Proficiency at billiards, it has been said, is a sign of a misspent youth. That is putting it politely. Pocket billiards, commonly known as pool, has had image problems for decades. The pool hall housed illicit kingdoms of numbers | runners and gangsters, winos and bums, four-letter-word expectorators and hustlers named Fats. Trouble brewed in every corner. Sharks infested the murky waters. "You had to watch out for all the spit on the floor," recalls a denizen of the old parlors in Ohio. "Any women who'd come around, you wondered what they did for a living."
So what's this? The Manhattan...
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