By George Fels
[Reprinted from November 2001]

When i first wrote about looking at the skyline of any strange city and immediately free-associating, “Who and where and how good are the pool players,” the city I had in mind, of course, was New York. Even now, with the horrible hole the madmen left in it, the skyline is still the finest in the world; the pool is less indisputably so, but right up there.

The first time I ever visited New York, in 1965, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the city at her very, very best. I had just begun a new job in Chicago with no less than The Wall Street Journal; they flew me to Manhattan for a week’s training, let me bring my wife and put us up at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was Broad Street by day and Broadway almost every night (including Streisand live in the original “Funny Girl”). And yet somehow, in the midst of all that splendor, I still found an hour someplace to sneak away to the Times Square poolroom called 711.

Pool was going strong then; the post-“Hustler” boom was still alive, and Barbara Walters, of all people, had just done a short feature on the plump Rudolph Wanderone, visiting him at Ames. (The porcine one, during the interview, not only advised Walters, “You’re in my way, doll,” but, responding to her good-natured hint that she might stop by again for a friendly game, asserted, “Hey, I’ll play ya for money if ya like.”) Manhattan then had three well-known players’ rooms in the Midtown area alone, the third being McGirr’s, but notwithstanding the momentary fame visited upon Ames by “The Hustler,” 711 was the best-known by far, especially in the Midwest. By ’65 its best player, “Jersey Red” Jack Breit, had already moved to Texas, but there was oodles of talent left.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see any of it; it was late afternoon, and hardly anyone was there except a light-skinned African American who was wearing a tiny cap like jockeys wear. I took out a pretty tight 9-foot table. They had 10-footers there, too, the customary venue for one-pocket. In an hour-and-a-half or so of practice, I ran 23, which I considered a suitable christening.

Later in the same wondrous week, we went to see a series of controversial one-act plays collectively called “American Hurrah,” way off-off Broadway. In fact, the theater was on 14th Street, just a few doors down from the famous German restaurant Luchow’s, and guess what was above Luchow’s? New York’s fourth famous room, Julian’s. But I never saw that room either; not only was I not about to ask my wife to indulge me in a visit, but the vibes from that room were frightful even at street level, and later I learned from two veteran New York players that strangers who scored at Julian’s had excellent prospects of being maimed or worse for their efforts.

Two years later, business had me traveling regularly to a Philadelphia suburb called North Wales, roughly 25 miles from the city. One day, business concluded early in the afternoon, and I decided to take a real drive and visit New York again. Ames was already gone, I think, and McGirr’s had descended to armpit status, but 711 was still around even though the action had begun to shift to Golden Cue in Queens. I got to the poolroom around 7 p.m. Two tables were going — some punk, who seemed to resent my even watching his game, and the deskman, practicing on the 10-footer — and seated on the side rail of the table where I had practiced two years earlier (which should give you some idea of how casually the room was being run by then), swinging a leg and devoutly studying The Racing Form, was the immortal Brooklyn Jimmy. Just about 10 years before, when I was still a fuzzy-cheeked teen, Jimmy had made me for my last $15, and besides he seemed too deep in thought to interrupt now.

Then I committed the gauche error of asking for a telephone book.

The counterman, who was wearing a toupee that looked like roadkill, paused in his practice and nastily read me his version of the “This is Ames, mister,” speech from “The Hustler.” His prose was something like, “The principal business here is pool,” but the movie’s treatment was way better, and I told him so, further suggesting that he find a hairpiece that fit him. Scowling but otherwise unmoved, he returned to his Paradise cue and his practice. Later I learned that he actually was a pretty fair player everyone called Tommy the Hat. But I took a final look at him, and the punk, and the studious Brooklyn Jimmy, and the hostile room that even charged a dime to visit a men’s room where all the commodes had no stalls, and walked out to treat myself to Angela Lansbury onstage in “Mame.”

But, in keeping with my lifelong fascination with the-best-of-the-best — that particular obsession began at age 11, with the magnificent harmonica player, the late Larry Adler — the concept of pool in New York continued to mesmerize me. So, I was really pumped up about coming to the inaugural Amsterdam Open tournament scheduled to follow the U.S. Open by one week but cancelled after Sept. 11. Once the madmen were done, though, it was no less difficult to get worked up about slamming a ball into a hole than it was for any other sport.

But the thing is, pool is important, to the extent that you and I have all given it a portion of the most precious commodity we have to give, love. If that were not true, you wouldn’t be reading this publication and I wouldn’t be writing for it. We have to get back to our lives, or else the bastards win, and that is unthinkable.