Toronto - Billiard Tourism North of the Border

From NYC, I rode the Greyhound to Toronto.

I visited two poolrooms in Toronto.

Le Spot Billiard Lounge

4531 Sheppard Avenue East
Second Floor
Scarborough, Ontario, Canada | M1S 1V3
416.298.2888

 This is the home room of Alex Pagulayan - many of his trophies are hanging up on the walls, as well as countless pictures. The room was not particularly photogenic, so I will not post any pics of it.

The place was difficult to reach. The last subway stop got me to about 8km away from the poolroom. It was Good Friday, a national holiday in Canada, and the bus stop sign in front of the subway station stated that the bus did not run on Holidays. 

So I walked.

And walked,

And walked.

View from the free BBQ roof party at the hostel

Then I saw a bus - THE bus actually. I tried to flag him down but since I wasn't at an actual stop, he just went on. So I kept walking until I reached the next bus stop, waited a half hour, and did get to do the last couple of kilometers while sitting down, which was nice.  

When I got there at 3pm, the room was already packed : no tables available.

One guy was shooting by himself, a Pakistani Canadian - we played some 9-ball races. Intelligent, interesting guy. A charming penchant for simplicity. After we were done, he kindly offered me a ride back to a subway station , which I accepted with enthusiasm.

I got off at the wrong stop. I misread my map scale, wound up walking over 1.5 hours to get back to town. You learn.

For my first night I had arranged to couchsurf - if you don't know what that is, I highly recommend it. Check out www.couchsurfing.org. My host  for that night was great, and I learned many things from his uncommon perspectives and life experiences. For my second night, I found a fantastic hostel right downtown which was clean, cheap, "green" and full of travelers from everywhere, particularly Germans and French 

youngsters looking for temporary work/travel arrangements.

Now, off to one of the places I was most excited to visit on my North American vagabondery :

 

The Academy of Spherical Arts

 1 Snooker St // For real  ---->

Toronto, ON

 (416)532-2782

http://www.sphericalarts.com/index.php

Twitter : @SphericalArts

Tip : 

Check in on Foursquare to get 1 free hour of pool - $20 value here ;)

From the website :  (anything in purple is directly from the website)

A BRIEF HISTORY of the Academy of Spherical Arts and the building that houses it reads like an outline for a short story.

In 1890 the 38 Hanna Avenue (now #1 Snooker Street) address was assigned to the original four-story building. Over the years, space was added and in 1905 the Brunswick Balke Collender Company bought the building and began manufacturing billiard tables, cues, balls and all manner of accessories (can you see it coming?).

In 1910 the company bought Canada's oldest and largest manufacturer of billiard tables, the Samuel May Company, making them the undisputed king of Canadian billiards. In 1959 the company moved its operations to Cooksville, Ontario, and the building lay fallow until its rescue in the late 1980's.

Serious collection of whisky

In September of 1991, the Academy of Spherical Arts opened with what is now the Samuel May Room. The facility was expanded in 1995 with the John Brunswick Room, and again in 1997 with the Georges Chenier Room. As a millennium project, in the fall of 1999, the Academy undertook the construction of our newest addition, La Belle Époque. Today, the Academy occupies 20,000 square feet, approximately one sixth of the old factory.

It is a poetic and comforting thought to know that many of the billiard tables, cues, balls and scoreboards that were handcrafted here decades ago have returned at long last to their place of birth.

All's right with the world.

The Samuel May Room :

Part of the Samuel May room

Our current bar, built in 1998, is fashioned from steel, copper and wood. This bar was custom designed by Rick using British Columbia fir shipped to Ontario in the 1920's. It was stored in a barn near Glen Williams, Ontario for some seventy years before being used to hold the vast array of Academy libations.

One of the Samuel May tables

Four of the billiard tables you see in this room are original Samuel May and Co. tables; they range in age from 100 - 130 years old. They are fine examples of Samuel May's Manufacturing excellence and keep Canada's billiard heritage alive.

The room features Kind Edward's personal snooker table, on which I played for free thanks to Foursquare :

King Edward's personal snooker table

Woodwork worthy of a King's table

The John Brunswick Room :

The billiard tables and accessories found in this room were all manufactured in the building. They have returned home. The bar was built in France at the end of the 19th century, and the stained glass lamps that light the bar are early 20th century.

The George Chenier Room :

zOMG mustard felt

As a billiard factory this area of the building would have been the busiest. It was the loading dock. All finished products came to this area to be shipped across Canada. The external windows in this room were loading doors and under the carpet you will find quarter inch steel plate floors necessary for the movement of slate and heavy table frames.

This room was opened in 1996. The idea was to provide space for smaller groups and create an intimate warm atmosphere. The large interior windows give the room an airy feel and also represent a significant part of Toronto's history. These windows were part of the now demolished Massey Harris factory on King Street at Strachan. Massey Harris was the largest manufacturer of farm tractors and implements in the first half of the 20th century. So in a small way we've brought together work and leisure under one loading dock roof.

Since the first two rooms of the Academy were named after the foremost Canadian manufacturers of billiard tables, it was only appropriate to recognize one of Canada's greatest players, George Chenier.

 There was also a last room called La Belle Epoque, but it was off-limits as they were in the process of renovating it :(

 I leave you with a few more shots from the Academy. The employees at this establishment were very happy to show me around and tell me history and anecdotes about the building, its furniture, and its tables. I highly recommend going to take a tour, shoot on some antique tables, sample some scotch, and have a delicious juicy ribeye with asparagus and gnocchi as I did!

The 5 perils of billiard travel

We've all been there - you're in a new place, looking for a good game of pool, but something about the table is not quite right. You might say a good player should not worry, since the equipment is the same for both players, but occasionally it's just a bit extreme...

This is a compilation of common and less common problems, annoyances and pet peeves about playing in unfamiliar places.

1. The chalk

Everything's perfect in this new bar you just found. Cheap gin, loose women, clean balls. You put your quarters up on the table, wait your turn. You get called over, your opponent breaks, runs 3 balls, informs you that you have stripes. You grab a cue, and proceed to look for chalk. You don't see it, so you ask your opponent for it, and he just laughs and says something dumb like "a good player doesn't need chalk". You look at the tip of your cue, and suddenly realize that this bar has never had any chalk. You painfully shoot through the rack, miscue 18 times in the process, win, and refuse to stay on your rightfully acquired table to play the next banger.

Solution : Stash chalk everywhere in your car, on your person, or find a secret spot inside your favorite bar to hide a emergency cube!

2. The balls

Raleigh, NC

Another common group of annoyances involve the quality of the set of balls.

• Incomplete set : "Only 6 stripes?... Okay, I guess errrrr take out one of the solids and we can rack them up without the wing balls"    "This sucks!!!"     "Yeah! Now I hate pool!"
• Over-sized cue ball, presumably dating from before the discovery of magnetism - all the cut angles change and drawing the ball is more difficult
• Under-sized cue ball, sometimes still found on snooker-type coin-ops in Europe.Cut angles are a mess, and applying follow is pointless.
• Cue ball has more craters than the moon. It rolls erratically at low speed, it even sounds weird when it collides with other balls. You have to make sure you don't stroke onto the edge of a canyon and ruin your tip 

Solution : Carry your own set of balls, or at least keep your own personal cue ball behind the bar.

Raleigh, NC

3. "House Rules"

These can be a minefield. At best they are just stupid but don't take away too much from the game. Examples :

• The 8 must go in clean. Occasionally found in backwoods bars in the US, this rule is total garbage and is often not mentioned until after you just made what you thought was the game winning carom.



Siem Reap, Cambodia

• If the cue ball is in the kitchen and you have no shot, one of the legal object balls can be spotted. Similarly, this is not mentioned when you are in the described situation, only when your opponent is!
• Scratch on break is loss of game. This is just about the worst one of all, and its adherents will vehemently defend it saying that's how it's done on TV, have you never played pool in your life?
• No shooting with the bridge. Ridiculous.

Solution : Learn to be comfortable playing a wide range of variants. Agree to the rules beforehand. Do not over argue your point, even when you know you're right, just play the damn game and beat them at their own rules.

4. The Table

Don Det, Laos

By far the source of the majority of problems, the table is rarely perfect. Some of the following issues can be dealt with by experienced players, and others affect the game so dramatically that the good player loses any advantage.

The most common affliction is the non-level table. When slight, it's not so bad, you just have to shoot a little harder than normal to avoid the roll-offs. When it's massive, you can tell because all the balls tend to migrate to the lowest point on the table, and you can actually use the table roll to curve object balls around other balls.

At least an effort was made to try fix this one!

As we all know, it's exceedingly rare to find Simonis 860 cloth on a random bar box. Additionally, the cloth is often mistreated by ignorant bar managers and clueless customers, commonly by means of spilled drinks, cigarette burns, "tapped in" spot ball mark. The felt does not sit fast to the slate, so it bunches up like cheap carpet when you form your bridge. The balls roll unpredictably and tend to settle in local minimums of felt thickness.

Recently, I've run into many tables with the peculiar property of making balls jump when they make contact with the rails. This is usually due to having cushions that are set too low, and can drastically alter the banking properties (to the point of balls jumping clear off the table at certain angles). Another common rail problem is when the rubber is too old or of poor quality, the balls come out very slow from the banks and the angle of reflection is greatly lengthened. Rail issues are difficult to adapt to, but at least they don't affect the simple "make the ball" shot. This tends to disadvantage the best players more than the worst ones.

Solution : Treat the table with respect, even if it's bad. There's a reason it got the way it is, do not contribute! Ask about other places to play in the area. Have your bodyguard, personal chef, or butler learn basic table maintenance and repair.

5. The Extreme

Then, there are the worst of the worst. Places with one stick, with no tip. Tables that have been kept outside for months, then brought back in on a whim. The table that doubles as the all-you-can eat buffet on Thursdays. The game room that is also a working barn. The closest table mechanic lives 400 miles away and is from an ethnic group that is currently involved in an armed conflict with yours.

Below, a selection of some of the more extreme things you find when looking for pool around our strange planet.

If you know of a particularly decrepit table or place to play please share with us in the comments!

Truck stop in the middle of the desert, Ethiopia

Hamed Ela, Ethiopia - see previous post

Don Det, Laos

Vang Vieng, Laos - This place calls itself the Q-Bar.

The 4000 Islands, Laos