New Sophie's listing in NYM

I had forgotten about a slow, non-league night this past winter at Sophie's when a photographer came in and started taking some pictures. I quickly learned that the photographer, Shanna Ravindra, was shooting pictures for New York Magazine's online bar/nightlife listings. I chatted with her only briefly, but once she told me her name I soon realized that I had used a few of her shots on this blog in the past, most recently in posts about Musical Box and Julep. For whatever reason, it wasn't until just the other day that I thought to look and see if anything had been posted. Sure enough, Sophie's newest listing was online. I was happily surprised to see that I'm in a few of her shots. Sophie's is a no-frills bar, and she definitely did the best with what she was given to work with. Bruce Bennett offers an apt description of waiting to play pool:

Sophie's has made no concessions to the surrounding neighborhood's nightlife boom. No poetry slams, couches or cappuccino here—just split shifts of professional drinkers and Bukowski wannabes by day and dressed-down locals staring and pairing by night. In this narrow, immaculately decrepit space the only stick of furniture you can trust is the pool table, though if you come during the night shift you'll go through quite a few Yuengling Darks (the cheapest pint east of First Avenue) waiting for your turn to play.

The Skinny

Just a quick post from the "Wow, I've walked by that bar a million times and never noticed a pool table before" department. This is a bar called The Skinny, and it's on Orchard right near Stanton Street. That block of Orchard just below Houston has been a big construction mess for as long as I can remember. Keen readers of this blog will remember me writing about that block and the long-demolished Rivertown Lounge here and here. A couple weeks ago Yvonne and I took Aris to dinner at our new favorite Mexican restaurant, El Nuevo Amanecer, on Stanton and Essex. Afterwards, before Aris went back to his car to go back to New Jersey, he and I decided to grab a quick beer somewhere (not to play pool). So we stepped into the nearest place, which was The Skinny.

Yes, the bar obviously gets its name from the dimensions of the space: it's long and narrow. But the first thing I noticed is the lofty 20-foot ceilings. And the reason I'd never noticed a pool table before is because it's way up in its own little loft area at the back of the bar. If there hadn't been a couple up there playing when Aris and I walked in I probably wouldn't have thought to check. Needless to say we played a couple games, more or less so I could get some pictures for the blog. It's a little cramped up there around the pool table, but at least they have a couple short cues for when you're up against a rail. By far, the biggest draw is the cost, at $2 per game (bills only). I think I saw something, however, where it gives you an option of getting three games for five bucks. I'm pretty sure it was a Sunday night, so it was by no means crowded. The DJ was playing some excellent tunes (in particular, some old Rush) in a loft at the front of the bar, above the entrance. I don't see myself ever going back to The Skinny, solo, to challenge people at the pool table. But for when I'm with somebody else and we want to play pool without having to go onto some long list, The Skinny is a good bet.

A Presidential Candidate Walks Into A Bar...

While checking out the headlines this morning, this photo of Barack Obama playing pool grabbed my attention. The photo, taken by Jae C. Hong, is from a place called Schultzie's in South Charleston, WV. It was fun to try to track down some details about his game. Apparently, his pool game isn't too shabby. I can tell as much from this photo: he looks comfortable with a pool cue in his hand, he's got a nice bridge. I had long known Obama was a lefty, from this great video interview with is brother-in-law Craig Robinson, who attests to Obama's sportsmanship on the basketball court.

At Schultzie's, Obama played a 24-year-old Iraq war veteran named Paul Scott, who is a supporter of Obama's. Apparently Obama lost the game by knocking in the 8 ball prematurely. A crowd had gathered to watch him play. By his third consecutive good shot Obama had the crowd oohing and ahhing. At one point he even made a combination shot. "That's the sign of a misspent youth," Obama said with a smile. "Obviously, I wasn't doing wholesome things like bowling." (Apparently Obama's basketball and his pool are much better than his bowling.)

Playing Last

Even though I've only been in the league two years, I think I have a fairly good grasp of every imaginable league-night scenario. There are so many ways of looking at wins and losses. For my Tuesday night team at Sophie's this season, it's most often been a matter of looking at how bad we got beat. Certain kinds of matches feel certain ways. For example, there's the feeling of being the only winner on your team on a night when your team loses 1-4. Then there's the opposite, the feeling of losing when everybody else on the team wins. My text messages to Yvonne afterwards are always some variation of "I won but we lost" or "We won but I lost." This past Tuesday my text message read "We lost, thanks to me."

It was a roller coaster night. Grace won the first match decisively, beating a SL5 2-1. Then the second and third matches went way south, with a combined score of 1-7 (via our SL3 getting whupped 0-2 by another SL3, followed by one of our SL4s losing 1-5 to their SL6). In the fourth Chris came back to tie it, setting up a rubber match showdown.

Now, this is where the title of this post is relevant. It would have been easy for me to sit out the evening and put up an iffy SL3 against the SL5 they had put up. But since I had sat out the previous week, I wanted to play. And I had a really long and productive practice session the night before so I felt good. I decided to put myself up. Somehow after nailing a nice cross-corner bank on the 8 I found myself ahead 3-0. But I'm not sure what happened after that. Obviously it was something to do with my will/nerve/resolve being stretched to the limit. Because at one point I overheard Chris say to somebody "Cary's ahead 3-0 and only needs one more," and I remember wishing he hadn't sounded so confident, it felt like a jinx. Then, somebody I hadn't seen in a long time had come in and was wanting to ask me photography questions. So I had to do one of those pretentious "not right now" stiff-arm gestures in the fourth game as I was trying to close the deal. Of course I lost that game and felt like a total ass. And I kept allowing myself to get distracted by looking over at the television to follow the shrinking percentage by which Obama was losing Indiana.

A couple games later on I overheard Chris tell somebody else "Cary won the first three and the other guy still needs two more." I cringed, not wanting an announcement of the score. Looking back, I remember playing some remarkable safeties that elicited some encouraging cheers from my teammates. One time after one of these safeties, my opponent picked up the cue ball and handed it to me. At which point I played another safety right back at him. I don't remember making any gigantic mistakes. No repeated gaffes when down on the 8 ball, not really any scratches that I can think of. In fact, I felt it was one of my best matches of the season. The games were all pretty short and I have to say the match had a nice, efficient rhythm to it: games alternated between exactly three and five innings throughout the entire match.

But my opponent just bore through it, eeking out wins, chipping away at my lead and confidence the entire time. Never once did I get a real opening to bring it home. I have to hand it to him, he exhibited tremendous do-or-die poise to be able to come back from such a deficit. The last game was a blur, I don't remember much other than praying he'd miss the final 8 ball (it went in for the win). In a shake-it-off lighthearted moment afterwards I made a joke to somebody, saying how intimidating his British-sounding accent was (hands down, the best players I face in bars are consistently from either England or Ireland.) I apologized to the guy who I had stiff-armed earlier, and was happy to hear him say he totally understood. I pleaded my case to him what a seemingly airtight win I had just blown. He, and fortunately others on my team, were of the thinking that "it happens," and I got some nice compliments along the lines of my matches being enjoyable to watch.

Still, it's been three weeks in a row now where we've lost in the final match. If the past three weeks had each gone just a little differently in the end we'd be at 6-7 instead of 3-10. Hardest of all is that in two of the last three weeks I've been the one to play last. Lesson learned? Perhaps make some other people play last. It just seems like our team has gotten into a routine where certain people always need to play first or second, whereas on average I play far later than everybody else. This season alone, I've played last six times, fourth twice, third and second once apiece (never played first). Then there's the whole "Well Cary, maybe you should drink less beer during league nights." But I do truly pace myself before I play, and usually just nurse an entire beer or seltzer water throughout my match (unlike some people I've played with who pull out cash and bark out drink orders when things aren't going their way).

I think I just have a limit on how much pressure I can take before I get tired of playing and start losing my focus/determination. Seven games of league pool under the pressure of the rubber match is a long time, it's not uncommon to go over an hour. This week I often found myself thinking about how tense it must've been for my teammates to sit there on the edge for so long. This is all something I need to work on, especially as a SL5 playing other SL5s or higher. I hope in the next season, under a different captain (I'm 99 percent sure I'll be switching to Monday nights at Sophie's), things will be different. Then again, we're looking at a roster comprised of the following Skill Levels: 6555443 plus room for one more (compared to my current team's roster of 54444333). There's going to be some late, late nights. Hopefully the outcome of some of those late nights I'll just wait to find out the next day.

Countdown

In about an hour I'm heading over to Sophie's for the last match of the winter/spring 2008 APA season. We began this season three long months ago, February 5th, which was Super Tuesday. I can't say it's been a pretty season for us: we're currently sitting at the bottom of our division with a dismal 3-9 record. All I can muster is a ho-hum "Oh Well." Based on private conversations with each of my teammates, I can tell this Tuesday night team is likely going to be going into a forced sabbatical for the summer. I'm estimating at least four or five of our members are not going to re-enlist on Tuesdays. Captain Caveman has already filled out the summer registration form, but I don't think he sees the reality of the situation. I think people have been too nice to tell him they're not coming back. There's going to need to be a massive recruitment effort to fill those slots.

Personally, it's looking more and more like I'm going to a.) either start a new team somewhere else or b.) get on the Monday night team at Sophie's. I have been talking people up at my potential new location (TBA) and it's reassuring to know I have the blessing of the management there. My only issue with starting a whole new team at an entirely new venue is that it puts a lot more responsibility on my shoulders. I would hopefully enlist the help of some experienced players who already know the routine of league nights (mainly picking up and dropping of the sheet and collecting everybody's dues, etc.) That way if I had to work or something it wouldn't be leaving an entire team of first-timers in the dark. It's really tempting to join the Monday night team at Sophie's, where I could just show up and not have to worry about coaching/captaining/management decisions. Only issue with Monday at Sophie's is they are pushing the 23-rule. They're a little heavy on SL 65&4s.

After tonight I think I'll have a better idea of what's going to happen in late May. To be continued...