HiFi

If nearby Doc Holliday's is empty and I'm not in the mood for Sophie's, then it's up to HiFi Bar on Avenue A at 11th. HiFi has quickly become one of my new favorite places to play pool in the East Village. I haven't been there often, maybe five or so times since I discovered it over a year ago. In its former life as a live music venue it was called Brownies. It became HiFi in 2002. Thank God I found the above picture on their website, because my only picture from HiFi has very little context:But I have some unique stories to tell about playing at HiFi. The first time I remember playing there it was against a guy from Germany. We were talking about playing last pocket, and he countered with a similar game, apparently common in Germany, where you can only call the 8 ball in one pocket. For example, if you call the 8 in one of the side pockets and botch your shot and the 8 ball ends up near a different pocket on the other side of the table, you're stuck with the pocket you called initially.

The last time I had any sort of significant multi-game winning streak was at HiFi, a few months ago. It was like nine or ten games in a row that I won. I remember it was a Friday night and I had a steady stream of opponents, none of which were particularly strong players. In fact, one guy I beat still had all seven of his balls on the table at the end. But there was one guy I was playing and when I didn't have any shot I said the word "Safe." He looked at me and asked "Are we playing that way? Are you allowed to play safe?" So I sorta shrugged and went ahead and called what I thought was going to be a Hail Mary fluke shot (diagrammed below). Amazingly, it went in. Saying nothing, he came over to shake my hand just on the merit of that shot alone.