From the Los Angeles Times – MARCH 14, 1993
TURTLE CREEK, Pa. —
Pool shark Denny Ayers longs for the good ol’ days when players threw punches and swung cue sticks like Louisville Sluggers, when hustlers cleaned out the wallets of suckers and toughs broke fingers of losers who didn’t pay.
“I used to stamp out my cigarette butts on the floor,” Ayers was saying the other day at Pinky’s, a venerable pool hall in this gritty mill town just outside Pittsburgh. “The atmosphere was different. It was smoky. It was better.”
It also was a cancer that sent that sort of pool hall to its grave a decade ago. Now, pool has shed its shady reputation, become “pocket billiards,” and has returned with a cleaned-up act.
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