X Marks The Spot: My Summer '09 Pool Route

Last night I went and picked up the Summer 2009 schedule for my APA division. The first thing I noticed is that it's a jam-packed division: 14 teams (the last session only had 8 or so). With only 13 weeks of play, that's a lot of criss-crossing the East Village. So just for fun I made this map to visualize all the venues in relation to one another. The big black X in the middle of this map is Sophie's, by far the most centrally located venue, and home court for my beloved team, Sophie's Crapshot. (Note: Originally it was supposed to be Sophie's Crapshoot, a reference to the inconsistent depth of our roster from week to week. But I've actually grown fond of the typo'd Crapshot because it fits in with bank shot, kick shot, etc. At the end of last season we tried to get it changed Mötley Cüe but I our request was ignored). Red arrows pointing away from Sophie's indicate away matches; green arrows pointing to Sophie's indicate home matches. Blue Xs indicate venues where we do not play. We start this session off at a place where I've never played a league match before: Parkside Lounge. And of course all the old regulars are present: Edge Bar, Ace Bar, O'Hanlon's, Identity and Whiskey Ward. But venue variety is the spice of life when it comes to playing pool, especially toward the end of any given session, and so I'm most excited about all the venues added back to our division: Josie Woods, Musical Box, Sixth Ward, Duke's and Mona's. I think for Sophie's our biggest rivalry is going to be Mona's. I say this because Sophie's and Mona's are "sister bars" owned by the same person with a lot of bartenders working at both places (two of which actually play for one of Mona's teams). Unfortunately we don't get to trade home/away games with them, both will be played at Mona's.

I never got around to writing an end-of-session post. But we ended up with an 8-7 record and I'm pleased with that. I've enjoyed the past few weeks off but I'm ready to dive into the summer session. Good luck, everybody.