Will pool replace live music at Continental?

In early September of this year I had an assignment from the Village Voice to photograph the live music venue Continental. In particular, I was supposed to try to get a shot of the owner of the place, a man who goes by the name Trigger. It was a story that was going to accompany a similar article about the closing of CBGB's.

Trigger is not hard to find. He is the omnipresent doorman who always wears a traditional Vietnamese conical leaf hat. I only got a chance to photograph him during one song as he played harmonica alongside The Bullys. A week or so later the place was closed, with plans to reopen soon as a dive bar, sans live music. Soon I was in the neighborhood again and saw a huge sign posted atop the main entrance announcing a pool table and a juke box. I made a point to walk in there last week to see if a pool table had materialized. It hadn't, but a carpenter who had apparently been dismantling the stage said that it would be there on Tuesday the 17th. I checked out the place last night, no table in sight, but I spotted Trigger and re-introduced myself from the Voice.

I asked him about the situation and he conceded that although he had put up the sign promising a pool table, he was not sure if that was going to be the case. I asked him if it was because it would take up too much space and he said that wasn't the case as much as his concern about "frat guys getting into fights." I immediately thought of my experience in Taos but didn't suggest to him the horrid idea of shutting the table down with plexiglass at 11:30. He said he had considered putting it in the basement (the Voice article mentions a pool table going in the downstairs green room). But he said if it went in the basement he'd need supervision down there. I suggested that he could have a league team or two, that way there'd at least be a core contingent of regular players that care about the table that would always be around to help and keep an eye on everything. He was undecided on what to do. I told him I'd check back in a few weeks.

I sincerely hope he'll have a table, not in the basement, but back where the stage was. I checked out the space and there'd be more than enough room for a table and four or five booths surrounding it. Besides, who wouldn't want to play in the same space that was host to such acts as The Ramones, Faster Pussycat, LA Guns, Spacehog, Sebastian Bach, Patti Smith, Wyclef Jean, Lemmy from Motorhead, etc. Not to mention countless lesser-known bands with pool-appropriate names, many of which would make excellent names for league teams: Te-Cue-Dos, Hi-Balls, Beyond the Bridge, Sea of Green, The Know How, Moment of Clarity, Hurry Up Offense, The Beatings, The Collisions, Slow Motion Lies, Another Day Wasted, Beer Drinking Fools, Fast Eddie, Crowned by Lady Luck, Spin Cycle, and perhaps the best one, Stuck on 8. Below is a shot of The Bullys and below that a motion-blurred shot of the back of the room where the stage used to be. To be continued, stay tuned...