Board hopes to see no trouble with a capital T at new Allston bar

The Boston Licensing Board decides tomorrow whether to let the owner of a bar being built in Allston buy a billiards table.

In a holdover from the days when authorities worried about the corrupting influences of billiards on young men, the board controls who can offer pool or sippio tables to customers.

Mayor Walsh is seeking state legislation that would get the city out of the billiards-regulating business (along with ending its oversight over fortune tellers, video games and bowling lanes), but until then, the board still gets to play Harold Hill.

Douglas Bacon, who is working to convert the old Shanghai Social Club at 1277 Comm. Ave. into a neighborhood bar called Hopewell Bar and Kitchen, told the board at a hearing this morning that he wants to offer a single billiards table, that it would be coin-operated and cost $1 a game and that, like the rest of the establishment, bar employees would monitor its use to ensure that that game with the fifteen numbered balls doesn't turn into a devil's tool surrounded by young men using words like "swell" and "so's your old man."