Why I think Pool Halls Close
My thought is that there just aren't enough pool players to maintain many more pool halls then there already is. Interest is sliding. We all saw The Color Of Money and likely many of us started playing because of that movie, but that was several years ago and quite frankly, "it ain't as easy as it looks." So, passions cool, and popularity drops off. Another major movie with a major star would do wonders for the sport. This new one about to be released, the one with Jennifer Barretta, what's it called? 9 Ball, the Movie, that will be nice (maybe?) for the pool player but I doubt that it will draw much of a crowd. I saw a movie a while back called Kiss Shot, with Whoopie Goldberg. An absolutely awful movie with an awful script - Major actor, rotten movie, and there have been others. I thought Poolhall Junkies was not to bad, but it didn't have a major star and consequently it had a very small, select viewing audience. I wouldn't put Chaz Palmentari or Christopher Walken in the same category as Tom Cruise and Paul Newman. But getting back to the main point, the interest just isn't there like it was several years ago and the industry doesn't generate the money necessary to sustain many more pool halls in many towns. To open a new up to date pool hall would likely mean the closing of an older pool hall and the the interest of the Saturday Night, neon light, fusion food and martini crowd isn't consistent and pool just isn't main stream enough to generate the necessary funds. The Men's Tour folded, I've read in some blogs that some bigger tournaments didn't pay out, this doesn't help. I think Pool and/or Billiards in general isn't taken seriously by most of the American Public because it's still seen as a basement game or a smoky bar back room game played by unsavory types. There was a push some time ago to get it into the Olympics. That wouldn't be a cure-all, but it would be a step in the right direction.