These pictures brought back a ton of memories.

My grandparents own a building in downtown Cairo and one of their tenants since the 1950's is a seedy pool hall. The hall was the bane of my grandmother’s existence for as long as I can remember. She essentially associated everything that is wrong with society with that place. In my beloved grandmother’s eyes “El Biliardo”, as she called it, was a symbol for unpaid rent, unsavoury characters, womanizing, alcohol abuse and illegal gambling.

As a teenager, playing pool with my friends was the ultimate sign of cool. We used to sneak out in the middle of the afternoon and hit a nearby hall. We were pretty much the only people in there and there was nothing seedy about that particular place. In fact, it was well-lit, clean and catered to well-to-do suburban dads. Our only sin was getting high on too many Diet Coke’s.

But, no matter. We were at El Biliardo and were fucking hip.