petition to play pool has Ringgold divided

By NORMAN AREY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/25/04


RINGGOLD — For the first time in 22 years, people may be queuing — or cueing — up to shoot a game of pool in this North Georgia town come Tuesday morning.

There's trouble in Ringgold city, and that's trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P and . . . well, you get the idea.

In 1982, Ringgold's city officials outlawed public playing of the game of pool.

Before that, there had been a pool hall in town. That establishment, which had no name, was reputed to be a place for gambling, underage drinking and general rowdiness, according to City Councilman J.B. Petty. When Ringgold City Council banished barroom billiards from town, the pool hall closed and its owner left town, Petty said.

Now, sports bar owner Kevin Cummings is fighting to bring public participation in the game of pool back to the Catoosa County seat. Cummings opened the Balls & Strikes Sports Bar in February in a small shopping center. He's petitioning the Ringgold council to allow him to have four pool tables. The council votes Monday on whether to rack 'em up again.

Petty, who has been on the council since 1990, says he'll vote to bring pool back.

"The owner of Balls & Strikes has been issued the most restrictive license we issue in Ringgold to serve liquor by the drink," Petty said. "He wanted pool tables and we [the council] have been back and forth with it. How much morality can be legislated? You have to be responsible for your own actions. I see nothing wrong with it."

Others do.

Councilwoman Martha Denton, a retired schoolteacher who took her seat on the council since the last vote on pool, worries that pool tables will attract riffraff.

"I have seen the effect of alcohol on people and I don't like any kind of alcohol," she said. "Our children are just torn up from the effects of alcohol. The people at the Balls & Strikes are wonderful and hard-working and I don't object so much to the pool tables, but I object to the serving of alcohol."

And Catoosa County resident Gary Petty, who happens to be Councilman Petty's nephew, has spoken out at public meetings against the return of pool tables to Ringgold.

"I'm not against the owners, I don't even know them," Gary Petty said. "But if you have young people coming in, they don't always discipline themselves as they should. I'm concerned for my fellow citizens. The more they play, the more they drink. When you have one, it goes hand-in-hand with the other."

Cummings says there'll be no gambling or underaged drinking at his place. But he believes he'll be behind the eight ball if he doesn't have pool tables in his sports bar. He's spent $100,000 getting the place open and is counting on the pool tables to bring in $26,000 or so in proceeds from league play. "It'll make me or break me," he said.

Besides, he said, "I'm not trying to open a pool hall. I just want four tables."

Insurance companies tell him, he said, that a pool hall must have at least six tables.

------------------

P.S. No relation.
 
hmmmmmmmmmm. . pool and drinking go hand in hand? Well, maybe some of them should step foot into a real "pool hall" and not a "billiards cafe"? Perhaps, just my opinion though.

I play the majority of the time in a "pool hall" and I've never experienced any of the problems as stated above. I'm pretty much at a loss for words. . I can't imagine my right being taken away like that.

Sonja
 
unbelievable....

First to BuddaJones: You are welcome in good old Europe...

Stories like this one always leave me with my mouth open..

USA / in the year of 2004 (Please don't mind my spelling..)

- You (not you personally) guys claim to be the land of the free
- The one and only democratic and advanced country of the world (according to President George W. Bush)

and yet you will have to discuss to put 4 pool tables in a sports bar?? Just to give my 2 cents worth:

In Germany the drinking age is:

- 16 year for beer an wine
- 18 years for hard liquor

even this may seem to be very low (in age) we do not have an underage alcoholism problem or fights in every bar, pool hall or elswhere. I think because drinking age is so high in the US it attracks more underage people to try it out....

Markus
 
Here's an update: 4/27/2004

RINGGOLD WILL ALLOW POOL TABLES

Sometime in the next day someone will call out "rack 'em up" and the game of pool will once again be legally played in public within the Ringold city limits.

The City Council voted 4-1 Monday to allow the game back into the town's good graces after an absence of more than 22 years.

In February, 34-year-old Kevin Cummings, owner of Balls & Stripes sports bar, applied to the City Council to allow him to install four pool tables.

Ringold voted to ban the game in public places in 1982 after a pool hall on Nashville Street closed. The no-name establishment had been a constant problem with its reputation for underage drinking, gambling and rowdiness.

Cummings said it won't take long to get the tables. "I've got some people lined up. We're putting in two starting (Tuesday) morning".


So, I guess this is what you call progress for the sport of pool. It's better than having the city council vote against tables and playing the game. Can you imagine any place in the country banning, golf driving ranges or putt-putt, tennis courts, softball fields because grown men drink after the game and fights break out because of disputed calls by the umpire. It took 22 years to allow pool to be played there, I wonder how many years it will take for the city council to yank the guy's license and reestablish the ban. All it really says is, pool is still a losing game in the mind's of many throughout the country and will NEVER get anywhere, at least in my lifetime. Sad to say.....
 
i210mfu said:
First to BuddaJones: You are welcome in good old Europe...

even this may seem to be very low (in age) we do not have an underage alcoholism problem or fights in every bar, pool hall or elswhere.
Markus
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Ahhh, if you had all us descendants of Irishmen in you're country, you might have a problem. ;-)
Seriously, you shouldn't judge the USA by what one town in one state did 34 years ago. I'm sure if we dug through local papers in Germany (and could speak the language) we'd find reports of equally bizarre things going on there. Every nation, every people have there idiosyncracies, USA is no exception and Germany is no exception.
BTW, the drinking laws are determined state by state over here not for the country at large, in some states county by county or town by town. When some states when to an 18 year drinking age many years ago it was an unmitigated disaster, most apparent in the context of auto fatalities. Different strokes for different folks, what works in your culture might not work in our culture.
I might add that I personally would not trade our culture with all it's faults for ANY other culture in the world. I might want to fine tune our culture if I had the control, but I would not trade it for another EVER.
 
catscradle said:
I might add that I personally would not trade our culture with all it's faults for ANY other culture in the world. I might want to fine tune our culture if I had the control, but I would not trade it for another EVER.
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Well Catscradle, this wasn't meant to offend anybodies culture at all.. It is just funny..Here no Pool Hall would survive without serving alcohol (not so much hard stuff but beer). I am not judging the US by a single towns decisíon. I am a frequent visitor to the the US, where else you can find so many good pool rooms and people to play with ( I just love Clicks Billiards in Dallas)

Just an historical remark: So you are somewhat Irish, well If am not mistaken the Irish and the Germans have been the largest immigrants to the new world in numbers of people ...So the country itself can't be too bad ;-)
 
Williebetmore said:
Drivermaker,
I tried your link, they wanted name/rank/serial #/blood type etc.; I couldn't sign on. Maybe you could summarize for us.
Click to expand...

if you want to be anonymous, then lie. Put in another name, adress and email addie.haha

Laura
 
Well, Ringgold has always been a bit of a "Mayberry".
But, at least it's not Germany.

This will be nice for those nights I do not want to drive 20 min to Chattanooga to play.
 
What's disturbing is that one person still voted against it. It really annoys me when people try to legislate private businesses to the degree that they need permission to rearrange their furniture. You have to wonder if some of the city council even realize that schools and government don't pay for government, the little bar they are legislating does. Ug, stories like this make me ill.
 
One word...ABSURD!! I agree with SonjaBlue...I have never seen anything as they explain in the pool hall I play in. There are the common disputes, and petty arguements. They go away in a matter of seconds. Did they close all the bars down too in that town. "Bars" encourage drinking...same deal!

Glad to hear they are letting him have some tables for league! Best of luck to your town Bazooka...may the pool halls come raining in!!!
 
This kind of reminds me of this talk show I saw one time, I think it was Donahue and it was quite a while ago. The subject was about an older lady that dyed her hair. The audience just went nuts! The notion that this lady wanted to do something a little out of the norm made this audience go completely bezerk!! This is just another example of people trying to control others and they want to do this more than anything else.

Pool is not the probelm, it's how the pool room is run. Where I live, we have 3 pool halls and two of them have fights in them occasionally. One of them never has any problems. This isn't because the people that go in there don't want to cause trouble once in a while. It's because the people that work there won't tolerate it. They know when trouble is coming and the stop it before it arrives. It's all about people, not the activity they're involved in. I've known bars that have rarely had problems and I've known others that have had people killed in them on occasion and have fights regularly.
 
9balldiva said:
One word...ABSURD!! I agree with SonjaBlue...I have never seen anything as they explain in the pool hall I play in. There are the common disputes, and petty arguements. They go away in a matter of seconds. Did they close all the bars down too in that town. "Bars" encourage drinking...same deal!

Glad to hear they are letting him have some tables for league! Best of luck to your town Bazooka...may the pool halls come raining in!!!
Click to expand...

Yes they did close the bars. Liquor by the drink is only now returning to Ringgold. Remember, it's Mayberry (only smaller).

Remember how absurd this was, the next time the government tries to pass new gun legislation. It's the same concept.

There will be no pool halls. At least for now, the only permit was given to the one sports bar. 4 tables only(it takes 6 to be considered a pool hall).

But now I can honestly answer a previous thread and say YES, I am one of the top 100 players in my town. :D
 
BazookaJoe said:
Yes they did close the bars. Liquor by the drink is only now returning to Ringgold. Remember, it's Mayberry (only smaller).
There will be no pool halls. At least for now, the only permit was given to the one sports bar. 4 tables only(it takes 6 to be considered a pool hall).
Click to expand...


Bazooka, you're exactly right...the bottom line is that they DID NOT vote to allow a pool hall (6 or more tables by their definition). My guess is, if someone did want to open a room it would have been unanimously voted down. Throughout my life I have been in a number of "Mayberry's" and found some great pool rooms, so it boils down to the inhabitants of Mayberry, not just small town USA. I also have a feeling that the attitudes of your town toward pool rooms don't stand alone across the country in a great number of other Mayberry's or towns even larger, which is why I titled this thread the way I did. Pool is still a losing game and thought of in a negative way by millions. How long will it take to change those perceptions and what will alter them for the better?
 
I have an article from Business Week or Newsweek (or something like that -- I'll have to find where I put it) from about 6 or 7 years ago. It states that the government of Uzbekistan has outlawed the game of pocket billiards because it promotes drugs, drinking, and other bad things. The funny thing about this article is that is didn't mention 'public places'. It just said that they outlawed the game.

I thought this was kind of funny.

Andy Segal
 
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