A Postcard from Doc Holliday's

I've been playing a lot at Doc Holliday's lately. The bar has long been a staple of my East Village circuit. It's the kind of place where, even if nobody's playing, I'll go ahead and rack the balls and ask around to find an opponent. And it never fails that if I'm playing with a group of people for a while I'll get to know them a bit and take some snaps (above, my apologies for the obnoxious tilt correction). Typically I go in around 7 o'clock and catch the last bit of happy hour and stay a couple hours. Then it's over to Sophie's, which is just waking up by then. Sophie's and Doc Holliday's have a unique history in terms of pool. The captain of my team, Caveman, actually started our team based out of Doc Holliday's around 1994 (but he got 86'd on 9/11 for making an inappropriate comment to one of the bartenders). Last year I was informally offered Doc's Sunday team by its captain, as they had had enough and were disbanding. I declined, as I was happy with my Tuesday night gig. Now that Whiskey Ward has a Tuesday night team, maybe it's time for Doc's to enter the fray again. I'm still pretty loyal to Sophie's. But to tell you how much of regular I have become at Doc's, I was there a couple weeks ago and it was much later, like 10:30 or so. I had been on a good string of games (bank the eight, any pocket) with some players who ended up leaving around the time my friend Aris showed up. So when a group of NYU-looking youngsters came in and asked the doorman, Steve, how to get on the pool table for a game of doubles, I was sort of honored that he felt comfortable enough to fit them in ahead of us (he of course thanked me). We were off to get a slice so anyway, so it was not like I needed to hog the table any more than I had. It's just cool that he knew I would have done the same thing.