Space Billiard Cafe

A couple weeks ago a high school friend of mine living in NYC informed me of a billiards hall on 32nd Street, in the heart of "K-town." In all honesty, I had always thought of Koreatown as being more along Broadway through the lower 30s. That is, I never knew there was a stretch of 32nd Street, just off Broadway, that was crammed with Korean restaurants, spas, karaoke bars, etc. But what got me especially curious was how my friend said the place was in a 12th floor penthouse and open 24 hours a day. It sounded too interesting not to check out. So there I was last Wednesday night, happy that it was not a regular "school night" due to Thanksgiving being the next day, riding the B/D express from Grand Street to Herald Square. I wasn't on street level more than 20 seconds before I spotted a bright sign for the place, on the south side of 32nd in the middle of the block between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

I know that the billiards scene in New York has a pretty big Korean influence. I know the originator of New York's billiards mecca, Carom Cafe, was a Korean by the name of Sang Lee. On my way to 32nd I had suspected the place might have pocketless tables, or at least I had hoped they would. Riding the elevator upstairs I was pretty excited to find out for sure. Indeed, the moment the elevator doors parted my eyes went straight to a set of red, yellow and white balls on the nearest table. I went over to the man behind the counter and he immediately pulled out a tray of 16 pool balls for me. I was like "No, I just want the three balls."

About half of the room's 14 tables were in use. I went over to a corner table and got down to practicing. The first thing I noticed was that the tables were a bit smaller than I'd played on before, definitely not the 5x10 monster Chevillottes and Verhoevens in Queens. Another thing, and probably the biggest drawback to playing at Space (and most ironic considering its name), is that the tables are incredibly close to one another. At one point during my hour-long practice session one of the players on the next table was aiming a shot and the butt of his cue was perilously close to a ball on my table.

I noticed that not everybody was playing with the trio of red, yellow and white balls. Some people were playing with two reds, a yellow and a white. I'd take brief glimpses just as they were about to shoot. Their games seemed to be less about hitting three rails and more about simply caroming one's cue ball off one red to the other. I looked this up and came across a wikipedia page for Four Ball, or as it's known in Korean, "danggu" (hence the name for Space's website, danggu24.com).

By far, though, the best part of playing at Space was the digital timer near each table. Whenever I rent a table anywhere else I am constantly fishing out my cellphone to keep track of time, especially when I'm approaching the last 10-15 minutes of the hour. But at Space, it's all done for you. It's super convenient to just be able to quickly glance over at the timer. And each table has its own rack of scoring beads as well. I played as well as I could have hoped, scoring 19 points in an hour.

It's a really great place, I am glad I was told about it. The walk from my apartment to the B/D train was longer than the walk from the Herald Square station to Space Billiard Cafe, so it feels especially close to home. It's a tad pricey, my hour cost me $12 (and I think it goes up on weekend nights). However, you can save money by going the BYOB route if you want. Of the 14 tables, three are pool tables. So it's not unlikely that you might have to wait if you want to play pool.

Needless to say, I won't be jonesing to take the 7 train all the way to Flushing, or the F to deep Brooklyn, just to play billiards. I'll still head out there from time to time. But I had long wondered if there were any billiard tables in Manhattan. I thought surely there had to be some tables in residences, private clubs and whatnot. But now I know where I can go that's a lot easier to get to. Oh, and I forgot to mention one other really cool thing. When walking into Space, take a quick left and go to the windows. Then look straight up.