It’s an unassuming building butted up against a car wash on the north boundary of Weinland Park – a building most people ignore as they speed past headed for the interstate.
Inside the doors, you can find drinks, friends and pool.
The Golden Eight Ball and Billiards on 11th Avenue serves as one of the only recreational businesses in the neighborhood. The Eight Ball boasts 14 pool tables as well as a lower-level lounge. Several beers are available on tap in addition to dozens of bottled drafts and mixed drinks from alley shooters to zoots.
Behind the bar, Sheila Radcliffe and her daughter Tamika serve up drinks with a splash of sarcasm into the early morning hours. In between pool games, they don’t mind putting down their cues to bring a customer’s next round.
Tamika lives on the second floor of the pool hall, so she maintains a close bond to her work. Between the mother-daughter pair, they’ve put in more than 11 years of service to the bar. For seven of those years, Sheila was the manager of the hall. In her time of tending, the biggest change she’s seen is in the clientele.
“They got a lot younger, that’s for sure,” Sheila said.
She gestures to the back corner of the hall. A group of twenty-somethings is gathered around the farthest table from the bar. They’re a quiet crowd, and only a few are shooting.
Sheila remembers the regulars – the crowd of old-time pool players that would come in for the same drinks and play the same table every evening.
The regulars have stopped being familiar faces around the Eight Ball, but owner Richard Whaley hasn’t given up hope that regulars might return.
Whaley works to improve the hall in any way he can. He owns both the 11th Avenue and 5432 N. High St. Golden Eight Ball locations. He bought the 11th Avenue location because he felt it would pay off in the future with the University Gateway Project on the horizon. For the past several years, Whaley has tried to improve the facility.
“I could go on and on about how much we’ve done to that place,” Whaley said. “The lights, the sound system, resurfacing tables, new tables, you name it.”
Still, the Weinland Park location isn’t making him a rich man.
“We’re just not getting the business,” Whaley said. “No matter what we seem to do down there, we don’t get good business from campus – and that would help.”
Tamika agrees with most of Whaley’s suggestions for the bar, but she emphasized the two hall, because of their locations, are different.
“I’m not sure they really understand they’re dealing with different people. You can’t run them (the two halls) the same,” she said.
But Whaley says he tries to cater to the different crowds.
“We’ve tried to hold tournaments down there with their clientele,” Whaley said. “But I don’t think it’s more than a place to drink a little Hennessey and play a little pool.”
Tamika doesn’t seem to mind that the hall doesn’t draw crowds of serious pool players.
“I just try to get the customer what they want,” Tamika said. “You get to know what they want to drink.”
At the North High location, tournaments and league players account for the majority of the hall’s business. Whaley said the High Street location thrives because of the mix of a bar, friendly pool-playing and competitive matches. He’s been a league operator, running tournaments in central Ohio for 10 years under the American Poolplayers Association.
While regulars are no longer commonplace around the 11th Avenue Eight Ball, some shooters are more frequent customers than others.
Eddie first came to The Eight Ball when he was 18 – after years of playing pool.
Eddie remembers the original Eight Ball on Livingston Avenue. He points out that the place wasn’t nearly as tame.
“Back in those earlier years, there was a lot that happened in this bar,” Eddie said. “A lot of fights, a lot of arguments, a lot of drug deals going down. Lotsa shit in the parking lot.”
Eddie tried not to get involved with the seedy crowd that frequented The Eight Ball. He was there to play pool. But the temptation of money changing hands over pool games got the best of him. Eddie found himself involved with the notorious Short North Posse – a Columbus gang known for its violence.
On three different occasions, Eddie was imprisoned for felony forgery charges during the ’80s and ’90s, according to the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“They put tons of people in jail,” Eddie said.
After his release, he claims to have turned over a new leaf.
On this Saturday night, Eddie’s pace is slower around the hall because of an injured foot. Still, he lines up his shot like every other night while balancing his weight on his good foot. He plays despite the ache because he enjoys pool so much. He’s a member of a team out of Oakland Park dubbed The Cue Sticks.
Eddie comes to the Golden Eight Ball to practice with friends for tournaments. He lives in Dublin but likes The Eight Ball because of its size and its tables, he said. His practice paid off last year when he was named the No. 1 player in his division of the American Pool Players Association.
“There are a whole lot of players down here that are real good,” Eddie said. “But, you know, I hold my own. At this level, you just got to hope that when he breaks ’em you actually get a shot.”
The group of twenty-somethings is finishing up another game, joking with one another over the loss. Eddie can’t underestimate the contribution The Golden Eight Ball makes to the community. He spins around on his stool to survey the room.
“Can you imagine what they’d be doing right now if this place wasn’t here?” He takes another sip of his drink and heads to a table to play a game.
