Living: Everyone Back into Pool!

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 pedestrian spots a banner flapping in the cold night wind: THE BILLIARD CLUB. Yet the scene beneath it is not a dimly lighted doorway, attended by a tattooed bouncer, but monstrous picture windows straight out of Trump Tower. Behind the glass, peacock feathers wave from porcelain planters. Within, fashionable men and women lay cues to green felt. A sticker at the door indicates that, yes, the club does take American Express. Welcome to the new world of pool.

From Boston to Miami, from Dallas to Chicago, pool halls are back with a vengeance, with yuppies leading the way. New converts chalk their cues like old-timers and gladly shell out up to $10 an hour for tables, as classical music and the latest in jazz and rock play in the background. During the past 14 months, Manhattan has seen the opening of four plush pool palaces catering to upscale players. The Billiard Club, which opened in August and takes in an estimated 1,500 customers on weekends, has a downstairs Safari Room, where players shoot pool amid zebra skins, mounted sailfish and a stuffed bobcat. In Boston, Jillian's Billiard Club has a private room, furnished as an English gentleman's library, that rents for $30 an hour. "It's becoming a glamour sport," observes Ed Irwin, a banker by day and a player by night.

"People want to see and be seen," says the Billiard Club's co-owner Barry Renert. At M.K., one of New York City's trendiest night spots, the club's two tables are always occupied, as the glitterati take turns shooting and racking 'em up. In Chicago the equally hip Limelight has eight-ball tournaments, and at the new-wave Star Top Cafe clients can munch on soft-shell crab while waiting their turn. Even at old game dens, the pool surge is evident as the gentry mix with the proletariat. Says Richard Gaedt of Chicago's North Center Bowl: "In the past six months, our whole crowd has changed from older to younger, to yuppies." Adds Jillian's co-owner Kevin Troy: "A few years back, health clubs were a big place to socialize. Now we're seeing the same thing over pool tables."

Players do not have to be Minnesota Fats to enjoy making balls go click- plunk into side pockets. "It's an addictive sport," says pool marketer Barry Dubow. "As soon as you sink two in a row, you want to get three." That simplicity of play, coupled with the change in atmosphere, has attracted new clientele, including women. Says Renert: "Women come by themselves, they come in groups, and they come with men."