No turf wars, no sexism: Meet the queer Gen Z women giving billiards a rebrand in L.A.
In the summer of 2023, Alix Max, new to town with a cigarette in their mouth, was shooting pool on the patio of 4100 Bar in Silver Lake. They were pretty good, too — good enough to catch the eye of two regulars, Andrea Lorell and Julianne Fox, who recruited them to join their practice group. Their proposal was simple: “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 could be lifted from the classic billiards film “The Hustler”: an up-and-coming pool prodigy, James Dean-cool, comes to town and gets seduced by the green-felted world of dive bar pool — an aspiring pool shark meet-cute over an ashtray. A cherished motto Max introduced to the group: “Pool is blue-collar golf.”
The pool-playing group, which started as a group chat titled “Women in STEM,” was composed of pool amateurs, usually young women Julianne “drunkenly met” at 4100 Bar who had a burgeoning interest in pool. Soon, the group chat mutated into a tournament series and community titled “Please Be Nice.” If billiards has the reputation of being a pastime for gamblers, hustlers and hanger-oners, the female-centric biweekly pool tournament at 4100 Bar offers a friendly, supportive alternative. “I don't know if the goal necessarily was to build community, but it was a natural byproduct,” says Fox. The tournament is both a party and competition where women practice pool, trade tips and compete in an encouraging environment. It was created as an antidote to the prickly, male-dominated world of dive bar pool — all the exhilaration without the bickering turf wars with bar regulars.
The founders, Lorell and Fox, began shooting pool at 4100 Bar in April 2023 and were bonded by their mutual hunger for the game. Growing up as an only child, Lorell spent hours playing on her aunt’s pool table. As an adult, she traveled across the country for work, always seeking out pool halls to “find a good hang.” She’s since joined a league and even played in a tournament in Las Vegas, where her team won the Sportsmanship Award. The team that knocked her out was disqualified in the next round. On the patio, she details the melodrama so amusingly that her love for the game is infectious — almost romantic.
Until recently, Lorell lived in a cluttered studio apartment with a pool table beside her bed. 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 young women: “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 tournament also 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 showing up the boys, even if that still happens. “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 adds, emphasizing the competition’s good-natured energy.
Pool tables in Los Angeles can be hostile places. “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.
Adds Lorell, “They're either giving you tips or checking you out, so it's uncomfortable.”
Molly Sievert, another “Please Be Nice” player, has also experienced sexism while playing pool. She explains that people assume her interest in pool stems from wanting to impress a father or boyfriend. She began shooting pool at 21 in bars across cities and is still baffled by men’s casual condescension toward female pool players. ”Men have never complimented me on my defensive shots because they think it's an accident,” she says. When they inevitably lose to Sievert, they toss it up to a bad beat rather than their opponent's skillset. She won her first tournament at “Please Be Nice” and has been a frequent competitor ever since. She’s a proud critic of 4100 Bar regulars — she says people keep walking into her cue stick, throwing off her shots, and not apologizing. “I always have that little part of me that is like, would you do that to a man?”
Sievert explains a personal theory that women take naturally to pool. Above all, it’s a game of brokering one’s circumstances, calling one’s shot, and making one’s own luck. It’s the type of hazards and presentiment that feel inherent to womanhood. Bravado, Molly argues, doesn’t serve the game. “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 comedian and pool player, chalks up antagonism at pool tables in L.A. to a scarcity issue. “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 game's appeal is the spontaneous encounters with strangers that pool invites. The fewer the tables, the worse the ecosystem, the worse the vibe, Clark argues.
It is often remarked that pool halls look like morgues; the dimly lit blue-felted table inside 4100 Bar is no exception. The competitors are in a trancelike state, building a stratagem. The pool tournaments often run till the bar closes at 2 a.m. The players take breaks to socialize, buy drinks and watch each other play.
Part of the success of “Please Be Nice” is tied to the recent renaissance of 4100 Bar, which transformed from a neighborhood dive into a Silver Lake nightlife institution thanks to TikTok. Mouse, a bartender at 4100 Bar for eight years, explains the bar’s rise began in 2020 when it became a popular spot for outdoor drinking during COVID restrictions.
Now, it’s not unusual to have a run-in with a celebrity at 4100 Bar on a weekend with its new reputation as a charmingly sleazy playground for the internet-famous. Due to TikTok, the bar gained a cult following in Europe and Japan, with tourists flocking to the bar to be photographed in front 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, closely resembled the now-infamous shade of neon green from Charli XCX’s "Brat" album.
For Lorell, the dive bar exists as a third space. “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.”
Rumors swirl that 4100 Bar might close in the coming year with the expansion of Erewhon. “Over my dead body,” Fox exclaims.
For the future of “Please Be Nice,” Lorell and Fox hope the pool-loving community develops even further. “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 adds with a smirk.
There’s a beloved pool adage from “The Hustler,” spoken by the protagonist, Fast Eddie Felson: “Even if you beat me, I'm still the best.” Fox thinks the quote doesn’t align with her attitude toward 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.’”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
