If you are reasonably successful in life and you like pool, you buy your own table. These people hang out with similar people and the whole group is not about hanging at some disreputable pool hall where the hustle is the word of the day.
I think that by and large you find losers and gamblers (who do not have much money) at pool halls. For fun they go hustle the local bar.
Pool is not dead, it just moved out of pool halls where drugs, loud music and poor hustlers hang out.
I too live in a retirement community and we have four Gold Crowns that are in use all the time. There are lots of players in my area, we see no reason to hangout at a pool hall. A few years ago 10 - 12 of us went "down town" for the local Friday night ten dollar tournament. After a few nights of ignorant red necks, foul language, whores and all the riff raff in town, why go back. If you did win anything you probably woud not get out of the parking lot without an escort.
There are plenty of us who play, we just choose where we go.
Before someone gets all over me, I continue to look for a "good" place to play when I am on the road. They are few and far between. As for supporting pool I certainly have more than 20 grand invested in the sport over the years, and so do many of my friends.
