What was your first pool hall?
- Thread starter 9BallPaul
- Start date
'Shooters' pool hall in Lake Jackson, Texas.
back when it was a top notch place, (thank you Dale and Lisa et al) i'd go there during the day to learn from the fat cats. but they would kick minors out after 5 or 6pm. so i got good at convincing them that i wasnt really a minor :grin:
This thread is great. I was gonna post one like it over in the history section but you beat me to the punch!
dam you expedient posters!
back when it was a top notch place, (thank you Dale and Lisa et al) i'd go there during the day to learn from the fat cats. but they would kick minors out after 5 or 6pm. so i got good at convincing them that i wasnt really a minor :grin:
This thread is great. I was gonna post one like it over in the history section but you beat me to the punch!
dam you expedient posters!
Is Abruzzo still in Villa Pk? I just called him and both ph #s are disconnected, we were working a another room a few yrs back out east towards Hwy 59 and Roosevelt Rd.
Stardust no
I grew up in Villa Park until about 1974 when I moved to Colorado. Palace billiards I thought was gone I think it was owned at one time by John Abruzzo and had a coup;e of locations. I'm not sure where the Stardust is, I used to play at Villa Park Bowl. It was torn down in the early 70's if I remember correctly. How you do in the cook off? :smile:
I grew up in Villa Park until about 1974 when I moved to Colorado. Palace billiards I thought was gone I think it was owned at one time by John Abruzzo and had a coup;e of locations. I'm not sure where the Stardust is, I used to play at Villa Park Bowl. It was torn down in the early 70's if I remember correctly. How you do in the cook off? :smile:
Roosevelt Road.
Palace Billiards was just off of Roosevelt Road and around Villa Ave for awhile. Hwy 59 is further west. As far as Mr Abruzzo goes I don't know his whereabouts. I did by my first cue from him in the 60's.
Palace Billiards was just off of Roosevelt Road and around Villa Ave for awhile. Hwy 59 is further west. As far as Mr Abruzzo goes I don't know his whereabouts. I did by my first cue from him in the 60's.
My first was Metro Pool Hall on the second floor of an old building on High Street in downtown Portsmouth, Virginia. When I was 15 years old, a couple of buddies and me would tell our parents we were going to the library to study and instead, we would climb the long skinny staircase to the smoke filled room. No juke box, no booze, no soft drinks, nothing was sold there. The rack-boy (he was not a boy by any means, at least 70ish) worked for ten cents a rack plus tips. We were underage but the counterman didn't mind.
I also would sneak across the tunnel to St. Elmo's Pool Hall in Norfolk, Virginia. It was there that I watched Wimpy work his magic on the poor homesick E-3's every Navy payday as well as many very good players that frequented St. Elmo's. That place had a lot of character and a lot of characters played their on a regular basis. This was during the mid sixties and of course both rooms are long gone and so am I!
I also would sneak across the tunnel to St. Elmo's Pool Hall in Norfolk, Virginia. It was there that I watched Wimpy work his magic on the poor homesick E-3's every Navy payday as well as many very good players that frequented St. Elmo's. That place had a lot of character and a lot of characters played their on a regular basis. This was during the mid sixties and of course both rooms are long gone and so am I!
I used to play a lot at the Fun Center. Beat on Andy nearly every night.
I really got my start at home in Missouri. I was having Sunday dinner with my uncle and he mentioned he had a pool table stored in the attic. I was about six at the time. For whatever reason (I had never even seen a pool table) I pestered him and my parents until we went and brought it home.
It was a 3 1/2 by 7 table with wire fold up legs and a Masonite bed. No cloth.
My parents would not pay for felt but my Mother suggested that I use some green Corda-Roy. It had ridges and lines but it had to do. I saved my allowance so I could buy a set of pool balls for 17 dollars. A lot at the time. I learned to play pretty well on the improvised equipment.
I then left home and moved to Dallas where I had access to the student center at SMU. Only 4x8s and 5x10 snooker but real tables. I was 14.
In a single summer I became the best player in Dallas. Guess all those hours on the Corda-Roy paid off. I was gambling for 10 cents a game with people like Don Merrideth. One day a guy came in and asked me if I wanted to go accross town and play a guy named Charlie Clark. I said OK and we went to an old pool room near Fair Park.
We started playing for 10 dollars a game and I won about 630.00. It was the first and the last time I ever was staked to play pool.
I continued to play Charlie over the next few years. He was the first person I ever beat out of a 500.00 bill. He was also the first I beat out of a 1000.00 bill. Remember those?
After high school and a summer on the road with Eddy Taylor, I moved to Boulder, CO. The Fun Center in Denver was my home. Spent many a Christmas there. Great pool room. I still miss it.
When it was slow I hand wrapped a few cues and put on some tips. I also ordered Rambo cues for some of the regular players. I guess you could say that the Fun Center was where I developed an interest in cuemaking.
Bill Stroud
My first real pool hall was a place called Purvis in Oxford Miss. Small room of the square with Centennials and Willie Hoppe house cues. Nine ball was .15 and eight ball was .25. Too bad that place closed it was quite the time machine.
9BallPaul
Banned
Bill, that's the coolest story yet we've heard from you. You're a trooper. Carry on. Love to see you at the Fun Center some day (now called Hank's, even though the sign out fron says Paradise. Crazier still, the sign over the back door says Fun Center. And it's still open tonight, one of the last of its kind, at least in denver.
Thanks for that. Remember Freddy the Jap, or Bill Barnes, Tim Cole, Tony Ricotta (Tony Cheese, of course) or his son T.J.? Those were the days, my friend.
9BallPaul
Banned
True. In the old days, it was all Gold Grown (if memory serves) and a half-dozen-snooker tables plus a 3-cushion table where I watched Eddie Taylor run off a dozen while telling a story.
As a kid, I saw Bil Staton, Buddy Hall, Keith Somebodyorother, and a bunch of other nodbodies at that place. Wish I could head over tonight.
The pool hall in Berkeley was Town and Country Billiards, same as the one in Daly city. I played there in the late 80's with 2 dollar Bob Parker all the time and that is where I first met Chris MacDonald.
My first pool hall was Guys and Dolls in Shreveport Louisiana, Later renamed Pockets. The place stayed open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. First place I saw CJ Wiley. He came to town to pick up a custom cue from Billy Schick and proceeded to demolish the house pro, Brett, while waiting for his cue to arrive. From what I remember CJ won enough money to pay for the cue by the time it arrived.
My earliest memory of pool was when I was real little, like 4 or 5 years old. My dad's friend had a table in their basement and I can remember being mesmerized by the balls clicking and rolling. Fast forward to I was about 9 or 10, there were 2 tables in the town hall basement, right across the street where I lived. If anyone here is a Cincinnati person, Westide, and knows the Westwood Town Hall, I lived right there on the corner of Harrison and Montana across from there. Anyway, I can still see those aluminum cues they had. Fast forward again to when I was in Jr. High, we had a table in our basement, after moving over to Kentucky. I honed by shot making skills there and thought I was pretty good. Then when Beechmont Billiards opened, HI SHERM!!!, I went over there thinking I was a straight shooter. I learned real quick that I was a home banger that didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. But, those guys over at Beechmont, HI SHERM!!!, took me under their wing and showed me how the game was really played. Been doing it ever since.
MULLY
MULLY
Thanks for posting up the name of the place. That was driving me nuts!
You still in the area?
Lazerrus,
My first pool hall in California was also Mels bowl in Alameda. I then followed the same path, playing in all the pool halls mentioned above, wherever I could find a tournament. Mostly played in Berkeley at Town and Country and in Vallejo at Billy Teeter's pool hall
I travel to the Bay Area to play in some of the larger tournaments but i live in the Fresno area and play in Clovis at Classic Billiards now.
The first pool hall I played in once I reached California was Mel's Bowl in Alameda. That was also the first time I met Mark Haddad. He came in and asked me to play 5 dollars a game. He barely beat me every game making me think I had a chance. I quite at 45 dollars in the hole and my friend who was with me offered to play him some. Mark proceeded to beat my friend out of another 100 but had to show a lot more speed to do so. After the first hundred my friend decided to change the game to one pocket. This turned out to be a bigger mistake as Mark turned out to be an excellent one pocket player. In the end Mark beat me and my friend out of just over four hundred dollars on the pool table. With only forty dollars left between us, my friend asked Mark to flip quarters for 20 dollars a flip. In the end we won all our money back and then all of Mark's money flipping quaters on a pool table. Did not leave the bowling alley until around 7:30 am. Those were the good ole days.
Sure thing