BLACKDOG DAYS, POOL, DARTS, CHESS AND SELF SABOTAGE
Goggled pool halls in Vancouver today to see which was closest to my new place and turns out that East End Billiards on the infamous Hastings street was only a couple of blocks away through Pandora Park. Grabbed my new pool cue, bought only about a month ago and headed out. I was hungry so I stopped by into this little greasy spoon to have their 4 dollar Kings Special…sausages, eggs, bacon and two pancakes a coffee and an Ice water for 7 bucks, it turns out. But I’m going to be a regular now. It’s kitty corner to the pool hall. Now that I think about it can’t really miss the pool hall with this huge mural on the side of the building of a dude lining up a shot and I remember I’d been thinking about going in there again anyways because I was last there about 15 years ago.
I’d phoned earlier to get a feel for the place because I had recalled that last visit that it was more of a snooker room and the pool tables had those tight snooker style rails. The moment he answered the phone I knew exactly the vibe, it was old school Italian 100%. Okay I said, no beaking off about shit too much and asked him if he had snooker tables, the style of pool tables, his hours and the cost for a single player per hour?…9 bucks, 4 new Brunswick pool tables and three snooker in a large room that is one of the last places they must allow you to smoke in Vancouver was his basic answer. Except the smoking part, I just assumed because there was a group of 6 men playing cards when I strolled in and talked about the Jack a lot and about fishing for it and chain smoking.
So I eye balled them all and they looked at me and I smiled and asked for the Boston Balls. The owner pointed to the rack of balls and I grabbed them myself like a big boy and went and picked my table. I have to say I didn’t like the size of the balls or those snooker style pockets on what is essentially small snooker tables. I was hoping for those big sloppy pockets that they use for 9-ball tournaments, where I can shoot pocket speed all night and roll everything in easy. I was hoping to do some practice drills but the fellas were talking loud and having fun and it would be too weird to go into a new place and start drills like I’m Paul Newman. Instead I just basically banged balls around trying to stun everything and stick the cue ball shape and use the natural angles of the rails instead of using side, follow or draw. This way I loosen up my stroke and start shooting straight faster.
The cue I bought is more like a breaking cue but I started to prefer these over the years with the harder tips and flat profile. My reasoning being that they are rugged and built more for punishment and cracking racks. I’m not crazy about having brand name cues anymore, a straight stick is a stick is a stick. It fricken don’t matter if it has a better pearl inlaid business end or not. If I don’t stand it up at an angle to the wall in the summer and baby it, the thing will stay straight enough until it either gets stolen, I give it away, trade it or pawn it. Or splinter it over a drunks head, which I have done once in my youth.
It was relieving to know that I wore the right clothes to the mafia hangout, a black hoodie with a Hayabusa jacket over top, ball cap, black jeans and black Nike hiking boots and a Sinister sweater. My hair is cut short to # 1 on the barbers shaver and a two day beard growth, so I don’t look much like a cop,goof, fag, junkie or perv that lives in this colorful new neighborhood of mine and they pay me little regard, that I noticed.
I almost asked them if it was okay to smoke a joint out the window since they wouldn’t be able to smell it anyways through there gauntlet of smoke and gas but bit my tongue at the last second and remained mute.
They could care less what their measly 9 bucks an hour client was doing when they were playing money games for more per minute.
This was the first time I put chalk on the cue since the guy at the billiard supply store gave it a light sanding when I bought it. The total with a basic carrying case cost me 90 bucks. I had just recieved a 100 buck tip from a group I drove up to Whistler, so the guy said to treat myself to something that I like to do, and I did.
I’ve always liked pool from way back to my Boys Club days. It was always pool or ping-pong as my favorites and if I only could have one in my house it would probably be pool because I can play it alone like meditation and use it as a kind of diviner Ouija board. I had a pool table in our basement since I was about 15 and all my other friends had ping-pong so it was a good arrangement to switch venues all the time but we tended to play more ping pong more because of it in the 1970′s.
Tending to be obsessive about games at least when I was younger, I would practice and read and study everything I was interested about.
When working at the Blackdog Billiard Cafe in New Westminster in the mid 90′s I would play pool all day at work and then after work I would stay till closing playing speed chess or darts. These are all games of skill and pool and darts are very similar because the stroke in both, is virtually the same. In pool it’s a underhand 90degree stroke and in darts it’s an overhand 90 degree throw.
These are the best games of skill and in my opinion the three greatest games in history. What makes them great is in all three you have to look about three moves ahead.
In darts you have three throws and pool and chess are both known to require about three moves ahead planing as well.
When I lived in Toronto I played a lot of darts in pubs. When I wasn’t working I would play for 12 hours solid in my room, thumping away methodically and bothering the other tenets in the rooming house. One time I actually scored 150 which is 3 double bull eyes and harder to achieve than 3 triple 20 and 180 points. Now if it is harder to achieve it should receive a bonus and make it 200 points for for triple inside bulls. The player would have the option to accept the bonus depending on what game they were playing and 200 points might put them over. Of course, I’m dreaming,that would never happen because dart grouping like this rarely occurs and I’ve never seen anyone else do it. Reminder to self: Youtube and Google dart scoring.
Now chess is another story altogether and my obsession with this bloodless war game goes back the farthest. My favorite way to play is with clocks, and I don’t have the patience for long games without timers after growing old waiting for people to out stall me and bore me to tears to the point I have to resign and go take a nap.
But in speed chess there is also a stroke but it is on a 180 degree plane and filled with technique and hand eye skill. The chess pieces in the hands of a chess master is a thing of beauty to watch if you can appreciate their nimble finger dexterity. If you combine this with someone that has a gift for gab and joking around, it’s really a fun time to just watch and kibitz for hours at a time without having to spend any money.
Chess players are champions at nursing back a coffee or beer for hours and as a warning to anyone that caters to chess players…your days are numbered till they drive all your other paying customers away, hog the table space and complain the most about the tiniest infractions.
That said, I always seemed to find out where the chess players hang out in any city I’ve ever lived. In Toronto it was Younge St and Gould that the chess hustlers hung out in the summer playing speed chess for 2 dollar games against long grey haired prototypical Russian masters and newbie wood-pushers.
Speed chess is a whole other animal then slow fag chess, it’s more like a video game version.Playing in chess clubs or tournaments is a kind of Dante’s Hell realm for me, the last tournament I played chess was at the Blackdog and it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I never played another tournment since…and I happened to win that tournament too.
It was like one of those Alister Crowley moments when he went to play at the London Chess Club and he witnessed all these depressing men teetering over boards in a closed room with laundry mat lighting, battleship linoleum wearing stinking old moth ravished sweaters, snorting and grunting with nervous tics and decided that these type of people were not the kind he wanted to work to be a chess champion for. Deciding that you become whatever you focus on, and these dudes were the ones that he was sitting across for hours at a time smelling their garlic and cigar reek and looking at apple core teeth and he just walked away from formal chess forever and I guess got his kicks from Satanism, heroin and cult sex.
I went through about a twenty year period obsessing over these games and it’s only within the last few years that I decided to walk away from chess and its 30 year hold on my mind. It’s not actually an addiction, it is more like a disease, and there are a lot of chess widows out there that would tell you the same. My advice is that there are far better distractions, like pussy, business,drugs,money,the great outdoors, thinking about pussy and costs for pussy and jobs for pussy and talking to pussy and well, I’m sure there are tons better distractions then chess for sure.
Chess is a violent game and played by silent sometimes crippled assassins and I’d much prefer playing pool in Bangkok with pretty girls and training Muay Thai then wondering if some retard stranger I play chess with is studying some weird opening variation so he can crush me at Blitz chess in front of the my girlfriend and a crowd on the street. Enough said,my tail is dun.
BLACKDOG DAYS, POOL, DARTS, CHESS AND SELF SABOTAGE
Goggled pool halls in Vancouver today to see which was closest to my new place and turns out that East End Billiards on the infamous Hastings street was only a couple of blocks away through Pandora Park. Grabbed my new pool cue, bought only about a month ago and headed out. I was hungry so I stopped by into this little greasy spoon to have their 4 dollar Kings Special…sausages, eggs, bacon and two pancakes a coffee and an Ice water for 7 bucks, it turns out. But I’m going to be a regular now. It’s kitty corner to the pool hall. Now that I think about it can’t really miss the pool hall with this huge mural on the side of the building of a dude lining up a shot and I remember I’d been thinking about going in there again anyways because I was last there about 15 years ago.
I’d phoned earlier to get a feel for the place because I had recalled that last visit that it was more of a snooker room and the pool tables had those tight snooker style rails. The moment he answered the phone I knew exactly the vibe, it was old school Italian 100%. Okay I said, no beaking off about shit too much and asked him if he had snooker tables, the style of pool tables, his hours and the cost for a single player per hour?…9 bucks, 4 new Brunswick pool tables and three snooker in a large room that is one of the last places they must allow you to smoke in Vancouver was his basic answer. Except the smoking part, I just assumed because there was a group of 6 men playing cards when I strolled in and talked about the Jack a lot and about fishing for it and chain smoking.
So I eye balled them all and they looked at me and I smiled and asked for the Boston Balls. The owner pointed to the rack of balls and I grabbed them myself like a big boy and went and picked my table. I have to say I didn’t like the size of the balls or those snooker style pockets on what is essentially small snooker tables. I was hoping for those big sloppy pockets that they use for 9-ball tournaments, where I can shoot pocket speed all night and roll everything in easy. I was hoping to do some practice drills but the fellas were talking loud and having fun and it would be too weird to go into a new place and start drills like I’m Paul Newman. Instead I just basically banged balls around trying to stun everything and stick the cue ball shape and use the natural angles of the rails instead of using side, follow or draw. This way I loosen up my stroke and start shooting straight faster.
The cue I bought is more like a breaking cue but I started to prefer these over the years with the harder tips and flat profile. My reasoning being that they are rugged and built more for punishment and cracking racks. I’m not crazy about having brand name cues anymore, a straight stick is a stick is a stick. It fricken don’t matter if it has a better pearl inlaid business end or not. If I don’t stand it up at an angle to the wall in the summer and baby it, the thing will stay straight enough until it either gets stolen, I give it away, trade it or pawn it. Or splinter it over a drunks head, which I have done once in my youth.
It was relieving to know that I wore the right clothes to the mafia hangout, a black hoodie with a Hayabusa jacket over top, ball cap, black jeans and black Nike hiking boots and a Sinister sweater. My hair is cut short to # 1 on the barbers shaver and a two day beard growth, so I don’t look much like a cop,goof, fag, junkie or perv that lives in this colorful new neighborhood of mine and they pay me little regard, that I noticed.
I almost asked them if it was okay to smoke a joint out the window since they wouldn’t be able to smell it anyways through there gauntlet of smoke and gas but bit my tongue at the last second and remained mute.
They could care less what their measly 9 bucks an hour client was doing when they were playing money games for more per minute.
This was the first time I put chalk on the cue since the guy at the billiard supply store gave it a light sanding when I bought it. The total with a basic carrying case cost me 90 bucks. I had just recieved a 100 buck tip from a group I drove up to Whistler, so the guy said to treat myself to something that I like to do, and I did.
I’ve always liked pool from way back to my Boys Club days. It was always pool or ping-pong as my favorites and if I only could have one in my house it would probably be pool because I can play it alone like meditation and use it as a kind of diviner Ouija board. I had a pool table in our basement since I was about 15 and all my other friends had ping-pong so it was a good arrangement to switch venues all the time but we tended to play more ping pong more because of it in the 1970′s.
Tending to be obsessive about games at least when I was younger, I would practice and read and study everything I was interested about.
When working at the Blackdog Billiard Cafe in New Westminster in the mid 90′s I would play pool all day at work and then after work I would stay till closing playing speed chess or darts. These are all games of skill and pool and darts are very similar because the stroke in both, is virtually the same. In pool it’s a underhand 90degree stroke and in darts it’s an overhand 90 degree throw.
These are the best games of skill and in my opinion the three greatest games in history. What makes them great is in all three you have to look about three moves ahead.
In darts you have three throws and pool and chess are both known to require about three moves ahead planing as well.
When I lived in Toronto I played a lot of darts in pubs. When I wasn’t working I would play for 12 hours solid in my room, thumping away methodically and bothering the other tenets in the rooming house. One time I actually scored 150 which is 3 double bull eyes and harder to achieve than 3 triple 20 and 180 points. Now if it is harder to achieve it should receive a bonus and make it 200 points for for triple inside bulls. The player would have the option to accept the bonus depending on what game they were playing and 200 points might put them over. Of course, I’m dreaming,that would never happen because dart grouping like this rarely occurs and I’ve never seen anyone else do it. Reminder to self: Youtube and Google dart scoring.
Now chess is another story altogether and my obsession with this bloodless war game goes back the farthest. My favorite way to play is with clocks, and I don’t have the patience for long games without timers after growing old waiting for people to out stall me and bore me to tears to the point I have to resign and go take a nap.
But in speed chess there is also a stroke but it is on a 180 degree plane and filled with technique and hand eye skill. The chess pieces in the hands of a chess master is a thing of beauty to watch if you can appreciate their nimble finger dexterity. If you combine this with someone that has a gift for gab and joking around, it’s really a fun time to just watch and kibitz for hours at a time without having to spend any money.
Chess players are champions at nursing back a coffee or beer for hours and as a warning to anyone that caters to chess players…your days are numbered till they drive all your other paying customers away, hog the table space and complain the most about the tiniest infractions.
That said, I always seemed to find out where the chess players hang out in any city I’ve ever lived. In Toronto it was Younge St and Gould that the chess hustlers hung out in the summer playing speed chess for 2 dollar games against long grey haired prototypical Russian masters and newbie wood-pushers.
Speed chess is a whole other animal then slow fag chess, it’s more like a video game version.Playing in chess clubs or tournaments is a kind of Dante’s Hell realm for me, the last tournament I played chess was at the Blackdog and it left such a sour taste in my mouth that I never played another tournment since…and I happened to win that tournament too.
It was like one of those Alister Crowley moments when he went to play at the London Chess Club and he witnessed all these depressing men teetering over boards in a closed room with laundry mat lighting, battleship linoleum wearing stinking old moth ravished sweaters, snorting and grunting with nervous tics and decided that these type of people were not the kind he wanted to work to be a chess champion for. Deciding that you become whatever you focus on, and these dudes were the ones that he was sitting across for hours at a time smelling their garlic and cigar reek and looking at apple core teeth and he just walked away from formal chess forever and I guess got his kicks from Satanism, heroin and cult sex.
I went through about a twenty year period obsessing over these games and it’s only within the last few years that I decided to walk away from chess and its 30 year hold on my mind. It’s not actually an addiction, it is more like a disease, and there are a lot of chess widows out there that would tell you the same. My advice is that there are far better distractions, like pussy, business,drugs,money,the great outdoors, thinking about pussy and costs for pussy and jobs for pussy and talking to pussy and well, I’m sure there are tons better distractions then chess for sure.
Chess is a violent game and played by silent sometimes crippled assassins and I’d much prefer playing pool in Bangkok with pretty girls and training Muay Thai then wondering if some retard stranger I play chess with is studying some weird opening variation so he can crush me at Blitz chess in front of the my girlfriend and a crowd on the street. Enough said,my tail is dun.
I loved seeing your draws during the podcast Joe. Thanks for sharing your talent with us