I am admittedly new to this world but so far most of my experiences playing pool have been in dive bars or sports bar & grills and I was starting to think that old school pool halls like the one Fast Eddie meets up with Minnesota Fats in The Hustler seemed either outdated or completely fictional.
However, this weekend I was out of town with my girlfriend visiting a relative and we happened to stumble upon The Cue Ball in Salem, OR. No bar, no bowling alley, no...ok, they did have a few pinball machines...but no food, no smoking, just pool.
http://www.thecueball.com/
It was a real pool hall. The table rates were staggeringly cheap considering how well it was setup. Two of us played for more than 3.5 hours in the second stretch and it was $15. Two large rooms of Brunswick Anniversary and Centennial tables that were pretty well maintained. The guy we talked to was the owner, I think, and had been there for 51 years.
When we arrived, it was welcoming and there was someone right there if we had any questions. There were plenty of regulars but everyone seemed friendly and the place wasn't intimidating at all.
We played a little (translation: she beat the hell out of me rack after rack), left to get some dinner and then came back to keep playing. (translation: she kept beating the hell out of me) While we were there, we saw two guys playing Mexican pool in the back with a young boy, a high school aged couple on a date, a brother and sister playing on the table next to us and a grandfather and his three grandsons playing scotch doubles against each other on the next table over. At some point the other room of tables had music a bit louder and was full of high school and younger college aged kids playing pool, laughing and joking with each other.
The place probably had 30 or more tables and was almost full for about 3 hours while we were there on a Saturday night. No one seemed tense, no sign of sharking (ok, fine...I sharked my opponent a little but she kept running out on me so it was my only hope), no fights or drunken behavior. People of all ages were just playing pool and having fun.
With all the pool halls closing down, tournament payouts remaining somewhat low and every tour dying out it is easy to be negative about the state of pool. The Cue Ball in Salem, OR was a great, family friendly way to see pool played.
However, this weekend I was out of town with my girlfriend visiting a relative and we happened to stumble upon The Cue Ball in Salem, OR. No bar, no bowling alley, no...ok, they did have a few pinball machines...but no food, no smoking, just pool.
http://www.thecueball.com/
It was a real pool hall. The table rates were staggeringly cheap considering how well it was setup. Two of us played for more than 3.5 hours in the second stretch and it was $15. Two large rooms of Brunswick Anniversary and Centennial tables that were pretty well maintained. The guy we talked to was the owner, I think, and had been there for 51 years.
When we arrived, it was welcoming and there was someone right there if we had any questions. There were plenty of regulars but everyone seemed friendly and the place wasn't intimidating at all.
We played a little (translation: she beat the hell out of me rack after rack), left to get some dinner and then came back to keep playing. (translation: she kept beating the hell out of me) While we were there, we saw two guys playing Mexican pool in the back with a young boy, a high school aged couple on a date, a brother and sister playing on the table next to us and a grandfather and his three grandsons playing scotch doubles against each other on the next table over. At some point the other room of tables had music a bit louder and was full of high school and younger college aged kids playing pool, laughing and joking with each other.
The place probably had 30 or more tables and was almost full for about 3 hours while we were there on a Saturday night. No one seemed tense, no sign of sharking (ok, fine...I sharked my opponent a little but she kept running out on me so it was my only hope), no fights or drunken behavior. People of all ages were just playing pool and having fun.
With all the pool halls closing down, tournament payouts remaining somewhat low and every tour dying out it is easy to be negative about the state of pool. The Cue Ball in Salem, OR was a great, family friendly way to see pool played.
Last edited:
