Max Fish

I've been meaning to write about Max Fish for a long time. But I can never figure out where to begin. Back when I first moved to New York in the summer of 2000, I'd go there fairly often with friends. It was always crowded and I remember thinking "Who are these people? Where did they come from?" I had just spent the previous four years in a small town in Michigan, so New York was a big eye-opener. I can recall hot August nights at Max Fish and labels sliding down the side of Amstel Light bottles. While I have stepped in a couple of times in the past few years to play pool, it was probably 2001 when I last went there with any regularity. I came across an old picture the other day (right), taken just days after I had moved to NYC. I hadn't even been to B&H to buy black and white film yet (it's a color neg picture, but it was very underexposed and looked better in black and white). I had several thousand dollars saved up and no real plan or any idea of how to freelance. Those were the salad days.

Recently, Max Fish has come to represent something entirely different to me. Actually, I am referring more to the street it's on, Ludlow, than the bar itself. Whenever I am coming back from the East Village, I always find myself drawn to walk down Ludlow. Most nights, especially on the weekend, it's got a kind of carnival atmosphere. It's probably because you can't smoke indoors anymore, and so the sidewalks are much more congested. Plus, the streets themselves are more congested, the grid is more dense than in the East Village. But there's something about all this congestion that allows you to blend in a little. As a photographer, this is crucial. Even when people notice me taking pictures they don't seem to mind.

As for pool, I don't have much to say. The last time I was at Max Fish was mid-December. There was a guy playing who was wearing a pig nose as a mask. If you click on the photo up top, you should be able to see it. But the guy played pretty well. As you can see, he's down to one solid and his opponent still has seven stripes left. I motioned to my camera, as if to suggest I wanted to take a picture of him. He insisted I pay him a dollar. Normally I'd say forget it, but I knew I'd want to do a blog post about the place and so I agreed. Besides, his pig nose was too good to pass up. He goes by name "Shnizzle Mo Nizzle" or something like that, and he was trying to sell copies of a book he had created.

The pool table is in the middle of the back room. It's surrounded by booths, and the bathrooms are right there as well, so there's a lot of people walking by. If there was a way to put the pool table in one of the corners of the back room, and possibly reconfigure the booths to take up the center area, I think it could be a lot better. I know I'm splitting hairs, but what I really think Max Fish needs is better lighting. The overhead lights are utterly directionless and emit a very low contrast, unflattering light. If they could figure out a way to improve the lighting, or at least hang a lamp over the pool table, it could be a lot better.