Ya' Got Trouble Right Here ....

We have mused about this picture for some time - mostly trying to be cute and clever about the caption.  "Entertainment Nightly" was one we liked but discarded. 

We figured out from another picture that the setting for this establishment was about where Sweet Temptations is now as we found another picture with a "billiards" sign in it hanging on one of the buildings that went flush to the corner.  Aside from the "fine art" decorating the place and the lack of electric lighting (oil lamp over the table and right inside the door to the viewer's left over the fellow's hat), this is pretty hard to date.  We do think that it is from about 1910 or before but after the "Remember the Maine" incident as that is the subject of the first picture on the top left. (The second appears to be the Brooklyn Bridge - but it could be any bridge).

We like the details in all this. 

The young fellow with the horn appears to be playing a 1906 C.G. Conn and Co. mellophone - something of a french horn and we can actually find pictures of this instrument here and there.  We dug around a bit and found that the Conn factory, over in northern Indiana, made a lot of versions of this instrument starting about 1890 and this one, the "right handed" one, showed up just about then.

If we were to guess, we would suppose that the fellow holding the cue is this lad's father (similar hats) but there is no way of telling and it doesn't matter much anyway other than the issue of a boy being in a pool hall/billiard room.  As Harold Hill of the music man would say "ya' got trouble".....