BREAKING TRADITION : POOL HALLS ATTRACTING PLAYERS OF ALL AGES.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

The decor is distinctly upscale, the air usually is smoke-free, and the atmosphere is surprisingly kid-friendly.

This is not your father's pool hall.

In fact, today's players congregate in billiard halls, not pool rooms. As the name preference shifted, so has the image of the game, even though players still have to knock 15 striped and solid-color balls across a felt-covered table into one of six pockets.

In the Santa Clarita Valley, one establishment hosts children's birthday parties. The Newhall-Saugus Pool League has 16 teams, most of them affiliated with the various billiard halls. And the customers who patronize businesses like Cue Stix Billiards and Santa Fe Billiards include local college students and couples on dates.

There's even an international effort under way to get billiards accepted as an official sport in the Olympic Games.

Suddenly, the pastime that Professor Harold Hill warned would bring ``trouble with a capital T'' to upright River City, Iowa, seems downright respectable, and at the same time hip. Apparently, ``The Music Man'' was mistaken.

Those in the billiards world credit the 1986 film ``The Color of Money,'' in which Tom Cruise plays a cocky pool hustler opposite mentor/rival Paul Newman, as a factor in increasing the popularity of billiards.

Jonathan Resh, managing editor of Billiards Digest, said the movie sparked a trend with staying power, rather than a passing fad. According to a national survey in June by the Billiard & Bowling Institute of America, the number of billiard players has grown by 20.2 percent since 1987.

``The middle and upper-middle class of America, who maybe played on pool tables as children, their interest was renewed. To accommodate that, there began this phenomenon of the upscale, `yuppie' pool room,'' Resh said.

``People wanted to play pool, but not in the archetypical hustler environment,'' said Resh, whose Chicago-based magazine has a circulation of 20,000.

The game has gained popularity among women and those in the higher-income brackets, said Resh, who reviewed contest entries for the magazine's annual list of the top 10 billiards establishments in the country.

Santa Fe Billiards, a Soledad Canyon Road hall owned by Corey Micale, ranked No. 5 on the Billiards Digest survey last October.

``Rooms like Corey's are doing a great deal toward furthering billiards' acceptance among the public, because a lot of people still frown on the game - (they think) it's a gamblers' game, it's a denizen of ill behavior and alcohol,'' Resh said.

Santa Fe Billiards, Resh added, ``is a nice place to play pool. It's very clean and an enjoyable place to be,'' he said. ``A pool hall doesn't have to be seedy or dark.''

Micale rents his 6,000-square-foot hall, with a dozen pool tables, out for children's parties, a strategy he felt would be profitable in the family-oriented, middle-class-to-affluent Santa Clarita Valley.

Parents initially are skeptical about bringing their kids into a pool hall that serves alcohol. But Santa Fe prohibits smoking indoors and offers air hockey and games of nylon-tip darts for the younger crowd, Micale said. An agreement with The Alamo, an adjoining Mexican restaurant, allows his patrons to order food from their menu.

``The adults were saying, `this is a really nice place,' '' he said. ``They have a chance to relax and have a drink, while their kids have a good time.''

Rick Rowsey, owner of Cue Stix Billiards, tries to draw a wide cross-section of customers to his Bouquet Canyon Road business.

College students who present their campus ID can rent a pool table for $3 an hour during weekday afternoons, Rowsey said. He keeps short cue sticks on hand for kids who come to shoot pool with their parents at the newly remodeled, 10-table establishment, which he hopes to expand to 17 tables and 3,900 square feet once a neighboring storefront becomes vacant.

Cue Stix also features a pro shop, televisions, a jukebox, pinball machines and video games, and serves beer, sodas and snacks.

``You see a lot of people taking their dates here,'' Rowsey said. ``Saturday and Sunday afternoons, we see a lot of families in here.''

Things sure have changed since Herbert Simpson opened the Trails Tavern, a San Fernando Road bar with two pool tables, in the late 1960s. Simpson, who sold the bar a couple years back, also founded the Newhall-Saugus Pool League in 1972.

``When we first came out here, nobody even owned their own cue stick,'' recalled his wife, Marge.

Now the league has a sprinkling of coed teams and a few all-women teams, said Simpson, 70. ``Sometimes they make a sweep of the men. There are some very fine lady shooters in this town,'' said Simpson, whose daughter, Kelly, is a professional billiards player and owns a 21-table pool hall in Charlotte, N.C.

The four-member teams play league matches in nine bars and pool halls across the Santa Clarita Valley during a nearly year-round season. ``There are some beautiful pool rooms up here,'' Simpson said.

Jason Akst, spokesman for the Billiard Congress of America, the Iowa City, Iowa, organization that is the sport's official sanctioning and archival body, said the International Olympic Committee took steps this summer that could recognize billiards as an official Olympic sport.

``You probably won't see billiards in the Olympics until 2004,'' Akst said. ``But I would say we're on a fast, solid track to become an Olympic sport.''

Perhaps the new breed of players and halls are to credit. ``The image that we've been battling for decades is the smoky, crime-ridden pool halls on the wrong side of town,'' Akst said.

And, food for thought now that autumn is upon us: Pool, Akst said, ``tends to be a sport that grows more popular as the weather grows more inclement.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--ran in SAC only--color) Owner Corey Micale st arts a game of eight ball at Santa Fe Billiards in Canyon Country.

(2--color in AV only) ``The adults were saying this is a really nice place. They have a chance to relax and have a drink while their kids have a good time.''

- Corey Micale

Santa Fe Billiards owner

John Lazar/Special to the Daily News