Amsterdam Billiards

I think it's safe to say that for yesterday, New Year's Day 2007, Amsterdam Billiards' newly reopened room was the place to be for New York's pool players. I certainly wasn't going to miss the experience, and I'm glad I went. I had been walking by there fairly regularly since Corner Billiards closed this summer, often taking a peek through an opening in the brown construction paper that covered the windows. I walked by there on New Year's Eve and saw that they were close to being ready, but that they still had a lot of finishing touches to make. That's when I took the photo above, of Al Conte at work on one of the tables. I went in yesterday around 4 o'clock and my initial thought was that the place was slow because of the holiday, as all the tables were covered in green cloth and looked ready but were nonetheless playerless. I was told they were still working on a lot of the tables but that I could put my name on a waiting list. I did so and sat down to watch some people playing 9 ball and straight pool on two of the front tables. What I noticed right away was that the tables rolled differently, that the English put on the cue ball "took" differently than I was used to seeing. These players were using the red-dotted cue balls like I've seen on ESPN and I was mesmerized watching the spin. I was dying to get a table of my own and starting hitting some balls around.

After about an hour my name was called. They put me on table number 18. I walked over and was amused to see some loose screws still on the table and in the ball retrieval box. It wasn't long before I discovered that only the corner pockets at the foot rail worked correctly. Balls made into the side pockets fell straight to the floor, and balls made in the head rail corner pockets got stuck underneath the table. Clearly, the ball routing chutes underneath the table weren't assembled correctly. A man playing next to me had the same problem with his table. I checked nearby table 17, and it worked fine so I asked to be switched to that table. As I was playing on 17 workers were installing its bridge holders. I mentioned the rail problem on 18 to one of the workers and he quickly got to fixing it.

I spoke a bit to Mr. Conte about his business. He said he's from Utica and that he works "more than full time" at it. I asked him how late he was working New Year's Eve and he said that it was after 11pm when he left. Watching him and the other four or five people working on the tables was impressive. I could tell they were hurrying to get out of the way of the players and get finished before the place got packed. It was exciting to hear names called over the loudspeaker, announcing a table was ready just as it had been finished.

I asked Mr. Conte about the cloth. I had assumed it was Simonis, and he confirmed this. I am no connoisseur of playing cloth, but this stuff felt downright slippery, slick, unlike anything I'd seen. Balls would spin and glide long after colliding, it was like playing on ice. It reminded me a lot of how a professional bowler's ball looks as it spins and arcs nearly the entire length of the lane before it finally straightens out into its roll and smashes into the pins. He told me that Simonis is made with a worsted wool. I play at Soho Billiards fairly often and one time they had resurfaced a table and I picked up a few cloth scraps, one of which had the Gorina logo on it. Neither Gorina or Simonis are like the "felt" on bar tables to which I'm most accustomed. This is from the Simonis website:

Worsted construction means that there are no short fibers that can release from the cloth to form "pills" or fuzz-balls that have to be removed from the playfield in order to allow the ball to roll straight. Simonis cloth is incredibly smooth without felt-like fuzziness. Worsted construction does not allow the cloth to wear like nappy woolen cloth, which eventually develops tracks or grooves, all the while shedding short fibers that constantly need to be removed. The hallmark of Simonis cloth is its perfect accuracy and precision. Smooth, even threads assure a consistent speed, English and cushion rebound. High wool content worsted thread construction takes ball spin more consistently and helps reduce ball burns. This precise construction provides outstanding accuracy and consistency.

The best table in the house, in my opinion, is number 12. It's got black rails, as opposed to the other tables, which all have brown rails. After playing for an hour on 17, I went up to cash out at a very reasonable six dollars for the hour. But not before getting some quarters and giving the small coin-operated bar table a whirl.

On a side note, last week I was contacted by Matt Elzweig, a reporter from a newspaper called Our Town Downtown. He had seen my blog and was seeking whatever insight into pool that I could offer. He's got the cover story this week and it's about Amsterdam's move. I was quoted in the story, which can be found here on his blog. Apparently, I must've been having convulsions or was choking on something, as my words seem to have come out a little choppy. But it's a really good story and an honor to be quoted in the same story as pool writer/historian R. A. Dyer, not to mention Tony Robles and others.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten any good photos yet from inside Amsterdam. But last night, after coming home from playing, all I wanted to do was go back and play some more. And I will soon. Until then, I'll let the friendly people there get their last-minute finishing touches out of the way. They'll get everything all smoothed out. The construction of the new Amsterdam is likely to end up costing around 2.5 million dollars, according to the story. It's worth every penny in my estimation. Taken from the story:

Like the original, it is modeled on the type of “classic old billiard club” common in the 1940s, Hunt said. Designed by architect Glen Coben, whose most recent project was Mario Batali’s restaurant, Del Posto, the idea was to create a space that looked fifty years old, and felt like being in “someone’s living room.”

That seems to fit.