Astoria pool hall behind the 8 ball

Queens Post

 

While there were no table legends in attendance when THE CITY visited on a recent Monday night, spectators watched a weekly nine-ball tournament as reggaeton music blasted overhead. Long-time patrons were absorbed in games of chess and tavli, or Greek backgammon, in the elevated area surrounding the pool tables, where people socialize until late into the night. Inside the pool table pit, red landline phones hung along the walls, hardwired to call the bar directly.

Nikolakakos stood behind the bar, glancing over at its maroon carpet. “I want to change that carpet now,” he said in a deep raspy voice, articulating his words at a relaxed pace and in a Greek accent. “But I cannot do anything because I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

While the pool hall has five-and-a-half years left on its 35-year lease, Nikolakakos said, the possibility that his business might be forced to shutter has been on his radar since his landlord approached him in 2017, when Innovation QNS’ opponents say developers had started to make their rounds along the five-block strip to explore property purchase options.

“He asked us how much we wanted to finish the lease, and when we told him, he offered us peanuts,” Nikolakakos told THE CITY. “So during the pandemic, when we were closed, we asked them to make us a better deal, but they didn’t want to do anything so we had to go to court.”

Over the 10 months that the billiards cafe was closed due to the city’s shutdown, Nikolakakos accumulated over $340,000 in unpaid rent, fees and taxes, according to court documents.

“Even though it was the pandemic, we got screwed,” Mennis told THE CITY. “If we hadn’t violated the lease, they would have had to keep us for another five years or make us an offer.”

 

Steinway & Sons plays their customers like pianos

 

NY Post


Angry buyers of Steinway pianos say they were duped by salespeople who told them the instruments would increase in value, though they actually plunge in price by 50 percent or more as soon as they leave the showroom floor, according to a report Saturday.

Owners of the ultra-expensive instruments, which cost between $70,000 and $150,000 when new, said salespeople lied to them about what their pianos’ worth in the future, the Hatch Institute reported Saturday.

Customers said they were shown charts of steadily rising prices for new models and were told that buying a Steinway made a better investment than Wall Street stock, the investigative journalism site said.
 
One Steinway brochure, titled “Your Steinway Investment,” claims that “for more than a century and a half, every handmade Steinway has increased in value,” adding that their pianos were “an investment instrument unique in all the world.”

But when owners tried to sell, they learned their Steinways were worth tens of thousands less than what they’d paid, even when the pianos were just months old or had never been played, the site reported.