EVERYBODY INTO THE POOL! : It’s a Game That’s No Longer Just for the Fast Eddie Felsons of the World

A tiny, hand-lettered overhead sign marks the entry to Broadway Billiards. A flight of stairs leads down from a busy downtown Santa Ana street into the dimly lit room, filled with the sounds of clacking pool balls and brassy Latin American music.

On the walls are yellowing newspaper clips, some dating back to the 1920s, and fading photos of past sports stars--golfer Bobby Jones, baseball pitcher Bob Feller. One of the most recent additions to the decor is a poster announcing an exhibition by a big-name pool player. It’s dated 1974.

In a way, this is the quintessential pool hall, the kind of smoky joint where you might expect to find the Fast Eddie Felsons of popular imagination hustling a few bills off some unsuspecting rube.

Meanwhile, it’s a Friday night at the Shark Club in Costa Mesa. Valets park the cars, and a line stretches out the door. Inside, it’s a four-hour wait for a pool table, but that’s OK by this upscale crowd; dressed to kill, many are here to socialize rather than play. The club mixes elegant antiques and a draped formalism with ultramodern touches, in a look the owners have dubbed “industrial renaissance.”

Electronic dance music thumps from the speakers as a pair of sharks slowly circle inside their 2,000-gallon tank, the club’s glowing centerpiece. If you’re lucky, you’ll be here for feeding time.

Welcome to the pool hall, ‘90s style. Since opening in 1990, the Shark Club has managed to capture its target audiences--young, style-conscious professionals looking for an alternative to the nightclub scene. In the process, it has spawned a rush of imitators looking to plug into what has shaped up as a new pool craze.

Upscale pool halls have been springing up on the East Coast since the late 1980s. The Shark Club is generally acknowledged as the first poolroom to bring the craze to Southern California, and its success helped spawn the star-studded Hollywood Athletic Club and the vast Yankee Doodles II in Santa Monica.

In Orange County, other upscale pool halls to follow in the Shark Club’s footsteps include the Classic Q in Newport Beach and the brand new Plush Pocket in Lake Forest. At least two more are on the way: On the Break, planned for a June opening at the site of the short-lived Peppers Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, and FX, due to open in the fall next to the Irvine Improv.

“There’s something happening in pool,” said Joe Fiscella, owner of Triangle Billiards in Orange. The supplier, in business since 1978, has provided tables for the Shark Club, Hollywood Athletic Club and Yankee Doodles II, commonly ranked as the Big 3 in modern Southern California pool halls. Other clients include Plush Pocket, the bustling Hard Times in Bellflower (and the newer Hard Times in La Habra), On the Break and FX.

The new clubs have been finding fast success. The Plush Pocket’s 20 tables were all occupied one recent Tuesday night, less than a month after its opening.

As the new upscale halls flourish, other outlets also continue to do well, from coin-operated tables at bars all over the county to such pool hall stalwarts as Linbrook Family Billiards and Bob’s Billiards in Anaheim.

While noting that the new halls are generally more expensive (as much as $12 an hour for a table, contrasted with $5 to $7 for some of the old-style halls), owner Tom Miller of Broadway Billiards says their popularity is good for the game: “If they go well, the other places go well.”

“The Shark Club is great, very nicely put together,” said John Weatherby, owner of Grove Family Billiards. “But most people like to play locally. Only the hot shooters or people looking for a nightclub will drive across town for something they can get cheaper closer to home.

“But I’m glad they’ve brought billiards into the limelight once again. It’s a great sport and it deserves more attention.”

Meanwhile, before the Shark Club ever opened its doors, more than a dozen vast billiards halls were opening in the heavily Vietnamese neighborhoods of Garden Grove and Westminster. The game of choice here is three-ball billiards played on a table without pockets, a carryover from the days of Vietnam’s French occupation.

Slowly, though, some of the Vietnamese players are finding an interest in pocket billiard games. “Before, they didn’t have (pocket) pool here,” said Kevin Nguyen of Saigon Billiards in Garden Grove. “Now, I’ve put in four (pocket) pool tables.” Still, three-ball billiards reigns and some of the hall’s regulars are professional caliber, Nguyen said.

Just as the 1961 film “The Hustler” helped spawn a ‘60s surge in pool popularity, its 1986 sequel “The Color of Money” has helped fuel the latest craze, Fiscella believes. Observers generally credit the 1988 opening of Jillian’s Billiard Club in Boston with touching off a move to upscale halls that quickly spread in the East and South. It wasn’t until the May, 1990, opening of the Shark Club that the trend hit the West Coast.

Fiscella credits the social aspects and “casual, easygoing environment” of the new halls for their success, although he says they are beginning to produce some serious players as well, if the booming sales of pool cues are any indication. Many players are buying their own cues, typically in the $100 to $200 range but sometimes spending as much as $8,000 for a custom cue.

Some of the new halls have their own leagues (nine ball, mostly) and tournaments are also on the rise. Darlene Stinson, a nationally ranked semipro from Costa Mesa, last year organized the Southern California Amateur Ladies Nine Ball Tour, with its first stop at the Shark Club and subsequent events in Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Diego.

There are more female players than ever, Stinson said, and that’s a direct result of the new halls. “All these nice rooms that are opening up make it so much nicer to compete,” she explained. “The ladies are much more comfortable in this atmosphere.”

Her husband, she said, was uncomfortable about her competing in bar leagues but is happy with the atmosphere in the Shark Club, her home base. “I’m not trying to put down bars. That’s OK,” said Stinson. But the more controlled environment of the new rooms is encouraging more women to play, by making them feel safer and less vulnerable to harassment.

“They make a big difference,” she said. “More and more, I’m seeing women come in in groups.”

“I think it’s just a real nice alternative to other social hangouts,” says Gregg Hanour who--with brothers Jon and David--operates the Shark Club. The brothers had been looking for a joint business venture when David, a pool player, suggested an upscale billiards hall.

Gregg and Jon were skeptical until they visited Yankee Doodles, a longtime fixture in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach, and heard about the upscale pool craze in the East. The brothers, all thirty-something, began visiting pool halls across the country.

The club has been a success from the beginning. By day, it attracts a white-collar lunch crowd, business people who drop in for a sandwich and a game of pool, and the music blends big band and Sinatra tunes with ‘60s and ‘70s rock songs. By night, especially on weekends, it’s a nightclub crowd, and the music mix is a MARS-FM blend of industrial dance music and hip-hop.

In fact, Hanour says he considers the business more nightclub than pool hall, and one of the main goals of the club is to provide a social alternative to the “meat market” atmosphere of many dance clubs. “A lot of people come here just to socialize,” he said. “Once you’re out of school, there’s not a lot of places you can go just to meet people.”

The success of the upscale clubs has helped erase some of pool’s backroom image, an image that has led many cities to discourage new halls in the past. According to Fiscella, “there’d be more pool halls out there” except that cities regularly blocked construction in the pre-Shark Club years.

Even in the wake of the Shark Club, some cities are reluctant to allow pool halls. Sal Gagliano failed in attempts to bring an upscale billiard club to Hermosa Beach and Brea before getting the OK from Huntington Beach to build On the Break Grille and Sports Club on the site of the briefly revived Golden Bear concert club in the Pierside Pavilion.

Cities told him they didn’t need “another watering hole,” even though he told them he was planning to spend a million dollars on an upscale club with a 21-and-over age limit and a dress code, said Gagliano, a New Orleans native who opened an upscale pool hall there, Honey’s Inc.--”the prettiest place in the South.”

Gagliano plans to feature a New York-style deli for lunch customers, Southern-style cooking at dinner, a fireplace, chandeliers and a full pro shop. He concedes that enforcing a dress code may be difficult across the street from the beach but thinks the idea of a dressy pool hall in Surf City will catch on.

So far, at least according to club owners, gambling has not become a big issue at the new halls. Fiscella says that’s largely because the atmosphere is more social than competitive. Hanour, of the Shark Club, said that he would be “naive” to think that no betting happens at the club. He said most of it remains in the friendly $1 range, and heavy betting is actively discouraged.

If hustling disappears, and valet parking and dress codes take its place, what other changes in the old image of pool can be in store? For Hanour, who tosses about the “Y” word--Yuppie--without reservation, the future can be glimpsed in plans for FX, due to open in late summer or fall.

A pool hall with a sushi bar and a dance floor? Maybe Fast Eddie Felson should have stayed retired.

* POOL PARTICULARS: Page 11