AsiaLIFE

Traditionally places promote their services as being the best in town, not so at the Tree, which claims to have the worst pool table in the Penh. Words by Mark Bibby Jackson.

“It looks kind of nice,” says Martin Crabtree the owner of The Tree on Street 118, “but you’d need a map to play it.” The Englishman who has run several bars in the capital over the last five years claims that his table is the Portsmouth Town of the pool world. Balls roll in strange directions, the cloth is ripped and even the custom-made, shortened short cues are too long for the cramped conditions. Still, his regular customers are not complaining. “It’s got a bit of a cult following,” he says in typical deadpan. “They call it crazy pool.” Not that Martin is taking any risks placing a disclaimer next to the table informing potential players that it is the worst in town. Martin attributes the table’s condition to the previous owners. He bought it from one of the squatter communities by the railway tracks, while evictions were being made as part of the lakeside development. It had spent a number of years suffering from neglect in a shack.

I ask him how much he paid for it. “100.” “100 riel?” “No, 100 bucks,” he laughs. “I think they saw me coming, but I felt charitable considering they were losing their livelihoods.” Martin is prepared to be equally generous towards the first person who manages to clear up from the break. “They can have free drinks all night,” he offers, while admitting that such a clearance would be a feet beyond Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. Martin would like to enter a Phnom Penh pool league, but feels that other bars would be scared off, fearing his team’s unfair home advantage. "For pool, we are the equivalent of what the Stiff Little Punks are for music,” he says referring to the expat two-man band that played his bar last month.

He has one tip for anyone brave enough to take up this challenge – “don’t play it sober.”

The Tree, 22 Street 118, Tel: 017 3 379.