![]() Melody’s husband was playing next door in the “serious room,” she explained. They’d continued to play casually for the next two decades – the league collapsing despite John’s entry – meeting regularly every week. Originally it was a woman’s league, but it was struggling with numbers and so accepted John as a kind of pool-eunuch in order to keep afloat. John and Melody, both in their late 60s, had become friends when John had joined Melody’s pool league. The most interesting people in the room (not much of an achievement, given there were only six) was an older couple pottering around a table in the corner. ![]() As we sank into that satisfying spatially-aware meditative state that pool brings on (one I almost forget the joy of between playing) I surveyed the room and pondered what quasi-sociological fruit Chris’s might bare. A worthy opponent I took great pleasure in beating, nonetheless. Momentarily lifting their eyes from their games on lovely Diamond tables, a few regulars watched as we were not quite escorted but purposefully led into the back room, filled with two dozen not-quite-as-lovely Brunswicks.ĭespite claiming to have not picked up a cue since his college days, Jon was a worthy opponent. We “rocked up” at Chris’s – to the extent that a mild-mannered Englishman his mild-mannered Minnesotan companion can rock up anywhere – around mid-afternoon, Friday. “Let’s do it, it sounds great!” That kind of open-minded, high-spirited attitude is something I later came to see as emblematic of his personality, and one of several features of his character I found both fascinating and inspiring. We went to a Cubs game and cruised the city on a boat tour, and when I mentioned my project, Jon suggested we check out Chris’s. He was funny and engaging, and we had a great evening.Īnd so all this time later, we arranged to meet up in Chicago. It was a complete chance encounter – there aren’t many likely scenarios in which someone like me would come across a middle-aged environmental consultant from Minneapolis – but he was interesting and friendly, so a couple of friends and I went to the pub with him. I’d met him almost a year ago in Oxford, when I’d been around before the start of term and he’d been there for a short-term academic course. One headline nervously asks: “Will ‘Hustler II’ make pool cool?” As you head up the staircase to the sprawling 40-table hall, sepia photographs of legendary pool players and fading newspaper articles adorn the walls. That’s largely thanks to the fact that much of Martin Scorcese’s The Color of Money, released in 1984 as a sequel to the classic The Hustler, was filmed here. ![]() Chris’s Billiards has a good claim to be the most famous pool hall in Chicago, and one of the most famous in the country.
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