STYLE : INTERIORS : The Color of Passion

At the Shark Club in Costa Mesa, a 12,000-square-foot restaurant-nightclub-billiard salon, what catches your eye isn’t the 2,000-gallon tank with the live sharks but the newly redecorated space to the left of the entry. The Metropolis room, as this part of the former liquor store is known, has been transformed into a plush aubergine and crimson tent by designer Rick McCormack of the Hatch Design Group and Jon Hanour, the club’s principal owner. Call it the industrial Renaissance look.

Roughly 400 yards of upholstery fabric drape the walls. Mounds of jewel-toned cushions fill the seating area, while a red mohair sofa offers more traditional comfort closer to the action. A platform of Brazilian cherry sports tatami tables.

Conical halogen lights hang overhead, and sconces shaped like medieval torches frame a gargantuan mirror. (McCormack found the chain-mail mantles at a custom shark-suit company in Massachusetts). A grid was cut into the concrete floor to resemble stone pavers, and iron sulfate was spread over it while it was wet to produce rust stains.

Hanour, who attributes the rise of upscale billiard clubs to the 1986 film “The Color of Money,” plans two more clubs soon--one in Pasadena, the other in Irvine. It’s enough to put Los Angeles pool halls behind the eight ball.