In the summertime of 2023, Alix Max, new to city with a cigarette of their mouth, was capturing pool on the patio of 4100 Bar in Silver Lake. They had been fairly good, too — adequate to catch the attention of two regulars, Andrea Lorell and Julianne Fox, who recruited them to affix their observe group. Their proposal was easy: “We have this group chat, and we play together and get better. The goal is to beat men at pool.”
It’s a plotline that might be lifted from the traditional billiards movie “The Hustler”: an up-and-coming pool prodigy, James Dean-cool, involves city and will get seduced by the green-felted world of dive bar pool — an aspiring pool shark meet-cute over an ashtray. A cherished motto Max launched to the group: “Pool is blue-collar golf.”
The pool night time was born after Andrea Lorell, pictured, and different gamers stored experiencing hostility across the sport at different bars.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
The pool-playing group, which began as a gaggle chat titled “Women in STEM,” was composed of pool amateurs, normally younger girls Julianne “drunkenly met” at 4100 Bar who had a burgeoning curiosity in pool. Quickly, the group chat mutated right into a match sequence and group titled “Please Be Nice.” If billiards has the popularity of being a pastime for gamblers, hustlers and hanger-oners, the female-centric biweekly pool match at 4100 Bar provides a pleasant, supportive different. “I don’t know if the goal necessarily was to build community, but it was a natural byproduct,” says Fox. The match is each a celebration and competitors the place girls observe pool, commerce ideas and compete in an encouraging surroundings. It was created as an antidote to the prickly, male-dominated world of dive bar pool — all of the exhilaration with out the bickering turf wars with bar regulars.
Julianne Fox tallies the rating.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
The founders, Lorell and Fox, started capturing pool at 4100 Bar in April 2023 and had been bonded by their mutual starvation for the sport. Rising up as an solely youngster, Lorell spent hours taking part in on her aunt’s pool desk. As an grownup, she traveled throughout the nation for work, all the time searching for out pool halls to “find a good hang.” She’s since joined a league and even performed in a match in Las Vegas, the place her group received the Sportsmanship Award. The group that knocked her out was disqualified within the subsequent spherical. On the patio, she particulars the melodrama so amusingly that her love for the sport is infectious — nearly romantic.
“It’s a community cheering for each other and seeing each other get good,” says co-founder Andrea Lorell.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
Till lately, Lorell lived in a cluttered studio house with a pool desk beside her mattress. She jokes being a pool shark is her dream job. “I give myself a little pep talk before important matches: ‘You’re the greatest pool player in the world,’” she says, laughing with a cigarette in hand. For her, the intention of “Please Be Nice” is to make pool accessible to younger girls: “It’s a community cheering for each other and seeing each other get good. It expedites people’s learning.”
Julianne Fox, a co-founder, says the match additionally operates as a workshop: “If you’ve never shot a pool ball before, come through. We’ll metaphorically or literally hold your hand.” It’s not about exhibiting up the boys, even when that also occurs. “I think it’s even more fun to learn the game to play with your girls,” says Fox. “I want to win, but I also want my opponent to have fun,” she provides, emphasizing the competitors’s good-natured vitality.
Pool tables in Los Angeles might be hostile locations. “I’ll walk into a random bar in Koreatown, and there’s a pool table, and a bunch of older men are playing. You walk in, and they assume you’ll be bad at it,” says Max.
Provides Lorell, “They’re either giving you tips or checking you out, so it’s uncomfortable.”
Gamers say there’s a good-natured vitality at “Please Be Nice” tournaments.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
Molly Sievert, one other “Please Be Nice” participant, has additionally skilled sexism whereas taking part in pool. She explains that individuals assume her curiosity in pool stems from eager to impress a father or boyfriend. She started capturing pool at 21 in bars throughout cities and remains to be baffled by males’s informal condescension towards feminine pool gamers. ”Males have by no means complimented me on my defensive photographs as a result of they suppose it’s an accident,” she says. After they inevitably lose to Sievert, they toss it as much as a nasty beat quite than their opponent’s skillset. She received her first match at “Please Be Nice” and has been a frequent competitor ever since. She’s a proud critic of 4100 Bar regulars — she says individuals hold strolling into her cue stick, throwing off her photographs, and never apologizing. “I always have that little part of me that is like, would you do that to a man?”
Sievert explains a private idea that girls take naturally to pool. Above all, it’s a sport of brokering one’s circumstances, calling one’s shot, and making one’s personal luck. It’s the kind of hazards and presentiment that really feel inherent to womanhood. Bravado, Molly argues, doesn’t serve the sport. “Men will say, ‘I can make shots. I’m a shot maker.’ Many women are like, ‘I like the side pockets and weird angles. I don’t like the long table shots. I don’t like hitting it real. I like to think about the interaction of all the balls.”
April Clark, a comic and pool participant, chalks up antagonism at pool tables in L.A. to a shortage concern. “When I first got sucked into playing pool, I was living in New York City; there were so many bars with pool tables.” For Clark, the sport’s attraction is the spontaneous encounters with strangers that pool invitations. The less the tables, the more serious the ecosystem, the more serious the vibe, Clark argues.
Jaden Levinson, left, and Taylor Garcia watch the motion.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
It’s typically remarked that pool halls appear to be morgues; the dimly lit blue-felted desk inside 4100 Bar is not any exception. The rivals are in a trancelike state, constructing a stratagem. The pool tournaments typically run until the bar closes at 2 a.m. The gamers take breaks to socialize, purchase drinks and watch one another play.
A part of the success of “Please Be Nice” is tied to the latest renaissance of 4100 Bar, which reworked from a neighborhood dive right into a Silver Lake nightlife establishment because of TikTok. Mouse, a bartender at 4100 Bar for eight years, explains the bar’s rise started in 2020 when it turned a preferred spot for outside consuming throughout COVID restrictions.
Contributors of all ranges are welcome — even those that’ve by no means shot a pool ball earlier than.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
Now, it’s common to have a run-in with a star at 4100 Bar on a weekend with its new popularity as a charmingly sleazy playground for the internet-famous. As a result of TikTok, the bar gained a cult following in Europe and Japan, with vacationers flocking to the bar to be photographed in entrance of the avocado-green wall, Mouse explains. “Foreigners come here just to take photos with the 4100 sign and won’t even order,” he says. “People come and spend 100 bucks on the photo booth and not even get a drink.” The wall, he notes, intently resembled the now-infamous shade of neon inexperienced from Charli XCX’s “Brat” album.
For Lorell, the dive bar exists as a 3rd area. “If you spend four out of seven days seeing the same people, you’re not just bar friends on that point; you’re chosen family.”
Diana Brennan sizes up the taking part in subject.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
Rumors swirl that 4100 Bar may shut within the coming 12 months with the enlargement of Erewhon. “Over my dead body,” Fox exclaims.
For the way forward for “Please Be Nice,” Lorell and Fox hope the pool-loving group develops even additional. “We would love to solidify a beginner-centric event since that’s where this all started, learning pool with women and nonbinary people who were too scared to try it at a normal bar,” says Fox. “We hope to continue to train up the troops and run every single table in L.A.,” she provides with a smirk.
There’s a beloved pool adage from “The Hustler,” spoken by the protagonist, Quick Eddie Felson: “Even if you beat me, I’m still the best.” Fox thinks the quote doesn’t align together with her perspective towards pool. “There’s something Andrea says all the time when someone beats her, she says: ‘I don’t lose to losers. So you better win the whole thing.’”
