I’ve always loved pool tables
October 18, 2011 1 Comment
When I was growing up a couple of the really cool kids at school had pool tables. One properly cool kid, Alistair, had a pool table…in his games room!
When you’re 13 years old a games room is the most magical place in the world. Monday was the best day to go there because if there’d been rugby or cricket on TV on Sunday then there would still be cigarettes in the ashtrays and a decent whiff of beer about the place. We would then lounge around practicing our swearing.
There was one Monday when we found a can of beer lodged in one of the pockets of the pool table. Four boys stood and stared at that can for about 15 minutes. To everyone’s relief Mark pointed out that we couldn’t open it because it wasn’t cold and that you could only drink cold beer because drinking warm beer would be a bit poofy.
That was almost as good as the time we found some ‘dad literature’ under the couch in the games room. Four boys stood and stared at that for quite a bit longer than fifteen minutes.
Anyway, I swore that when I was grown up and had some money and could spend it on anything I wanted I would have a pool table.
Then when I got my first job, at Ogilvy & Mather Wellington, there was a pool table in the middle of the office…..that you could play whenever you wanted! That was the most advertising thing I’d ever seen. It was the perfect Friday night prop. Clients loved it and would ask for meetings to be at our office so that they could stay on for a few frames. (Obviously they just referred to it as a ‘game’. I called it ‘a few frames’ because I was a dick.)
I spent a lot of time at that table. To no one’s surprise I had my own pool cue and committed a solid two months to learning how to play a Masse shot (because I was a dick).
Again I swore that if I ever had my own agency, or could make decisions about spending other people’s money on stuff to put in an agency, I would have a pool table.
Which gives me the sense that my entire life has just been building to this point. This is a pool table designed by James Perse. It’s magnificent. It’s exactly what my 13 year-old self would buy and what every self-respecting agency needs.
