Rack ‘em - Wagners resurrect billiards hall

by Matt Jarzemsky

April 18,2008

Les Wagner was shocked by the news last summer that Phil Spudich was closing Columbia Billiards and Rack ‘n' Roll Billiards.

"It'd been such a huge part of his life for so long," Molly Wagner said of her husband's hangout. "Then there was grief about what it would mean not to have a pool hall and what he calls ‘the congregation.' It was an anchor for a lot of people."

Chuck Metscher met his now-fiancée, Mia Calvin, at Columbia Billiards on 9th Street downtown. After it closed, the couple started driving all the way to Jefferson City to get the "traditional" billiards hall experience, something they say they don't get at Booches, Willie's and other bars and restaurants with pool tables in Columbia.

For Wagner, a pool hall is about "fellowship."

"A pool hall is multigenerational, diverse, has repeat customers who come to have a history with each other," Wagner, the director of Boone County Family Resources, said. "There are norms for appropriate and acceptable behavior."

It looked like that fellowship would end for the clientele at the two pool halls. But thanks to the community that grew around Spudich's pool halls, Billiards had a cohort of regulars waiting with open arms when the Wagners opened the doors at 514 E. Broadway, the former location of Shattered nightclub, in late March.

Now, two or three nights a week and most of the day on the weekends, you can find Metscher at Billiards on Broadway. He'll be leaning over the pool cue he won in a tournament that was signed by the world's ninth-ranked nine ball player, Jennifer Beretta.

In fact, he'll be playing on one of the same tables he played on at Columbia Billiards, and during a break he'll be eating a burger that's identical to those served at the old hangout.

The Wagners bought 17 pool tables from Spudich and brought in former employees and equipment from Columbia Billiards. They enlisted the help of some regulars at Spudich's pool halls—paying some of them in hours of pool table time—and converted the remains of Shattered into the new pool hall.

The shuttering of Columbia Billiards and Rack ‘n' Roll dominated conversation at the Wagner house last June.

At first, Spudich discouraged the Wagners when they talked about opening a pool room. He cited several reasons for closing his pool halls: at 64, he doesn't have as much energy for it as he used to; he didn't like the city banning smoking in his establishments; and from a real estate point of view, running a pool hall didn't make much sense.

"Pool halls are not a great investment anymore because it takes up a lot of real estate to own a pool table," he said. "You can make more money with just about anything else."

Nevertheless, by the end of the summer 2007, Spudich's pool tables were stored in the Wagners' garage and their friend's basement. They decided to buy the tables and waited until a well-located building with high ceilings came onto the market. They closed on the old Shattered building Dec. 18 and started work on the renovations the next day. Billiards on Broadway opened March 24, after a $100,000 renovation.

Only 12 tables could fit in the building. Molly Wagner doesn't know what to do with the five extra tables that are preventing her from parking in the garage.

The interior of Billiards on Broadway has the look of a vintage pool hall, albeit without the haze of smoke. The space features stained hardwood floors, exposed brick walls, a mahogany bar and large windows. "We were able to get a picture of the original storefront, which used to be a furniture store," Molly Wagner said. "We put in windows like the furniture store had to restore it to its original state and to bring in a lot of natural light."

Les Wagner said he made a special effort to hire the manager with the burger recipe from Columbia Billiards.

"We cook them on the same grill with the same seasonings," Les Wagner said. "The Billiards burger is back!"

Many of the subcontractors who worked on the renovation used to play pool at Columbia Billiards or Rack ‘n' Roll, which was located next to Sophia's along South Providence Road. Like the moving crew, some agreed to take hours of pool table time as payment.

"They've got a monetary number that I'm chipping away at," said Jeff Mueller, a trimmer who finished the mahogany columns rising from the Billiards on Broadway bar. "The way the last couple weeks have gone, I'll probably have it dried up in about a year."

"All the people that would be playing pool decided to build a place to play pool," Mueller said. "I guess it's kind of like the Amish building houses for each other."

Molly and Les Wagner co-own the hall. Boone Wagner, Les's son, helps manage it and will work as its tournament and league coordinator. They have inherited much of Spudich's clientele, a diverse group ranging from laborers to a bank president.

"I always felt so comfortable at Columbia Billiards," Calvin, a former bartender at the pool hall, said. "Here the tables and the people are the same. You always know the same people—and the same great people behind the bar."

Boone Wagner said, "We were greeted whenever the doors opened by that same group of people. Not only is it the community of pool players, but there was an associated community. They weren't pool players, but they worked at the adjacent stores or just kind of hung out as a group, at the Lakota or 9th Street Video."

Molly Wagner said they want they want to appeal a broad range of customers. "We'd like to have it be a multi-use pool room, different times of day serving different types of people: the lunch crowd, Saturday afternoons after soccer or after school, or people who want to have a drink and play a game of pool."

Although none of the Wagners has previously owned a restaurant or a pool room, they all say they're learning fast.

"Pool is all about refining a process of delivering the cue through the cue ball," Boone Wagner said. "You have to understand where you initiate that process and which steps are in the middle, to arriving at the desired conclusion. It's kind of a systematic approach to what you're doing. That comes easy to me and my father. That's something we were engrossed in, late into the night, playing and discussing pool theory."