PoolSynergy9: Hustlers, Beats and Others

It would have been 1982 or so, back during my college days, and a friend of mine had just handed me a copy of Hustlers, Beats and Others. The book was the width of a Lucky Strike cigarette. A real thin paperback. I remember the pages were dog-eared and coffee stained.

My friend had discovered Hustlers, Beats and Others atop a pile of similarly musty books at an Austin thrift shop. He figured — quite correctly as it turned out — that this book would interest me. He paid a quarter for it. "Check this out," he said, grabbing the book back for a moment. "Right here. There's a whole section here on hustlers."
  
Hustlers, Beats and Others is about exactly what it says it is about. New York sociologist Ned Polksy, the author, describes the lives of beatniks, petty thieves and pool hustlers. He examines them almost as if he were examining members of a tribe, writing about both their gathering places and their customs. My friend gave me the book because he knew I was familiar with the game. But the pool halls described in it were nothing I recognized. In Polksy's world, serious men argued over "spots," made giant wagers and sometimes cheated one another. In mine, college kids played for beers.

Flash forward: I graduated from the University of Texas in 1986 and then bounded off to Costa Rica, where I had accepted work at The Tico Times, an English language newspaper. Not long afterwards Touchstone Pictures released The Color of Money, the pool film starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. A bunch of us ex-patriot reporters bounded out to the local movie theater to see a subtitled version of the film and then afterwards, inspired, we ventured into a San Jose pool hall.  It was up a flight of cement stairs. I remember having to step over a drunk.

The room was called Center Pool and it was unlike any I had ever seen.  These were not surbanites playing pool. These were not college kids winding down after their bio-chem exams. These were serious players, men not running two balls or three, but entire racks in succession. I thought I was good, but I had no idea what good was. These men were playing on giant tables, the largest I'd ever seen — and they made long cut shots and crazy caroms and they gambled. Money, Costa Rican colones, glided back and forth between the players. Even the spectators were placing bets. It donned on me then that these men hardly ever left the pool hall. I realized that this was their home. It was a culture exactly as Ned Polksy had described it.

Our assignment for this month's installment of PoolSynergy was to describe how we came to love pool. So that's my story, more or less. I fell in love with the sport as it was played in Costa Rica, which seemed to match the descriptions from Polksy's book. You can see the sociologist's influence in The Hustler & The Champ and Hustler Days, my books about the early years of American pool. Of course I had other influences too, not the least of which was my Uncle Rob, who was the first pool shark I ever knew. But those days in Costa Rica left quite an impression.

At the top of this post I've embedded a Super8 film I shot at Center Pool,  a room that sadly no longer exists. You can also read other PoolSynergy essays by clicking through the Angle of Reflection blog, which you can find here.

-- R.A. Dyer

Keith McCready, Jay Helfert and Pool Wars

I have to confess that my introduction to Keith McCready came in a movie theater. Touchstone Pictures released The Color of Money in 1986, the year I graduated from college.  I had just moved to Costa Rica and I remember going to see the film with a couple of other expats.  I really enjoyed the smoky rooms, thought Tom Cruise and Paul Newman were dynamite, laughed at Iggy Pop's cameo.

But one of the real revelations for me was McCready. I didn't know anything about professional pool at the time, but I could tell, instinctively, that McCready was the real deal. He looked like a pool player. McCready, in the film, had that vaguely side-arm stroke — not as side-armed as Greenleaf's, but neither like an amateur's. And McCready shot fast. By the end of The Color of Money I found myself rooting for McCready's Grady Season's character over Tom Cruise's Vincent.

My friends and I emerged from the darkness of the theater and immediately went hunting for a pool room. We eventually stumbled upon a place called Center Pool, where I proceeded to luck in a few balls.  I  may even have nerdishly uttered some McCready catch phrases. Oooh, the impossible dream. It keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it? And it was precisely then that I became hooked on the game.  I remain hooked to this very day.

So why this trip down memory lane? Because I just picked up Jay Helfert's great book, Pool Wars. It's subtitled "On the Road to Hell and Back with the World's Greatest Money Players." The subtitle is particularly apt, given that Helfert here has collected stories about Charlie the Ape, Ronnie Allen, Cuban Joe, and of course Minnesota Fats. Helfert writes about brawls and sleeping in pool rooms. He has some wonderful old pictures of a crazy skinny Earl Strickland and Buddy "Rifleman" Hall.

But what got my quick attention was Helfert's recollections of stakehorsing McCready, and Helfert's experience with Martin Scorsese and The Color of Money. The author recalls how Scorsese came out to Barry Behrman's Q-Master billiards to research the film. It was there where the famous movie director discovered McCready as he was going head to head with Danny Medina in a backroom matchup. "They were playing a race to eleven for $1,500 and Keith was in full gear, laughing and joking with all the onlookers," recalled Helfert. "He was both brilliant and hysterical at the same time, and I could tell Scorsese was enthralled by him."

You'll have to get the book to read the rest. But know that McCready, at least very early in his career, was one of the most feared money players in the nation. In that sense he was not so different from his character in The Color of Money. That's what makes those scenes with him so cool. You can tell he's not faking it.

To pick up your copy of Jay Helfert's Pool Wars, check out his website at jayhelfert.com. And if you haven't seen the Color of Money, do so immediately.


-- R.A. Dyer

Pool in Costa Rica: The Spirit of Pichitas

It's been nearly 25 years ago now, but way back when I used to live in San Jose, Costa Rica. I spent a ton of time in various pool halls there, including a place called Center Pool. I wrote a piece earlier about a hustler I met in San Jose, a man by the name of Luis Calderon -- better known as "Pichitas." He was something of a legend in the pool halls then. I eventually went back to Costa Rica and produced a short documentary about Pichitas. A couple of months ago I dusted off that old documentary and posted it up on the Internet.

Lo and behold, one of my old buddies from Costa Rica, Hernan Aguilar, saw the video and has sent me video of his own trick-shooting prowess. It seems that the legend of Pichitas lives on in Costa Rica. I've posted up one of Hernan's videos, above, but there are tons more at his YouTube channel. I can't tell where Hernan is shooting in these videos, but it looks about like what I remembered of the now-closed Center Pool. The only difference is that with Center Pool, you had to go up a flight of stairs. With this pool hall, you have to go down. (I will note, however, that either up or down, all the best pool halls involve a flight of stairs.)

Thanks to Hernan for sending along this video. He looks like someone you'd want to steer clear from if you're ever in San Jose, looking to make a game.

-- R.A. Dyer