most are gone
Bear in mind I have seen pictures and websites showing nicer places. There are a few fantastic businesses dedicated to pool but they aren't pool halls. Not sure whatcha call them but I can't call them pool halls.
The Billiards Den in Richardson Tx just above Dallas is like that. Not exactly a pool hall but probably the very best business layout I have seen to try to make a living focused on pool. Were I to open a pool business I'd think long and hard about how they are set up. Nice place, the only knock is that there is no pool hall atmosphere.
There was a beautiful place in Elmwood the same way. I did play in the Billiards Den a couple times when I was passing through Dallas. The place in Elmwood, I couldn't bring myself to play. A lovely bright clean place full of pool tables but it wasn't a pool hall.
Pool halls, Greenway wasn't bad. I liked the owner's old place, Shoppers Pool Hall near the Shoppers Fair shopping center better. Nick's Steak House was a great place to play pool on huge old tables, get drunk, maybe get rolled or killed while you were there. A great old hall with ten footers by the levee in Port Allen, don't know the name and haven't been there since the seventies or eighties, I assume long gone. Tee Neg's, featured in many of James Lee Burke's novels was a great old hall, still there under a different name, don't know if they still have tables or not. There were some old caverns I played in, damp, dank, dark, high ceilings, never more than wide enough for two rows of tables. Somehow those are real pool halls to me. Racketeers wasn't much of a hall but it was awesome to see several acres of pool tables in a place!
Two Sisters in Slidell definitely isn't a bad place to pass through and Bayou Billiards in Baton Rouge seemed like a pool hall when I passed through and played Humphrey a bit years ago. Emerald, White Diamond, and several more deserve better mention than I can give them, I don't get that way much.
LnL if you haven't, you need to pass by Whitey's right around the corner from Buffalo's. Of course Buffalo Billiards, the world's pool hall, is the place to play pool in the New Orleans area. Decent tables, overall great staff, and Buffalo is a pool player that knows how to cater to pool players and isn't afraid to spend a few dollars here and there that he doesn't have to.
I'm leaving out a lot of places and plain forgeting a few more at the moment. I played in some places around Atlanta and Augusta years ago that weren't bad at all. Hopkins Landing on Old River deserves a mention too.
Hu
robably the nicest of the nice Men's room. And I'm talkin bout the john. had to hold your breath when you took a p**s
