New Season Underway, part II

Adam (above) is our other new player for Sophie's III. In a recent post I described seeing him a couple years ago run "10 or so" games while sporting a huge white bandage on his bridge hand. After reading the post last week he corrected me, saying that it was 15 games. Coincidentally, 15 is my all-time record, injured or otherwise (and I have a photo to prove it). At any rate, I stand corrected. A former teammate of mine on Sophie's III this time last year, Noah, made a claim that he ran 40-some games in a row at Raven. Hmmm. I digress.

Adam is in many ways the ideal APA player. Most importantly, he has started practicing a couple times a week. He has shown up pretty much before everyone else each week to get in some practice. He's even studied the APA rules book. But most importantly, he takes the game seriously. Not that he gets overly upset if he loses, but he's critical about his game and seems eager to improve it. He never assumes beforehand that he is going to win a match. He is humble enough to talk to others about what he needs to correct. Which, in short, is a quality that is utterly absent by some of our most senior members. Our team had a meltdown this week with our first and hopefully last shutout loss of the season. The last match involved our most senior member huffing and puffing during and after a 1-5 drubbing he received. He was rude to his opponent and it extended to the visiting team as well. And it brought our whole team down after an already difficult night. It was embarrassing. We're only going to have seven players this season, but it's looking like we might be better off with just six.

Pool at The Parlour

A pretty nice place I discovered over Memorial Day weekend is The Parlour, up on 86th at Broadway. I was in the neighborhood to help some friends move into a fifth-floor apartment and I had some time to kill before they arrived with their moving van. So I went in. Exhausted after all the unloading, lifting and carrying of boxes up five flights of stairs, I suggested going there for a bite to eat and some beers. It was a good time. I went back this weekend and look forward to future visits.

New Season Underway

After a couple weeks off it's nice to be back into the routine of weekly league play. We have two new players this season, Grace and Adam, and we're looking for a third player. We have a rule on our team: in order to play on our team you must be a regular at Sophie's. In my opinion, this "hiring from within" has held us back a little bit because some of the best players I know never come to Sophie's.

That being said, we're fortunate to have Grace and Adam on board. Their personalities are a welcome addition to our team. I can tell Grace is still adjusting to the competitiveness of the APA, the adrenaline. I've tried to stress the effectiveness of playing safeties, and she seems to have taken to that idea. Last week, as a 2, she came very close to beating a 5. I suspect she's due for a big win any week now. She's got a bit of a North Carolina drawl and a lot of "isms." Once, she and I were having a discussion about an overly talkative woman, about whom Grace remarked "Yeah, she can talk the dog off a meat wagon."

Adam, who hails from Massachusetts, used to come into Sophie's more frequently two years ago, when I was just starting to play a lot. One time I saw him run 10 or so games in a row with a huge bandage on the index finger of his bridge hand. But he hasn't been around much until a few weeks ago, when he and I played and I couldn't beat him at all. So I pitched the idea of him joining the team and fortunately he accepted. He played a crucial role for us last week by knocking off a 5 in two straight games. His win tied the match (we had been down 0-2) and sent us to the rubber match, which we narrowly won. It was our first win of the season, and our first home match to boot. Here's to new talent and fresh starts. Thanks to this up-and-coming photographer for surreptitiously snapping this photo of me giving a quick coach to Grace last week.

East 5th Street, 8:30 AM

This is a photo of Sophie's from a few weeks ago when I had an early morning assignment in the far East Village. I made a point of walking by Sophie's to see it in a new light. Now, I've never lasted long enough at Sophie's to witness the bar being closed after last call. So for some reason I had envisioned there being a protective gate or shutters pulled down over the windows like 99 percent of all New York businesses. But since it's an old storefront there aren't any and thus I was able to look in from right up against the window. I was stoked to discover the fluorescent light in the back is kept on nightly, bathing the pool table in a cold glow as it lords over the empty space.

Unless you've been in Sophie's a number of times this probably looks like a night shot. But the quality of light in this photo is vastly different from night. Here, the light from the window is blasting the far back wall, revealing all sorts of texture and character not visible at night. The beer taps on the left side, and the bar stools, are all very oddly reflective of the light coming through the window. That morning I ran into a Sophie's neighborhood regular, who told me that the first time he noticed Sophie's was walking by on his way to work one morning years ago and noticing people still inside drinking. That's a pretty funny scene to imagine, especially considering the lack of window shutters.

On a side note, when Google recently released its new "Street View" feature I immediately went to check out the images from 5th Street. Not that I was expecting to see myself outside of Sophie's, I just had to see how it looked. There it was (below), plain as day and waiting for customers. Speaking of "Street View", check out 2point8, a fantastic blog done by fellow photographer Michael David Murphy, who in a recent post compares his own street photographs to those taken by Google's robot street photographer.

Tribeca Tour

Roadhouse. Tavern. Saloon. Lodge. It just dawned on me that a handful of pool bars in Tribeca I've wanted to write about all have decidely "Old West" names. Over a year ago I sent a query to Tom Leath of the APA, asking for suggestions of some well-worn dive bars with pool tables. He replied immediately and suggested that I check out Raccoon Lodge (above), on Warren Street near West Broadway. A week or two later I lugged my 4x5 camera down there and took some photographs. It was early on a Friday afternoon and nobody was playing pool, thus it made for a decent still life. But I went back a couple months ago. It was about 2:30 in the morning and I was with some friends for a nightcap after a bachelor party. A very good place to play pool, notable for the impeccable detail with which the waiting list is kept. On this evening there was a man who apparently had been running the table all night but was taking a break from playing. There was a designation next to his name on the list that implied he could resume playing once he was ready. The aforementioned bachelor party had started out several hours earlier at Tribeca Tavern, which is also a pool bar. But I don't have any pictures. In my mind, Tribeca Tavern still has more of a SoHo feel since it's my first alternative bar when nearby Toad Hall is too busy.
Next is Patriot Saloon (above), on Chambers Street at Church. I got the impression it was a new bar, but apparently it's been around a few years. It's amazing how much a bar can be overlooked during the daytime. But at night, this place really stands out. Over Memorial Day weekend I discovered Patriot Saloon when walking down to the Winter Garden at the Word Financial Center for a late night assignment. I looked in and didn't see a pool table, but asked the doorman and he said there was one upstairs. So I went in to investigate. Sure enough there it was, situated in the corner of a room placed at an appealing angle from the rest of the bar. I didn't have time to stick around, or else I would have gladly played some.Finally, Dakota Roadhouse. I discovered it on the same night as Patriot Saloon. It's on Park Place, which is a block or two from the northern edge of Ground Zero. It's a really trippy place to play, especially with the black lights above the pool table. This picture makes it look like any other pool table, but I'm telling you it is much darker to the naked eye. If you look closely you can see the 8 ball is a white ball with a black circle around the number 8. There are two tables side by side downstairs, and I believe a couple more upstairs. Incredibly, Dakota Roadhouse offers free pool on weekends.

B'klyn

A few photographer friends of mine live on the top floor of a house in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I've been a devoted attendee of many of their parties. The most memorable was when I was the awkward first arrival of a New Year's Eve party in 2004. Since then, I've come to pace the timing of my arrivals to include a pre-party stop at Liberty Heights Tap Room (above), which is a very picturesque corner bar. It's convenient for me because the bus coming from the F train drops me off right outside the bar's side entrance, 20 feet from the pool table. It's also a good place to play while waiting for the bus. In April I had an assignment to photograph a different Red Hook bar called Sunny's, over on Conover Street. I highly recommend Sunny's for the ultimate time travel experience (think "dockworker bar mixed with a honkytonk vibe, 1950"). But since Sunny's is only open a few nights a week and since they don't have a pool table and since the bus doesn't stop at its doorstep, Liberty Heights will remain my Red Hook bar of choice. During a recent visit I discovered the bar hosts a league night. I asked a few people about the bars where they played. Some I'd been to (Cellars, Alibi), others I'd never heard of. I can't remember where the visiting team was from. Everyone I talked to knew about pool in the East Village, on Third Avenue, etc. All very friendly and helpful people.

Initially, this post was going to be about the Brooklyn/Queens APA. But I haven't really looked into it enough. For now, it's more fun to just write about the bars I've come aross with nice pool tables. Brooklyn still provides a lot of material in this sense. A couple Friday nights ago I was in Carroll Gardens for a friend's poetry reading. I had an assignment in Brooklyn Heights later that evening, so I made a walking tour out of it. I was going up Smith Street and I stopped by some people smoking outside a bar. Instead of asking them "Do you know any place nearby where I can play pool?" I said "I'm scouting for a movie and need to find bars that have pool tables. Do you know of any?" They didn't seem to know or care. I kept walking and went on instinct. I saw some neon signs in the window of a bar across the street and went in to check it out. It was a calling: the pool table was the first thing I noticed. Suddenly I wished I wasn't on my way to an assignment, because it was the kind of place I could have stayed at for a while. The bar is called Angry Wade's. I put my name on the list and went to get a beer, which was served in a frosty pint glass. I went back to the table and sat out of the way. I could see one man was owning the table. I saw him make a jaw-dropping kick shot on the 8 ball. It was no straight-in, pocket-hanger kick shot. The 8 was in the middle of the table and so was the cue ball. He was able to aim the kick so that the cue ball cut the 8 into the pocket. It was extraordinary. Turns out the man, Ishmael, is ranked a 7 on the league. It wasn't long before it was my turn to play him. I racked and he made five balls on the break, ALL OF WHICH were solids. It's safe to say neither he nor I will likely ever see that again. I went on a nice four-ball run but I botched an easy safety and left him with a textbook runout. When he was going for the 8 ball I heckled him, saying "Come on, bank it, I dare you." But he would have none of that.