Retail Anthropology

When I walked into the Compleat Gamester in Waltham on Tuesday, I was first struck by its scale.  They'd moved from a moderate storefront in downtown Waltham and into a huge industrial version of a strip mall, from 5,000 feet on two floors to an open space the size of a hockey rink and 40' tall.  I brought the rails from Table 7 into the shop, and then spent an hour or so looking around.  About 20 pool tables were on display, one or two in stages of disassembly and restoration.  Hundreds of sets of darts, a dozen dart boards.  Table tennis rackets and balls.  Poker tables, ping pong tables, light fixtures, leather television chairs with cupholders built into the armrests, and the largest array of table and board games I've ever seen; that display alone was eight feet tall and a hundred feet across, a mosaic of colored boxes calling for our recreation time.

I was the only customer in the store for the whole hour I was there.  I've worked in retail, and I know what that's like.  Tammy, the one staff person present, kept herself busy with paperwork, but it's a tough, long day when you don't have customers.  (I didn't fully count as a customer, since I was there to arrange shop work and delivery; our sales transaction had already taken place by phone.)

But the reason for this essay is the display of signs at the front of the store.  When equipping one's man-cave, there are no end of people who are happy to sell you clever signs, the indoor equivalent of bumper stickers that provide manufactured jollity.  And the collective content of those signs tells us something about the targeted community.

• 24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day.  Coincidence?  Maybe...
• I gave up pool once.  It was the most terrifying weekend of my life.
• Butt and butts – keep them both off the table.
• My wife said she'd leave me if I didn't give up pool.  I'm sure going to miss her.
• In pool, you have two opponents – the other player and the table.  Please treat both with respect.
• Pool and sex – two things you don't have to be a professional to enjoy.
• I've spent most of my money on beer and women.  The rest I've just wasted.
• Danger!  Beware of foul words and occasional flying debris in this seating area.
• Don't talk about yourself.  We'll do that after you leave.

You have a picture in your head, I'm sure.  This is the domain of the Reagan Democrat, the working man who is generous with his friends and suspicious of the rest of the world, who adheres to traditional stereotypes about the roles of men and women, and who works hard at a physically demanding job all week and just wants a place and time to relax.  And those folks don't have much money any more, so institutions like the Compleat Gamester sit vast and empty.

Billiards was once a recreation of aristocrats, a true parlor game for people whose homes had parlors.  Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying that billiards was a "health inspiring, scientific game, lending recreation to the otherwise fatigued mind."  (I wonder if Daniel Day Lewis spent a lot of time playing carom billiards during his year of preparation...)  Mark Twain had a noted love of billiards, and a room in his home similar in shape and size to the new home for Table 7.

Twain's writing and pool room. The table is probably a Brunswick "Richmond," with slate from Vermont. Note the remarkable lack of beer signs.

But the aristocrats left it behind, and it became just another another coin-operated amusement in taverns.  The number of home tables is smaller, as are the tables themselves.  The few remaining professional tournaments take place in regional casinos, themselves another place for the working class to spend their quarters on the weekends.

A retail store shouldn't leave you wondering about issues of class, history and politics. Occupational hazard, I guess.