Lifestyle
No turf wars, no sexism: Meet the queer Gen Z women giving billiards a rebrand in L.A.
In the summer of 2023, Alix Max, new to town with a cigarette in their mouth, was shooting pool on the patio of 4100 Bar in Silver Lake. They were pretty good, too — good enough to catch the eye of two regulars, Andrea Lorell and Julianne Fox, who recruited them to join their practice group. Their proposal was simple: “We have this group chat, and we play together and get better. The goal is to beat men at pool.”
It’s a plotline that could be lifted from the classic billiards film “The Hustler”: an up-and-coming pool prodigy, James Dean-cool, comes to town and gets seduced by the green-felted world of dive bar pool — an aspiring pool shark meet-cute over an ashtray. A cherished motto Max introduced to the group: “Pool is blue-collar golf.”
The pool night was born after Andrea Lorell, pictured, and other players kept experiencing hostility around the sport at other bars.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The pool-playing group, which started as a group chat titled “Women in STEM,” was composed of pool amateurs, usually young women Julianne “drunkenly met” at 4100 Bar who had a burgeoning interest in pool. Soon, the group chat mutated into a tournament series and community titled “Please Be Nice.” If billiards has the reputation of being a pastime for gamblers, hustlers and hanger-oners, the female-centric biweekly pool tournament at 4100 Bar offers a friendly, supportive alternative. “I don’t know if the goal necessarily was to build community, but it was a natural byproduct,” says Fox. The tournament is both a party and competition where women practice pool, trade tips and compete in an encouraging environment. It was created as an antidote to the prickly, male-dominated world of dive bar pool — all the exhilaration without the bickering turf wars with bar regulars.
Julianne Fox tallies the score.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The founders, Lorell and Fox, began shooting pool at 4100 Bar in April 2023 and were bonded by their mutual hunger for the game. Growing up as an only child, Lorell spent hours playing on her aunt’s pool table. As an adult, she traveled across the country for work, always seeking out pool halls to “find a good hang.” She’s since joined a league and even played in a tournament in Las Vegas, where her team won the Sportsmanship Award. The team that knocked her out was disqualified in the next round. On the patio, she details the melodrama so amusingly that her love for the game is infectious — almost romantic.
“It’s a community cheering for each other and seeing each other get good,” says co-founder Andrea Lorell.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Until recently, Lorell lived in a cluttered studio apartment with a pool table beside her bed. She jokes being a pool shark is her dream job. “I give myself a little pep talk before important matches: ‘You’re the greatest pool player in the world,’” she says, laughing with a cigarette in hand. For her, the intention of “Please Be Nice” is to make pool accessible to young women: “It’s a community cheering for each other and seeing each other get good. It expedites people’s learning.”
Julianne Fox, a co-founder, says the tournament also operates as a workshop: “If you’ve never shot a pool ball before, come through. We’ll metaphorically or literally hold your hand.” It’s not about showing up the boys, even if that still happens. “I think it’s even more fun to learn the game to play with your girls,” says Fox. “I want to win, but I also want my opponent to have fun,” she adds, emphasizing the competition’s good-natured energy.
Pool tables in Los Angeles can be hostile places. “I’ll walk into a random bar in Koreatown, and there’s a pool table, and a bunch of older men are playing. You walk in, and they assume you’ll be bad at it,” says Max.
Adds Lorell, “They’re either giving you tips or checking you out, so it’s uncomfortable.”
Players say there’s a good-natured energy at “Please Be Nice” tournaments.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Molly Sievert, another “Please Be Nice” player, has also experienced sexism while playing pool. She explains that people assume her interest in pool stems from wanting to impress a father or boyfriend. She began shooting pool at 21 in bars across cities and is still baffled by men’s casual condescension toward female pool players. ”Men have never complimented me on my defensive shots because they think it’s an accident,” she says. When they inevitably lose to Sievert, they toss it up to a bad beat rather than their opponent’s skillset. She won her first tournament at “Please Be Nice” and has been a frequent competitor ever since. She’s a proud critic of 4100 Bar regulars — she says people keep walking into her cue stick, throwing off her shots, and not apologizing. “I always have that little part of me that is like, would you do that to a man?”
Sievert explains a personal theory that women take naturally to pool. Above all, it’s a game of brokering one’s circumstances, calling one’s shot, and making one’s own luck. It’s the type of hazards and presentiment that feel inherent to womanhood. Bravado, Molly argues, doesn’t serve the game. “Men will say, ‘I can make shots. I’m a shot maker.’ Many women are like, ‘I like the side pockets and weird angles. I don’t like the long table shots. I don’t like hitting it real. I like to think about the interaction of all the balls.”
April Clark, a comedian and pool player, chalks up antagonism at pool tables in L.A. to a scarcity issue. “When I first got sucked into playing pool, I was living in New York City; there were so many bars with pool tables.” For Clark, the game’s appeal is the spontaneous encounters with strangers that pool invites. The fewer the tables, the worse the ecosystem, the worse the vibe, Clark argues.
Jaden Levinson, left, and Taylor Garcia watch the action.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
It is often remarked that pool halls look like morgues; the dimly lit blue-felted table inside 4100 Bar is no exception. The competitors are in a trancelike state, building a stratagem. The pool tournaments often run till the bar closes at 2 a.m. The players take breaks to socialize, buy drinks and watch each other play.
Part of the success of “Please Be Nice” is tied to the recent renaissance of 4100 Bar, which transformed from a neighborhood dive into a Silver Lake nightlife institution thanks to TikTok. Mouse, a bartender at 4100 Bar for eight years, explains the bar’s rise began in 2020 when it became a popular spot for outdoor drinking during COVID restrictions.
Participants of all levels are welcome — even those who’ve never shot a pool ball before.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Now, it’s not unusual to have a run-in with a celebrity at 4100 Bar on a weekend with its new reputation as a charmingly sleazy playground for the internet-famous. Due to TikTok, the bar gained a cult following in Europe and Japan, with tourists flocking to the bar to be photographed in front of the avocado-green wall, Mouse explains. “Foreigners come here just to take photos with the 4100 sign and won’t even order,” he says. “People come and spend 100 bucks on the photo booth and not even get a drink.” The wall, he notes, closely resembled the now-infamous shade of neon green from Charli XCX’s “Brat” album.
For Lorell, the dive bar exists as a third space. “If you spend four out of seven days seeing the same people, you’re not just bar friends on that point; you’re chosen family.”
Diana Brennan sizes up the playing field.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Rumors swirl that 4100 Bar might close in the coming year with the expansion of Erewhon. “Over my dead body,” Fox exclaims.
For the future of “Please Be Nice,” Lorell and Fox hope the pool-loving community develops even further. “We would love to solidify a beginner-centric event since that’s where this all started, learning pool with women and nonbinary people who were too scared to try it at a normal bar,” says Fox. “We hope to continue to train up the troops and run every single table in L.A.,” she adds with a smirk.
There’s a beloved pool adage from “The Hustler,” spoken by the protagonist, Fast Eddie Felson: “Even if you beat me, I’m still the best.” Fox thinks the quote doesn’t align with her attitude toward pool. “There’s something Andrea says all the time when someone beats her, she says: ‘I don’t lose to losers. So you better win the whole thing.’”
Entrepreneur David Huang tests out a VR headset while conducting demonstrations of the social dance lesson app Dance Guru at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, Calif., June 17, 2026.
Chloe Veltman/NPR
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Chloe Veltman/NPR
Wedding season is in full swing, bringing with it a familiar sense of dread for anyone who fears the dance floor.
But relief may finally be at hand with the help of a new app, Dance Guru, and a virtual reality (VR) headset.
The social dance instruction app transports users to a spacious, digital dance studio. Waiting inside is a computer-generated coach: a handsome, male avatar wearing a shirt open to his navel. He speaks with a slightly gravelly English accent.
“Watch me now,” he instructs at the start of a waltz lesson — which NPR tried out at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, Calif., an annual conference showcasing the latest developments in virtual and augmented reality.
The avatar then demonstrates a basic box step.
From there, the lesson becomes interactive. The coach tells the user to hold his hand while an electric pinging sound tracks the student’s foot placement.
“One, two, three, four, five, six,” the virtual teacher counts down.
When the user stumbles, he remains remarkably patient. “Do not worry, foundations take time. Let’s try that again. Work on grounding your steps more intentionally.”
Solving the beginner’s dilemma
Dance Guru creator David Huang said he came up with the idea for the app a couple of years ago out of frustration.
“I always wanted to learn to dance and I was always terrible at it,” Huang said. “And I always ended up stopping midway through the lessons.”
He soon realized that many beginners hit the exact same roadblocks.
“Private lessons are too expensive, and you feel like you’re always forgetting the dance steps,” Huang said. “You cannot find a partner to dance with. So I figured maybe I can create something like this.”
The Dance Guru platform currently offers tutorials in salsa, bachata, waltz, and cha-cha, in both lead and follow modes. To make the digital instruction feel authentic, Huang used motion-capture technology to record the movements of real-life dance teachers — with their permission.
Building on the legacy of online tutorials and video games
Dance Guru belongs to a small but growing wave of apps using VR to demystify social dance. At a nearby booth, conference attendee Victor Chen is testing out a competing app called Trip the Light. It currently offers salsa lessons, as well as freestyle options, where a user can dance with a partner without having to learn specific steps.
Trip the Light’s booth at the Augmented World Expo included posters of the app’s virtual instructors. Real-life performers, who gave Trip the Light permission to motion capture their movements, were used as a basis for these avatars.
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“A lot of times when you’re trying to learn a choreography, it’s watching a YouTube video and you have to pause it, rewind, and play it,” Chen said. “If you were to have a virtual avatar dancing in front of you and correcting for any parts that you missed, it might be a lot easier.”
Interactive video games like Dance Dance Revolution and Just Dance, and YouTube tutorials have been helping people improve their skills in private for years. But those games are mostly aimed at solo players. Unlike the new generation of immersive VR apps, they cannot simulate the mechanics or confidence required for partner dancing on a live dance floor.
The reality check
But this kind of app won’t work for every dancer.
“Everyone learns a little bit differently. And so unless you have a game that has lots of different ways of teaching, you’re going to have things that work for some people and don’t work for others,” said Ariana Katana, a trained contemporary dancer and dance content creator who’s active on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms. “Also, it’s hard to dance with a headset on.”
And then there’s the issue of not being able to physically feel a virtual partner’s hand or shoulder while dancing with them. Patrick Ascolese, the creator of Trip the Light, said the experience could become more tactile in the future. “Haptic suits and wearables will be coming, but I think we’re a little away from that,” he said.
Ascolese said even with their limitations, immersive tools like Trip the Light have immense potential as judgment-free training grounds — giving reluctant dancers the baseline confidence they need to eventually step onto the dance floor with real partners in the real world, including at weddings.
“Just like anything else, practice makes perfect,” said Ascolese. “So the more time you spend in VR with a virtual partner, it works towards helping you get over that social hurdle. We are teaching you the moves that you have to do in order to go out and have fun.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited the broadcast and digital versions of this story. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
For half a century, Deidre Hall has taken on every kind of disaster in the drama-packed town of Salem, Ill., as a star of “Days of Our Lives.”
There was the time — actually, it happened twice — when her character, Dr. Marlena Evans, was famously possessed by the devil and even levitated.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Or the time a serial killer, who was actually Marlena under hypnosis, seemed to kill several beloved characters. The long-running show’s storylines have become legendary, and in March, while promoting “Hail Mary,” actor Ryan Gosling even gave Hall a shout-out, admitting he was a fan, praising the hard work of soap opera actors and calling her an “OG acting inspiration.”
But Hall’s real life in Santa Monica is much quieter than her character’s, and she likes it that way.
“When I bought my house in Santa Monica, I didn’t realize how great it would be to live near Montana Avenue,” says Hall, 78, about the popular shopping spot. Every day, she walks to the main street with her golden retriever, Riley, and enjoys Pilates, art and good food along the way. “The owners of the Farms Market even keep dog biscuits, so guess where the dog wants to go every time we walk — the Farms, of course,” she says, laughing.
When she isn’t filming the daily soap opera, which airs on Peacock, Hall enjoys raising monarch butterflies, exploring the shops and restaurants on Montana, and hosting movie nights at home with her two sons.
Here’s what a perfect day in L.A. looks like for her.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
7 a.m.: Breakfast and dog walk
I usually kick off my day with a protein shake, feed our golden retriever and take her out for a walk. She’s a phenomenal girl. When we adopted her, her name was Riley, but I did think about naming her after Mrs. Hughes from “Downton Abbey.”
10 a.m.: Church and garden time
After I walk the dog and go to church, I like to spend some time in my yard. I’m not a natural gardener, but I really enjoy it. I started raising monarch butterflies because my identical twin sister, who played my twin on the show, planted a butterfly garden. Monarchs are amazing because they are transitional. Every year, they travel from Mexico to southern New England, but it’s getting harder for them. Their numbers have dropped by about 80%. To help, I plant milkweed, which is what they need to survive. I buy my milkweed from the Staghorn Garden on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. Julie, who owns the nursery, is delightful and has a wide variety of milkweed. The monarchs always seem to find my garden. Julie was raising some caterpillars too, and she cared a lot about them. We talked about how important it is to help the butterflies. That’s why I do this. Sometimes I get milkweed with eggs already on it, and Julie knows her butterflies are going to a good home.
1 p.m.: Walk to Montana Avenue for some lunch
I live near Montana and love taking long walks, going to Pilates and trying out the great restaurants nearby, like R+D Kitchen and La La Land. I’m a big fan of the waffles at the Courtyard Kitchen. Just a few days ago, I had a chicken salad on raisin bread with an Arnold Palmer, and it was delicious. It is right on Montana and has a nice outdoor seating area. It’s one of my favorite spots. La La Land always has a long line in the morning, which is perfect if you want coffee. They serve coffee, doughnuts, croissants and avocado toast. There’s plenty of outdoor seating, and you can even bring your dog.
2 p.m.: Peek inside a clock shop
There’s a small clock shop on Montana Avenue that’s closed on Sundays, but if you walk by, you’ll see all kinds of clocks — standing, table and wall clocks. The owner is great at fixing them. Once, I bought a wall clock from MacKenzie-Childs, but it didn’t work. And I was really upset because it matched everything else on my countertop. I brought it to the owner and said, “I love this, but I can’t make it work.” He fixed it right away. His name is John, but I call him Geppetto. And we all know why. He really does have a magic touch.
2:30 p.m.: Visit a neighborhood art gallery
Ten Women Gallery is run by 10 artists, all of whom show their work there. I was drawn to some watercolors there, bought a few cards and spoke with one of the artists. She told me, “You seem to love watercolors,” and mentioned that the artist who painted them, Pamela Harnois, lives in Los Angeles and teaches nearby. I got Pamela’s name and found out she taught at the Brentwood Art School. I was so inspired by her gift that I started taking private lessons with her on Saturdays. That gallery is where I discovered my love for watercolor painting.
3 p.m.: Grab some ice cream at Rori’s
The other day, my longtime girlfriend wanted to get ice cream and told me, “We are walking to Rori’s Artisanal Creamery.” It’s a small shop on Montana near Lincoln. They make everything themselves, using local ingredients from grass-fed cows with no added hormones. The place is family-owned and probably has the healthiest ice cream you’ll find. They switch up their flavors often, but my favorite is the salted caramel.
6 p.m.: Family dinner and movie night at home
R+D Kitchen is always packed, so my sons, who are 31 and 33, do the cooking. They come over, and together we make salads and cook dinner. There’s a neighborhood grocery store called the Farms, off Montana, a small family-run place that has everything we need. Everyone knows each other there, and people bring their dogs. We try to have movie night every Sunday. Sometimes the day changes, but we always make sure to have one night a week where we cook a meal and sit down as a family. Keeping that tradition has become really important to us. My sons are great cooks, which is funny because they definitely didn’t get that from me. [Laughs]
9 p.m.: Take Riley for one last walk and visit neighbors
After dinner, I take my dog for a walk. It’s a great way to meet neighbors. We always go around the same block. We’ve met so many people, and since she’s a golden retriever, she loves meeting everyone.
10 p.m.: News, knitting and bedtime
I am a news junkie, so I usually watch whatever is on the news before I go to bed. I have a long-standing passion for knitting. Lately, though, the news would make me drop a stitch.
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