Best of 2000: Best Place To Buy Your Pool Table

Billiards and Barstools
330 Rancheros Drive, Suite 111, San Marcos
(760) 471-9208

You have a rec room measuring at least 12 feet by 9 feet by 16 feet. And you think "Brunswick." That is, the brand your daddy always said was "it," because they're the biggest in the world, the oldest in the country (a young Swiss immigrant carriage-maker named John Brunswick built his first table in Cincinnati in 1845). Also because they grow their own forests in Wisconsin for the timber for their tables. And Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, the Rockefellers, and Mark Twain all played on Brunswicks; there's a Brunswick "Jewel" table at Camp David; and they go all the way to Italy and Brazil to get the slate that underlies the felt surface. And besides, Padres pitcher Trevor Hoffman bought one the other day. "Plus," says Ken Clark, the San Marcos shop's assistant manager, "we're the largest Brunswick dealer in the whole of the U.S.A." Clark says Brunswick insists on training every sales guy. "For instance, we don't use a spirit level when we're setting up a table. We use a machinist's level. Just one sheet of paper under one end will shift it." That's interesting, but how much dinero? Bottom end starts at $1800, delivered and set up. Top? They have an 1860 antique worth around $120,000.