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By Matt Dowell

“Some fat ass cats show up here,” said Ronnie on a recent Wednesday night at the Summit Public House. He’s a regular at the pool table there and he’s been shooting pool on Capitol Hill since the ’90s.

Summit’s free-to-play table attracts good players on any night of the week. But for the last few years, a weekly Wednesday night tournament has become a center of the scene.

Show up around 7 PM on a Wednesday and you will see players warming up. A stack of cylindrical cue cases abuts the long bench at one end of the table. Competitors chalk up with focus, break racks with a whip crack heard around the bar. As Katy, the organizer, takes $10 buy-ins, she adds names to the bracket on a nearby TV screen.

It might look serious to an outsider, especially one who doesn’t play pool. But chat up a few people gathered around and you’ll quickly see there’s more to it than the game.

“They’re fat, but friendly cats,” Ronnie revised. “I like the competitiveness here, and the chill. Everybody’s friendly. Everybody polices themselves. You can come out here [to the patio between games] and smoke your cig, your doobie, your spliff.”

“It’s a good way to spend some time on a Wednesday night.”

For folks who like pool, but are more into hanging out, there’s space.

“We’re not trying to be a breeding ground for great pool players,” said Darren, who’s missed one tournament since the first. “It’s a fun neighborhood thing for us — our Wednesday lose-your-ten-dollars night.”

Lots of the usual tournament players do live near the bar, though the tournament has drawn people from around the city. There’s a variety of experience levels. Some have played competitively for years, like Campbell and Adel who’ve notched the most wins. Others got started because of the bar, like Katy.

“I live two blocks up the street,” she said. ”Summit was kind of my hang out spot. Everyone was playing pool, so I said why not give it a try.”

Now she’s running the show.

“It feels like a good community. There are a lot of local people, a lot of regulars. At other pool places, people can be rude. Maybe they’re not following etiquette, they’re shit talking in a not fun way. People here are having fun and are kind.”

“We’ve cultivated an environment where you can learn the game. Sometimes men are assholes – that’s not allowed. If someone is yelling advice that isn’t asked for, someone else will step in.”

Bella and Claire who often show up for the tournament agreed.

“One thing that’s cool about this tournament that’s different is that it’s very diverse. Generally pool culture is very ‘straight white male’. This place used to be that way but now it invites a melting pot of awesome people.”

That includes folks from Tunisia, Tigray, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago.

“We’re over here in a language center, teaching each other English, Spanish, French,” said Bella.

Since Brendan, another of the organizers, rigged an iPhone to a pipe above the table a couple of years ago, they’ve drawn an international audience via a @summitpool YouTube livestream.

“My mom watches me sometimes back in Peru,” said Luis.

Brendan’s a software engineer. “Like a lot of Seattle people,” he said. (He set up a website for the tournament that tracks winners).

“It’s so easy to get siloed in a social bubble. But you come here and Luis is a sushi chef, Edward works cameras at the baseball games, Ykaalo is an attendant at soccer games getting into real estate, Katy’s a lawyer, Adel works at a hospital. There are people from every walk of life and background.”

The regulars at Summit are part of a healthy pool culture on the Hill. A number of bars have tables here. But each place has a different environment that draws different crowds. Hillside skews young and spans the skill spectrum. For a few quarters, one can always find a game there, though they’ll probably have to wait in line for the table. If they don’t want to wait, they can go to Garage and rent one of dozens of tables all to themselves. Or they might drop into OX Billiards, where the most practiced shoot on professional-grade surfaces. OX shares a distinction with Capitol Hill neighbor Zoo Tavern in Eastlake: They both offer snooker with its wildly large tables more common outside the U.S.

There’s plenty of cross-pollination between the venues. Summit folks play at Hillside, and a group from the Zoo sometimes comes uphill for the Wednesday tournament. Lots of people travel to 4Bs in Ballard or the Red Onion Tavern for weekly games.

But they’ve found a special blend of competition, respect, and friendliness at Summit. This is intentional. Adel, who started the tournament, recognized that he could set a welcoming tone from the start. When people like Katy and Brendan showed enthusiasm, he brought them in as leaders.

“When people get involved, at some point they try to say, ‘No it’s mine’, or stop people from getting more involved. It’s something I’m very against. I promote that we’re a team.”

“We’ve created this sense of community, family, healthy competition and love for the game.”

“Huge credit to Sam [one of Summit’s owners] because he’s such a people person and an amazing individual. He’s an amazing person who made this possible. The love that he showed us, we’re giving it back to Summit.”

Sam and the staff at Summit take care of the pool folks, though Summit is not strictly a pool bar.

“They keep it nice,” said Luis. “They re-felt the table every six months or so. It’s a small table but a good table.

It’s a 7-footer, often called a “bar box” because it’s small enough to fit in most bars. Hillside has an 8-foot table and a professional is nine.

“It makes pocketing balls easier but the position more difficult,” said Ykaalo. In the more confined space, “more can go wrong and you can’t anticipate what will go wrong.”

“It’s a little quirkier here,” said Parker. “There are interesting things about the environment.”

“Like the corner over there,” he said, nodding to the side of the table closest to the bar where folks contort themselves to avoid bumping the bar with their cue.

And the tournament is often single-elimination — lose and you’re out.

A traditional tournament setup, focused on sorting by skill in the most pure way, might try and avoid this randomness.

“It’s anyone’s game here,” said Ykaalo. “Everyone has a chance.”

Added Adel: “It creates an evenness somehow. If you’re very good – scratch, done.”

“You don’t know what will happen because it’s one game and one game only.”

He sees that as an opportunity. “If a new person beats a good player, it will mean a lot that they won and they’ll love the game more.”

It’s a game that, like any game, is at its best when it brings people together or offers a diversion.

Said Ykaalo, “I’m a refugee from Tigray. Pool is my thing. It’s the only thing I kept doing for two and a half years before I moved here last year.“

“This was the first place that I came. A friend told me about it and ever since, every Wednesday, I’m here. It was a great introduction to the U.S.”

“Coming here and finding that the pool culture is huge, it was really soothing.”

On March 26, the players will celebrate the tournament’s third anniversary with a special edition. The stakes will be a little higher. There’s a $35 buy-in and Summit will add $100 to the purse. Sam of Summit will be cooking paella out front, too.

Come by, watch some slick shooting, but don’t get hustled.

The Summit Pub is located at 601 Summit Ave E. Learn more at thesummitpub.com.

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

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