ANNIVERSARY Countdown (Count-Up?)

Today is Friday, March 7th, 2014. We were married 986 days ago, on June 25th, 2011.


Thursday, February 28, 2013

Retail Anthropology

When I walked into the Compleat Gamester in Waltham on Tuesday, I was first struck by its scale.  They'd moved from a moderate storefront in downtown Waltham and into a huge industrial version of a strip mall, from 5,000 feet on two floors to an open space the size of a hockey rink and 40' tall.  I brought the rails from Table 7 into the shop, and then spent an hour or so looking around.  About 20 pool tables were on display, one or two in stages of disassembly and restoration.  Hundreds of sets of darts, a dozen dart boards.  Table tennis rackets and balls.  Poker tables, ping pong tables, light fixtures, leather television chairs with cupholders built into the armrests, and the largest array of table and board games I've ever seen; that display alone was eight feet tall and a hundred feet across, a mosaic of colored boxes calling for our recreation time.

I was the only customer in the store for the whole hour I was there.  I've worked in retail, and I know what that's like.  Tammy, the one staff person present, kept herself busy with paperwork, but it's a tough, long day when you don't have customers.  (I didn't fully count as a customer, since I was there to arrange shop work and delivery; our sales transaction had already taken place by phone.)

But the reason for this essay is the display of signs at the front of the store.  When equipping one's man-cave, there are no end of people who are happy to sell you clever signs, the indoor equivalent of bumper stickers that provide manufactured jollity.  And the collective content of those signs tells us something about the targeted community.

  • 24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day.  Coincidence?  Maybe...
  • I gave up pool once.  It was the most terrifying weekend of my life.
  • Butt and butts – keep them both off the table.
  • My wife said she'd leave me if I didn't give up pool.  I'm sure going to miss her.
  • In pool, you have two opponents – the other player and the table.  Please treat both with respect.
  • Pool and sex – two things you don't have to be a professional to enjoy.
  • I've spent most of my money on beer and women.  The rest I've just wasted.
  • Danger!  Beware of foul words and occasional flying debris in this seating area.
  • Don't talk about yourself.  We'll do that after you leave.
You have a picture in your head, I'm sure.  This is the domain of the Reagan Democrat, the working man who is generous with his friends and suspicious of the rest of the world, who adheres to traditional stereotypes about the roles of men and women, and who works hard at a physically demanding job all week and just wants a place and time to relax.  And those folks don't have much money any more, so institutions like the Compleat Gamester sit vast and empty.

Billiards was once a recreation of aristocrats, a true parlor game for people whose homes had parlors.  Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying that billiards was a "health inspiring, scientific game, lending recreation to the otherwise fatigued mind."  (I wonder if Daniel Day Lewis spent a lot of time playing carom billiards during his year of preparation...)  Mark Twain had a noted love of billiards, and a room in his home similar in shape and size to the new home for Table 7.

Twain's writing and pool room. The table is probably a Brunswick "Richmond," with slate from Vermont. Note the remarkable lack of beer signs.
But the aristocrats left it behind, and it became just another another coin-operated amusement in taverns.  The number of home tables is smaller, as are the tables themselves.  The few remaining professional tournaments take place in regional casinos, themselves another place for the working class to spend their quarters on the weekends.

A retail store shouldn't leave you wondering about issues of class, history and politics. Occupational hazard, I guess.  

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Death and Life of a Great American Sport

Those of you who've been with this blog since its inception a little over two years ago may remember that it began with a countdown.  A new one has just begun; perhaps not so auspicious as a wedding date, but March 18th, 2013 will be a red-letter day nonetheless.

Let us begin from first causes.  On August 23rd, 1961, three years after I was born (and in my hometown), a sporting tradition was begun.

Please note "George E. Schaefer, Muskegon Heights, Mich." among the patent holders
The Brunswick Corporation launched a massive building campaign, supplying bowling centers across America with the most up-to-date "Populuxe" furnishings and accessories, a sort of family futurama of high style for the masses.  And along with the settees and ball returns and lockers, they designed a new space-age pool table for the billiard rooms that bowling centers were incorporating into their recreational mix.

Doesn't it feel like there should be a big swimming pool just off to the left here?
In keeping with the corporate theme of the Crown logo, they called the table the Gold Crown.


The colors of the 1961 Brunswick lineup were Coral, Gold, Green (more nearly a sort of teal), Blue, Classic White, and "the pleasure-packed attractiveness of Tangerine."  The table above is in Classic White, which is actually not white at all, but closer to a bone or ivory color.

There is no standard dimension for an "official" pool table, except that it must be exactly twice as long as it is wide.  Snooker tables are 6' by 12', which feels the size of a golf course when you encounter one for the first time.  Lots of home tables are 8' by 4', or even 7' by 3'-6".  But the 1960s inclusion of the Gold Crown in hundreds of pool rooms throughout the country standardized the "tournament-sized" table at 9' by 4'-6", which it has been ever since.

Sacco's Bowl Haven in Somerville MA bought eight 1961 Gold Crown pool tables, the very first year the table was made, in Brunswick Tangerine. (And what goes around comes around... Pantone named color 17-1463 "Tangerine Tango" the 2012 Color of the Year.)


I discovered Sacco's when I moved to Medford in 2006.  In fact, I moved to Medford in large part because I could get to Sacco's in ten minutes.  And it became a significant home for me for four years, with Mike and Mike and Frank and Dan and Steve and Carlos and Roger and Matty and Dave and I all doing something to get us out of the house for a few hours.  We weren't great players, but we were all drawn to the game; the game then let us discover one another.

Late in 2009, Sacco's sold the building to Flatbread Pizza Company, and sold the eight Gold Crowns to good customers for $500 apiece.  (FYI, a new Gold Crown model V, with Chinese slate and lots of plywood instead of the original Vermont/New York slate and solid mahogany frame, runs over $10,000.  So they were doing their friends a favor.)  I bought Table 7, and it's been in pieces in my basement in Medford for almost three years.

I cast about for a new place to play, and finally came across World Class Billiards up in Peabody.  It was 45 minutes away instead of ten, and a much less homey place.  Your talent and intentions were sized up the instant you came in the door, every newcomer immediately classified as a pigeon or a hawk.  But they had well-maintained Gold Crowns, and I got to know some of the locals after a few months.  It was an acceptable home in the absence of home.

Three years later, in January 2013, World Class has also closed, and thirteen more orphaned Gold Crowns are consigned to await their new homes.  There is no place left in Greater Boston for me to play.  When I was at Sacco's, I was playing ten hours a week; now, I have not taken a single shot since early December 2012.

But on Monday, March 18th, that will change.  Our friend Matt has worked diligently and carefully to assemble a new poolroom above our garage.  The insulation and drywall are installed, the electrical system and heating units are in place, the windows are in and the hickory flooring is going down right now, the paint will be chosen this weekend.  And on 3/18/13, my Gold Crown will be delivered and installed, all 1260 pounds of it lugged up the stairs and re-assembled.  It will be covered in pristine Iwan Simonis 860 cloth, and fresh Artemis K-66 rubber cushions installed; a virgin set of Aramith Pro Cup balls awaits inauguration.

Pool is nearly dead in America, at least as a commercial enterprise.  But Table 7 is soon to be reborn, in only 19 days, its Tangerine trim revived to contemporary freshness.  I will do my best to honor the tens of thousands of games that it has hosted over fifty years, and to make it into a cherished destination for many friends in its new home.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Another Ball, Sir?

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion -- Parkinson's Law
The best you can do between now and Tuesday is the best you can do -- Charles Eames

Growing up the way I did, I learned to be happy occupying myself on my own.  I spent endless hours reading, conducting various vernacular experiments, listening rapturously to remarkable music.  My childhood taught me to be an academic, thoroughly happy to be immersed in my own projects and take them to obsessive levels of completion.

And then I entered the world of management and administration, and I've had to develop a whole new body of skills.  As a college administrator, I'm essentially paid to be interrupted.  A colleague needs advice, a student has a crisis, sixty or seventy e-mails a day come through, people at other colleges want me to come visit, my professional organization wants me to run a project.  I no longer have the luxury of focused time, but rather have to attend to many projects for mere minutes each.

This is my work life, a form of vaudeville but with higher stakes.

And because I've now taught myself to do that divided work, it's presumed that the capacity is endless.  I do a very little bit of juggling, and everyone who's ever juggled knows that if you can do three balls, someone will ask if you can do five.  If you can do five, someone will ask you if you can do seven.  If your high run at pool is 30 balls, someone will remind you that someone running 100 is a regular occurrence every year in major tournaments.  Once you run 100, someone will remind you that John Schmidt ran 400 a few years ago, just as they remind him that Willie Mosconi ran 526 back in the 1950s.

We're about to put on an important national conference, from this afternoon through Saturday mid-day.  I did most of the planning for the first one two years ago, and have attempted to not have as large a role in this one.  But as the deadline has drawn closer, my e-mail traffic has grown, my phone usage is up, and I'm adding a few more balls to the mix every day. 

There are some things I do where I get to re-claim that focal, attentive path.  Teaching.  Writing in this blog.  Playing pool.  Not nearly enough, nor any of those for enough time. They suffice to bring a bit of peace and pleasure, and simultaneously remind me of another way of life that I've temporarily left behind.

I have 40 minutes before I enter a weekend of politics, agendas (both written and unsaid), flattering, placating, fawning, reassuring, listening.  I'll be spinning dozens of plates through the next two days, and this is my moment of meditative preparation.

And then I'll be home this weekend, which is its own reward and focus.  The pool room is nearing readiness, which will be a thorough delight.  I'm returning to the values of my childhood, after a long detour through adult life (which, it must be said, has given me greater capability to understand and enact my values more purposefully and fully).  Work and rest, home and away, social and monastic, immersed and removed -- the eternal tensions that, at their best, act as the two poles of a battery, drawing power through ourselves and into the world.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Jet Set

When you travel a lot:
  • You have a favorite restaurant at the Charlotte International Airport
  • You have all your pants pockets emptied out and into a specific zippered compartment of your carry-on before you ever get in line for security
  • You can balance on each foot alternately to untie the other shoe while standing upright
  • You get on a plane in the snow, and get off surrounded by palm trees
  • You've thought about buying the Garden Yeti, the FootSmart SmartFlexx, or a set of personalized beer mats from the SkyMall catalog
  • You know that soccer games and action movies are just as good without the headphones
  • You have three sizes of carry-on luggage: pretty small, really small, and why bother
  • You know that it's almost impossible to find dark chocolate in the newsstands
  • You've given up on finding local tourist merchandise that isn't the same stuff as everywhere else with a different decal on it 
  • You throw all of your change into your carry-on instead of putting it in your pocket
  • You wonder who shops at the PGA Tour Shop in an airport
  • You overtip the server at the themed restaurant in the concourse — a bad enough job in the best of circumstances, here coupled with a daily commute to the airport and trip through security
  • You know that your moderately determined walking pace beats almost everyone on the moving walkway
  • You treasure that extra fifty feet after the security area, especially when it has a bench so you can put on your shoes and your belt and find your wallet and watch again
  • You know when to feed the cab driver just a little more information to keep him navigating comfortably without confusing him with too much detail
  • You know that there are only two or three magazines (New Yorker, New York Review, The Sun) that can sustain a three-hour flight, no matter how interesting all the covers in the newsstand might be
  • You've been so bored that you bought a copy of Fifty Shades of Gray to see what all the hype was about, and have later contributed it to a garage sale or library donation
  • You wonder if Wolfgang Puck would have ever had a career as a chef if his name had been Wally Morton
  • You know that departure is up, arrival is down
  • You know how to walk down an airplane aisle like a two-dimensional Egyptian painting, briefcase in front and carry-on in back and nothing side-to-side
If I think about my air-travel experience divided into decades...
0-10 years old:  none
10-20 years old:  twice
20-30 years old:  once
30-40 years old:  six times
40-50 years old:  about 25 times
50-54 years old:  at least 40 times

So over the next five years, the trend predicts that I should travel by air about once every two weeks.  Just between now and early summer, I have trips to San Francisco, Daytona Beach (again), Chicago, Portland ME, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Baltimore again.  And those are just the ones I know about right now, and after a trip to Europe and two weekends in Florida over the past six weeks.

I just flew home from Charlotte... and boy, are my arms tired!