A beauty of billiards is that it has no singular, global definition. Played around the world, the game has morphed and been shaped by local customs, cultures and personalities, assuming various rules and strategies and relying on different types of equipment, depending on where it’s played. The sport encompasses everything from goriziana (Italy) to keglebillard (Denmark), from kaisa (Finland) to sinuca (Brazil), from yotsudama (Japan) to pyramid (Russia). The sport’s celebrities, too, span the globe, forming a transcontinental pantheon of billiards all-stars: Efren Reyes (Philippines), Earl Strickland (US), Pankaj Advani (India), Thorsten Hohmann (Germany), Ronnie O’Sullivan (United Kingdom), Mika Immonen (Finland), and many more.
R.A. “Jake” Dyer
One country, however, that receives little mention is Costa Rica. Perhaps, that is a grave oversight. Certainly, that is the conclusion of R.A. “Jake” Dyer, the preeminent pool author (The Hustler & The Champ; Hustler Days), historian, blogger, and former documentary filmmaker. Back in 1991 or 1992, Dyer returned to Costa Rica, where had lived for three years shooting pool among “some of the country’s greatest players” to make a movie about Luis “Pichitas” Calderon, the “best hustler, the best pool player in the world.” Shot on Super-8 film in black-and-white and running about 23 minutes, Pichitas: A Costa Rican Pool Documentary is Dyer’s personal quest to find and film the legendary Pichitas, a billiards player of near mythic status. The full film is available to watch on Vimeo here.
The documentary features Dyer as director, interviewer, and Spanish translator, intimately talking with the denizens of “Center Pool,” a (now-closed) pool hall in the market district of San Jose that had 50 billiards tables and was reputedly a frequent destination for Pichitas.
Interspersed between the interviews is footage of this “wonderful cast of characters, some of whom were vaguely disreputable,” with the popular Cumbia tune “Juana La Cubana” by Fito Olivares playing in the background. Dyer also packs into this billiards documentary some sociological history, comparing the role pool halls played in the lives of turn-of-the-century heterosexual American bachelors to the role they play for men in Costa Rica today. “Most the men are married, but you wouldn’t know it from their behavior. They are here literally all day…they are not unlike the lifelong bachelors that one time thrived in the US.” [1]
Of course, the great irony of the documentary is that Dyer set out to “look for Pichitas and make a movie about him because he is legendary. That’s what this movie is about, that’s what we’re going to do.” But as the film progresses, Dyer is unable to locate Pichitas. One starts to wonder if he is like the Yeti of Nepal, el fantasma de Costa Rica. Even Dyer expresses doubts (or at least frustration), saying, “They’ve told me Pichitas is here, Pichitas is there…I have no idea, I can’t find him anywhere.”
For fans of documentaries like Searching for Sugar Man, there is an expectation that the denouement will result in the big reveal. But, it never happens, at least not for the audience. The movie technically ends with Dyer running off camera to pursue a possible sighting. But, in the epilogue, Dyer returns, triumphantly announcing that he did finally meet Pichitas, though the moment is not captured on film. As Dyer subsequently explains, “We saw Pichitas. He was everything we promised. He was the best hustler, the best pool player in the world. He was a great guy…but we ran out of film, sorry, that’s the breaks…maybe next time.”
“Sorry, that’s the breaks?!” It is arguably the cruelest of endings, a final vanishing act, a punch line at the audience’s expense. Or, maybe it’s the perfect capstone to this supernatural quest. If one goes online today, the only mention of Luis “Calderon” Pichitas is by Dyer. There are no other stories, no images, no artifacts.
In a December 2009 blog post, Dyer wrote that Pichitas was like a “trickster figure,” a legend shared through oral tradition. He added:
I also recognized in each case messages about the “culture” of the pool room, in that they would communicate lessons about such matters as gambling etiquette, attach value to certain sorts of figures and heap ridicule on others, and define the language common to members of the “tribe”.
So, who was Pichitas? Where is he now? Does he exist? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. I only know my passion for pool just got a little stronger watching the wonderful documentary Pichitas.
