Here’s an excerpt of an interview I conducted around 2007 with Bill “Weenie Beenie” Staton. Some of this, as I recall, ended up in Hustler Days. Staton references in this interview his hot dog stand. That’s a picture of the last of his hot dog...
A little more than 20 years ago I interviewed Ned Polsky, the late author of Hustlers, Beats and Others. We spoke about the 7-11 pool hall and Jersey Red and where pool’s been and where it was then going. Polksy himself had met Red at the 7-11 in Manhattan, and...
Gary Carlson, a former graduate student from Southern Illinois who wrote recently about a chance encounter he had with Minnesota Fats, also sent in a note about stumbling into a poolroom owned by George and Paulie Jansco. This was sometime back in the late 1960s. The...
Pool, as is noted in this great Sports Illustrated article that I’ve just stumbled across, involves sustained waiting. “When one player is at the table, there is nothing his opponent can do except sit and hope that he misses,” wrote Robert Coughlan...
The Alfredo De Oro Bladder Technique I wrote an essay sometime back in which I listed some of the most popular sharking techniques in history. Somehow I neglected to mention one of my favorites. During the 1936 World Billiards Tournament, when Alfredo De Oro was 71...
Here’s a one-pocket mystery. Jack Hill, apparently from Oklahoma, is referenced in Hustler Days as the inventor of one-pocket. But the original source for that information was The Bank Shot and Other Great Robberies, the book by Minnesota Fats. Fats offers only...
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