Tradition lives on at Tacony Billiards

On a dreary weekday afternoon inside Tacony Billiards, coffee in styrofoam cups scents the air, along with the day's special of meatball sandwiches, as legends long retired from the working class sit along the sideline like crows on a fence, lying in wait, watching a tight game of one-pocket pool.

The club, a former supermarket and discount-clothing store, sits solitary, a block from I-95 in the Northeast. With 46 tables, it has a reputation for bringing out the best of the best: wily onetime hustlers, lights-out players, and gentlemen of skill.

By the counter, Dale Page, sinewy with dark hair, who has spent most of his 40 years hanging out in pool halls and who works here as the quasi-manager, cook, bartender, and barback, draws his stick in an exhibition of nine-ball.

Crack!

Off goes the 1 ball.

Crack!

In goes the 5.

"It's like chess," Page says before launching the 2. "I like to set up at least three shots further down the game."

Like many regulars, Page has been running tables since before he learned how to drive, playing pool since he was 15 or 16.

"I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have this place to come to," says Page, nicknamed "Hoch" by some, as in Ho Chi Minh, for his Italian and Korean heritage. His father, a former soldier, met his mother in Vietnam during the war.

"And people count on coming here," he continues. "A lot of the time, they don't have nothing to do, just sitting home, watching TV."

Open almost 20 years, Tacony Billiards has become a place to belong. Every face is familiar, and the band of regulars reflects the growing diversity of the neighborhood.

"At any time you can find world champions," said Charlie Newsom, 73, known as Camden Charlie, a pool player for 60 years. He spent his professional career in South Jersey making auto parts for Ford. Now he's dedicated to the game of one-pocket. Between games, he says, "we tell each other a lot of lies about what we used to do. It's just a great, great bunch of guys."

There are Spanish Mike, Russian Kenny, Spanish Lou, Gary the Bear, and the sergeant - one of Philadelphia's Finest. There's Shaky, who pops in from his roofing job for a couple of games before he picks up his wife from work, and Benny.

"When I was a younger man," says Benny, "my wife would grumble about me being at the pool hall. Now that I'm retired, she says: 'Go to the pool hall, and come back for dinner.' "

During the day, seniors get discount table rates of $3 an hour. On Wednesdays, ladies play free. Once a month, teams from the regional Amateur Pool League compete to qualify for a Vegas tournament. Tuesday is the big nine-ball tournament. First prize: $150.

To keep the camaraderie - and the art of running the tables - flowing, Page, a father of three and perhaps the youngest player here, hopes to pass the cue. The hall attracts a younger crowd through karaoke nights and regular live hip-hop events. Page gives free pool lessons to budding disciples.

"It's kind of a lost art," Page says. "We want to get a younger crowd in here, so their generation plays pool."

As a teenager, Page worked at the neighborhood's former grand lady - the Boulevard Social & Billiard Club - watching better men become legends.

He made a name for himself wearing loud polka-dot outfits and winning games. "I had a free stroke," Page recalled. "I used to tease people, 'You don't want to play me. I haven't missed a ball since last Tuesday,' " he says, then chuckles.

At 22, tournaments bought Page his first home, in Castor Gardens, and a shiny red Camaro.

In 2005 an early-morning shooting outside the 24-hour Boulevard club left two young men dead, and the owners, who also owned Tacony Billiards, shut it down. Many of the pool regulars spilled over.

One legend, Spanish Mike, 77, a round man with bifocals and slicked hair under his cap, comes just about every day from his Northern Liberties home, where he lives with his wife of 54 years. Retired from pool, the grandfather plays rummy in a smoke-filled room in the back. "It's peaceful," he explains.

Mike LeBron started playing pool at 13 in his native Puerto Rico. He then worked in Philadelphia for 20 years as a cutter in a vinyl-processing plant. "They closed the place," he says softly, "and I went back to pool."

In his heyday, he beat the best. He shot nine-ball in Germany, the Philippines, Austria, and Norway. In Taiwan, he said, he was crowned world champion. In Puerto Rico, he added, an annual tournament is held in his honor. In his home, LeBron has more than a dozen trophies displayed, and a shiny pool stick engraved with the title "Champion of Champions." He won it in 1991 at the ESPN-broadcast International Challenge of Champions tournament, along with 50 grand.

"You have to have a lot of heart" to be a good player, LeBron says.

A few years ago, after doctors removed a tumor from his brain, he retired. He sometimes teaches. But the game still calls.

"The click of the ball," LeBron explains, tapping his fingers together, as he watches Page, who grew up watching him, sink shot after shot.