This came from RSB but I thought JAM would be especially interested in it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11441-2005Mar29.html
PatH
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11441-2005Mar29.html
PatH
This is something special.
- Thread starter PatH
- Start date
Great article. And how true!PatH said:
I wonder if JAM knows who Goose is 
Purdman
Banned
Goose
I knew a guy back in the 70's named Goose. His real name was Ken Goslen. Hell of a player. In the time I knew him he was an Insurance agent and a carpenter. He is now passed. I will always miss him. Played guitar with Roy Buchanon. Those were the days. Jack @ Jills and the Golden Cue. I don't know if it was the same guy, but it could have been.
Purdman
I knew a guy back in the 70's named Goose. His real name was Ken Goslen. Hell of a player. In the time I knew him he was an Insurance agent and a carpenter. He is now passed. I will always miss him. Played guitar with Roy Buchanon. Those were the days. Jack @ Jills and the Golden Cue. I don't know if it was the same guy, but it could have been.
Purdman
O
onepocketchump
Guest
This is too good to lose. Here it is credits and all.
By Ted Gup
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 30, 2005; Page C01
I am in mourning. A scribbled note on the door says it all: "Poolroom Closed." I press my face against the glass. The room is dark, the tables gone -- auctioned off a few weeks ago, I am told. In the mailbox are what look to be two old bills. Nothing else remains of 20 years of Friday nights spent here in one of the few real pool halls anywhere near the nation's capital. The operative word is "real." Sure, there are those family-friendly billiard parlors, polished places with red-felt tables and marble floors where up-and-comers sip martinis, dates coo and bar mitzvah parties are welcomed.
Whatever that is, it's not a pool hall. For that you had to go to Silver Spring, to Champion Billiards on Georgia Avenue. Squeezed between Auto City Used Cars and Meineke Discount Mufflers, it was a true throwback, the sort of place the Music Man himself warned about. Across the street was the required pawn shop with its guitars and gold and guns. Next to it, like some wayward guardian angel protecting our blessed pool hall, was the bronze bust of a homeless man, the late Norman Lane, once dubbed the "mayor" of Silver Spring. It was a tribute to citizens for looking after him. In those days, Silver Spring was like that. So too was the pool hall. It was open to anyone, anytime.
For much of its existence, it was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even in a blizzard, its lights glowed warmly and you had a place to go. I don't remember a soul being turned away, though I do remember a few who muttered to themselves or went out back for a fix or a swig. Rogues and scalawags it had, but mostly just hardworking men who long ago chose the pleasure of each other's company and the click of ivory spheres about to fall off an earth of sheer green felt. It was all about the game.
Only some seven miles from Washington's corridors of power, it was incalculably far away, immune to its correctness and self-importance. It was one of the few places I knew in my 21 years in the capital where neither race nor class nor ambition meant a thing.
There were two kinds of rules to the hall: written and unwritten. Gambling was prohibited, which meant bills had to be neatly folded and left in a corner pocket or slipped palm to palm. Cursing was forbidden, and truth be told, was not much tolerated. We'd heard enough cursing outside not to want to track it in. And finally there was "no spitting," a carryover from the days of spittoons and rack boys. A little down in the mouth it might have been, but it was ours, and each of us had an interest in keeping it up. Sit on a rail, drop a live ash on the felt or talk trash and you would draw enough cross looks to know you were in the wrong place. On the outside door was a warning: "No one under the age of 18 permitted on these premises during normal school hours and after 10 P.M. unless accompanied by someone 25 or older." But our skill bore witness to our own misspent youths, and who were we to deny the next generation such pleasures? Besides, a real pool hall caters to the truant in each of us.
But it was the unwritten rules that made the hall a true sanctuary. Nobody talked about work, whether they had a job or not. It was a "No Whining Zone," a given that life was not always kind but that here at least we would not marinate in each other's misfortunes. There were no peacocks or pimps in broad brims. Vanity went elsewhere. Inside, a man's past and future counted for nothing, only the present and the number of balls sunk. It was all about the game. One soft-spoken guy always wore cardigans and reminded me of Mister Rogers. We knew he'd done time, but never dreamt of asking for details. That was the past, his past, not ours. It was all about the game. Even the bookie showed enough respect not to ply his trade inside. In nearly two decades, I never saw a fight, not so much as a scuffle.
Life stories, hard luck or otherwise, were off-limits. You learned enough about a person from his game to know whether his company was desired. Almost nobody had a last name. It wasn't as if any of us were likely to hook up in the world of sunlight. Fat Mike, a chef turned shooter, was almost balletic when he took to the tables. "Goose" and "Tom-Tom" were minor deities. Before them, the rest of us parted and silently took in the majesty of their skill.
First names all, except for Mr. Knox. He was true royalty. I never knew his first name, but he was as honorable a gentleman as I shall know, a man who handled a cue with grace, and lived and died the same way. When cancer was eating him up, he allowed a few tears to run down his cheeks, talking about those he would miss most. He apologized, but for him, the ban on hard-luck talk had been waived. He wasn't looking for pity, just a way to make the best of what we players called "a bad leave." I think he worked as a custodian or in maintenance.
Immigrants, too, found their way here, from Koreans to Salvadorans. Political correctness skipped us by as did all the righteous rectitude of Washington, but we did right by each other. A buddy tells me he thinks Reggie, a black, helped sponsor Lee, a Korean, for citizenship. I don't remember any ramp for the disabled but I remember some killer shots made from wheelchairs. A guy with a shriveled arm managed to persuade me to spot him a couple of balls to even out the odds. He destroyed me. After that I never underestimated him again. The only handicap in the pool room was your own.
Women were few. I once brought my wife, emphasis on "once." But in recent years more spouses showed up and some brought their own cues and solid games and taught the aging bulls about gender and humility. Grizzled old men and kids barely old enough to shave gave the rest of us lessons in the perils of ageism. An open mind often came at the expense of an empty wallet. Fifty bucks was a big loss.
We had our music and we had our food -- a hot dog off the spit, a handful of salty cashews, a Kit-Kat from the machine. It wasn't gourmet but at 2 in the morning it kept you going. It was all about the game. The jukebox favored Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love" and Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry."
My game is straight pool, an old man's game, the one they played in the 1961 flick "The Hustler" with upstart Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson, not the sequel where a bespectacled Newman tutors a clownish and cue-twirling Tom Cruise. There the game was nine-ball.
My standing game was with Ira. One night when we were playing straight to 50, I broke and left him at the far rail without a prayer of a shot -- except he found one and proceeded to run one rack after another, all the way up to 50 balls. I never even got out of my chair, except to rack the balls for him. On that one night, there was not a player in the cosmos who could have beaten him. That feat alone should have preserved the pool hall forever. I imagined a brass plaque outside speaking to his 50-ball run the night of whenever it was -- time was something we quickly lost track of, but never the number of balls. It was a universe unto itself, a place of blue chalk and white talc, of two-piece ebony and ivory cues and oak racks. No sweeter sound there was than that of the respectful tap-tap-tapping made by the butt of a cue upon the floor as an opponent paid homage to a shot well made. It was all about the game.
The poet W.S. Merwin, writing about a pool hall, said the players were "safe in its ring of dusty light where the real dark can never come." Well, "the real dark" came a few weeks ago. Some blamed Montgomery County's smoking ban. I don't know. Five minutes away, Galaxy Billiards Cafe had opened its doors. Thirty-five big TVs outnumbered the pool tables. Short of a pencil and paper, there's no way even to keep score -- no string of beads, no counters. At the far end of each pool table is a "service button." Press it and a waitress comes running. I kid you not.
Five years ago I moved to Cleveland, but before I did I made a list of what I would miss about Washington. The pool hall was near the top of that list. Funny how little things figure large when saying goodbye. On each of my returns to Washington, Ira and I met at the hall for a night of straight pool. I would come through the door after an absence of months and get the same familiar nod from the guys as if I had been there just the night before. No questions asked. It was all about the game. I wonder now what has become of them. It was a brotherhood that fell to a smoking ban, to gentrification, maybe to time itself.
It's true, the place reeked of cigarettes. Smoke wreathed upward and formed a stationary cloud overhead, and saturated my mustache so that next morning my wife would still recognize the smell of the pool hall. But for me, it was the air of Washington itself that had begun to grow stale and unbreathable, a city of fluted columns and sometimes towering egos, of brass-knuckle arguments and invisible walls that divided one city into many. It was becoming what those who had never set foot in my pool hall doubtless imagined it to be -- vulgar, combative, full of hustlers. I came to the pool hall to escape all that and always I found there a breath of fresh air. Really, it had nothing to do with the game.
Ted Gup, author of "The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA," is a professor of journalism at Case Western Reserve University. He can be reached at tedgup@att.net.
By Ted Gup
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 30, 2005; Page C01
I am in mourning. A scribbled note on the door says it all: "Poolroom Closed." I press my face against the glass. The room is dark, the tables gone -- auctioned off a few weeks ago, I am told. In the mailbox are what look to be two old bills. Nothing else remains of 20 years of Friday nights spent here in one of the few real pool halls anywhere near the nation's capital. The operative word is "real." Sure, there are those family-friendly billiard parlors, polished places with red-felt tables and marble floors where up-and-comers sip martinis, dates coo and bar mitzvah parties are welcomed.
Whatever that is, it's not a pool hall. For that you had to go to Silver Spring, to Champion Billiards on Georgia Avenue. Squeezed between Auto City Used Cars and Meineke Discount Mufflers, it was a true throwback, the sort of place the Music Man himself warned about. Across the street was the required pawn shop with its guitars and gold and guns. Next to it, like some wayward guardian angel protecting our blessed pool hall, was the bronze bust of a homeless man, the late Norman Lane, once dubbed the "mayor" of Silver Spring. It was a tribute to citizens for looking after him. In those days, Silver Spring was like that. So too was the pool hall. It was open to anyone, anytime.
For much of its existence, it was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even in a blizzard, its lights glowed warmly and you had a place to go. I don't remember a soul being turned away, though I do remember a few who muttered to themselves or went out back for a fix or a swig. Rogues and scalawags it had, but mostly just hardworking men who long ago chose the pleasure of each other's company and the click of ivory spheres about to fall off an earth of sheer green felt. It was all about the game.
Only some seven miles from Washington's corridors of power, it was incalculably far away, immune to its correctness and self-importance. It was one of the few places I knew in my 21 years in the capital where neither race nor class nor ambition meant a thing.
There were two kinds of rules to the hall: written and unwritten. Gambling was prohibited, which meant bills had to be neatly folded and left in a corner pocket or slipped palm to palm. Cursing was forbidden, and truth be told, was not much tolerated. We'd heard enough cursing outside not to want to track it in. And finally there was "no spitting," a carryover from the days of spittoons and rack boys. A little down in the mouth it might have been, but it was ours, and each of us had an interest in keeping it up. Sit on a rail, drop a live ash on the felt or talk trash and you would draw enough cross looks to know you were in the wrong place. On the outside door was a warning: "No one under the age of 18 permitted on these premises during normal school hours and after 10 P.M. unless accompanied by someone 25 or older." But our skill bore witness to our own misspent youths, and who were we to deny the next generation such pleasures? Besides, a real pool hall caters to the truant in each of us.
But it was the unwritten rules that made the hall a true sanctuary. Nobody talked about work, whether they had a job or not. It was a "No Whining Zone," a given that life was not always kind but that here at least we would not marinate in each other's misfortunes. There were no peacocks or pimps in broad brims. Vanity went elsewhere. Inside, a man's past and future counted for nothing, only the present and the number of balls sunk. It was all about the game. One soft-spoken guy always wore cardigans and reminded me of Mister Rogers. We knew he'd done time, but never dreamt of asking for details. That was the past, his past, not ours. It was all about the game. Even the bookie showed enough respect not to ply his trade inside. In nearly two decades, I never saw a fight, not so much as a scuffle.
Life stories, hard luck or otherwise, were off-limits. You learned enough about a person from his game to know whether his company was desired. Almost nobody had a last name. It wasn't as if any of us were likely to hook up in the world of sunlight. Fat Mike, a chef turned shooter, was almost balletic when he took to the tables. "Goose" and "Tom-Tom" were minor deities. Before them, the rest of us parted and silently took in the majesty of their skill.
First names all, except for Mr. Knox. He was true royalty. I never knew his first name, but he was as honorable a gentleman as I shall know, a man who handled a cue with grace, and lived and died the same way. When cancer was eating him up, he allowed a few tears to run down his cheeks, talking about those he would miss most. He apologized, but for him, the ban on hard-luck talk had been waived. He wasn't looking for pity, just a way to make the best of what we players called "a bad leave." I think he worked as a custodian or in maintenance.
Immigrants, too, found their way here, from Koreans to Salvadorans. Political correctness skipped us by as did all the righteous rectitude of Washington, but we did right by each other. A buddy tells me he thinks Reggie, a black, helped sponsor Lee, a Korean, for citizenship. I don't remember any ramp for the disabled but I remember some killer shots made from wheelchairs. A guy with a shriveled arm managed to persuade me to spot him a couple of balls to even out the odds. He destroyed me. After that I never underestimated him again. The only handicap in the pool room was your own.
Women were few. I once brought my wife, emphasis on "once." But in recent years more spouses showed up and some brought their own cues and solid games and taught the aging bulls about gender and humility. Grizzled old men and kids barely old enough to shave gave the rest of us lessons in the perils of ageism. An open mind often came at the expense of an empty wallet. Fifty bucks was a big loss.
We had our music and we had our food -- a hot dog off the spit, a handful of salty cashews, a Kit-Kat from the machine. It wasn't gourmet but at 2 in the morning it kept you going. It was all about the game. The jukebox favored Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love" and Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry."
My game is straight pool, an old man's game, the one they played in the 1961 flick "The Hustler" with upstart Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson, not the sequel where a bespectacled Newman tutors a clownish and cue-twirling Tom Cruise. There the game was nine-ball.
My standing game was with Ira. One night when we were playing straight to 50, I broke and left him at the far rail without a prayer of a shot -- except he found one and proceeded to run one rack after another, all the way up to 50 balls. I never even got out of my chair, except to rack the balls for him. On that one night, there was not a player in the cosmos who could have beaten him. That feat alone should have preserved the pool hall forever. I imagined a brass plaque outside speaking to his 50-ball run the night of whenever it was -- time was something we quickly lost track of, but never the number of balls. It was a universe unto itself, a place of blue chalk and white talc, of two-piece ebony and ivory cues and oak racks. No sweeter sound there was than that of the respectful tap-tap-tapping made by the butt of a cue upon the floor as an opponent paid homage to a shot well made. It was all about the game.
The poet W.S. Merwin, writing about a pool hall, said the players were "safe in its ring of dusty light where the real dark can never come." Well, "the real dark" came a few weeks ago. Some blamed Montgomery County's smoking ban. I don't know. Five minutes away, Galaxy Billiards Cafe had opened its doors. Thirty-five big TVs outnumbered the pool tables. Short of a pencil and paper, there's no way even to keep score -- no string of beads, no counters. At the far end of each pool table is a "service button." Press it and a waitress comes running. I kid you not.
Five years ago I moved to Cleveland, but before I did I made a list of what I would miss about Washington. The pool hall was near the top of that list. Funny how little things figure large when saying goodbye. On each of my returns to Washington, Ira and I met at the hall for a night of straight pool. I would come through the door after an absence of months and get the same familiar nod from the guys as if I had been there just the night before. No questions asked. It was all about the game. I wonder now what has become of them. It was a brotherhood that fell to a smoking ban, to gentrification, maybe to time itself.
It's true, the place reeked of cigarettes. Smoke wreathed upward and formed a stationary cloud overhead, and saturated my mustache so that next morning my wife would still recognize the smell of the pool hall. But for me, it was the air of Washington itself that had begun to grow stale and unbreathable, a city of fluted columns and sometimes towering egos, of brass-knuckle arguments and invisible walls that divided one city into many. It was becoming what those who had never set foot in my pool hall doubtless imagined it to be -- vulgar, combative, full of hustlers. I came to the pool hall to escape all that and always I found there a breath of fresh air. Really, it had nothing to do with the game.
Ted Gup, author of "The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA," is a professor of journalism at Case Western Reserve University. He can be reached at tedgup@att.net.
I was in Silver Spring and played there about a year ago. What a dump! Close to the worse tables I'd ever played on. I didn't have a cue with me, so I used a bar cue. I'd have been better off with a broom stick. No action there that I saw, but it was Tuesday night after 11:00.
Still, there was something about the place I really liked.
Still, there was something about the place I really liked.
WOW! JAM did you know this was happening? I'm sure that they still had alot of patrons...despite the "pool hall" opening down the road...a button to becon your waitress...please. 
I just can not imagine how a smoking ban will kill ALL of your business. I smoke, and there is a smoking ban in my county....no smoking in ALL public places, except bars. Does this mean I stop going to the places I enjoy? No. I pack up and stand in the cold a few seconds to get my fix. JMHO.
I just can not imagine how a smoking ban will kill ALL of your business. I smoke, and there is a smoking ban in my county....no smoking in ALL public places, except bars. Does this mean I stop going to the places I enjoy? No. I pack up and stand in the cold a few seconds to get my fix. JMHO.Deeply moving and well-written article. I'm surprised it made its way into The Washington Post. Ted's lament is also mine, and that of many dedicated pool lovers: In an era when upscale entertainment emporiums vie for monopoly over it, it's no longer about the game.
landshark,landshark77 said:WOW! JAM did you know this was happening? I'm sure that they still had alot of patrons...despite the "pool hall" opening down the road...a button to becon your waitress...please.
I have no evidence for saying this in the instance of this particular room. But I suspect the closing of Champion Billiards, and other establishments like it, has roots reaching far beyond the smoking ban. It is the logical outcome of an economy based on frivolous credit-card debt consumerism, and real estate hyperinflation. Not a yuppie, not a pinch of luck.
onepocketchump said:
When J&R Champion Billiards in Silver Spring, Maryland closed its doors, I posted a thread about it: Another Legenday Pool Room Bites the Dust
The Washington Post article said:
With the exception of Old Man Mickey a/k/a "Mr. Johnson." Mickey showed me a good break for 9-ball several decades ago, and to this day, it still works best for me! During the NFL, MLB, and NBA seasons, quite a few phone calls would come in during the evening hours before game time. "Is Mr. Johnson there?," the caller would inquire. I'd look directly at Mickey and say, "Is Mr. Johnson here?," and Mickey would smile gently and come to the phone to engage in brief conversations, with his pen and paper in hand.
Mickey passed away several years ago, but he will NEVER be forgotten to those of us regulars at Champion's in Silver Spring. Tom-Tom moved away to Florida right about a week before Mickey passed, and upon hearing the horrible news, Tom-Tom immediately flew back to D.C., so that he could give Mickey's eulogy. The funeral home was filled with pool folk, and Mickey was buried with his trademark cap and pool cue in hand. There were no tears, only a celebration of Mickey's life.
The Washington Post article said:
Well, Fat Mike was actually a shooter before he went to culinary school. Weighing in at 350 pounds in his younger years, he traveled cross-country with Michael Gerace to California on a road trip, where they both met a young player by the name of "Evil." Fat Mike doesn't shoot pool today, and to my knowledge, he never pursued his culinary skills due to physical limitations.
The writer must have a poor memory when it comes to "Goose" because Goose is actually Geese a/k/a Mike Gerace. Tom-Tom recent moved back to Maryland from Florida, and today, this local one-pocket legend hung up his cue stick for cards and enjoys playing poker. Geese passed away last year. Phyllis Gumphrey posted a thread when he passed: Sadly,Another Passing - "Geese"
The Washington Post article said:
"Korean Lee," as we used to call him, was one of the main action players at Champion Billiards in Silver Spring. He eventually purchased a pool room in Laurel, Maryland, named USA Billiards with his brother, and his brother still runs this pool room today, which currently is the MAIN action spot in the metro D.C. area. I was there last night until 5:00 a.m. this morning, and the place was PACKED!
"Korean Lee" left pool for a while and began to play golf, but he never lost his passion for the game. Last year, he bought another pool room on Security Boulevard in Baltimore, where he hangs his hat today. Rumor has it, Korean Lee still enjoys games of stake! Roadsters beware!
I'm not sure who Ted Gup is at this juncture, but IMHO, especially after talking to the owner before she shut the doors, the smoking ban in Montgomery County killed the business of this neighborhood pool room, and it is the MAIN reason why it shut down. She decided the timing was just about right for her to retire and is going to Myrtle Beach.
I'm going to e-mail the author and thank him for taking the time to write this article. It was a great read! Some people do read The Washington Post in the morning, but I get the news I'm interested in from AzBilliards Discussion Forum.
JAM
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WOW...you're right...that is something special!...almost welled up... ;by all accounts I am young in this game, (40 in august), but I remember halls like this...in and around NJ growing up...there was Loree John's and a place upstairs above a men's store?...name escapes me?...but I watched the elders play straight pool...nobody really played nine ball...hmm?...were they trying to tell us something?...the other games were one pocket and three cushion...of course there were the 8-baller's...but it was a room...a place to be...where you knew people and people knew you...no questions asked...old watched out for young...young learned from old...I miss it...there are very few rooms like this left...we need to preserve them where ever we find them...(ALL);do you know one?...where is it?...name it...
;by all accounts I am young in this game, (40 in august), but I remember halls like this...in and around NJ growing up...there was Loree John's and a place upstairs above a men's store?...name escapes me?...but I watched the elders play straight pool...nobody really played nine ball...hmm?...were they trying to tell us something?...the other games were one pocket and three cushion...of course there were the 8-baller's...but it was a room...a place to be...where you knew people and people knew you...no questions asked...old watched out for young...young learned from old...I miss it...there are very few rooms like this left...we need to preserve them where ever we find them...(ALL);do you know one?...where is it?...name it...