A Plea to Parents Who Bring Kids to the New Burger Schmurger

You might be aware that Burger Schmurger opens today in the old Bar None spot off Buckner Boulevard. It will do meat from 3-11 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 12 a.m., Friday and Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday. No Tuesday for you! It will be good. I live down the street and am excited about it, but don’t tell Goodfriend I said that. Like, Goodfriend is my wife; Burger Schmurger will be my side piece.

Now we need to have some real talk. I’ll put this as gently as I can: if you have young children, and if you bring those little hellions to Burger Schmurger, and if you give them a fistful of quarters to run amok on the pool table while you obliviously pour beer and rosé down your necks, I swear to you I will turn your table over and attack you like a chimpanzee on bath salts. As Dwight Schrute taught us, the eyes are the groin of the head, and I’ll be coming for yours with my teeth.

I am going to rank the current Dallas pool tables that I can think of off the top of my head, based on criteria that I refuse to disclose and which criteria are inconsistently applied throughout this ranking. Here we go:

1. The Goat
2. Lakewood Landing
3. Milo’s
4. That place across from Lochland’s whose name keeps changing
5. One Nostalgia
6. Bryan Street
7. Ships
8. Barfly
9. The house across the street from me where the guy dedicated his whole living room to his pool table
10. The Old Crow

As of today, that ranking has a new entry at the top spot: Burger Schmurger.

Burger Schmurger has a 7-foot Valley Dynamo Panther table. It is perfectly level. The rails are correct. The felt is without blemish. The cues are straighter than Tom Cruise at a Scientology sock hop, and their tips are in good condition. The balls gleam. There is sufficient space around the table so that you never have to shorten your stroke or execute a massé shot to avoid bumping your stick into a wall. A game costs $1.50. In other words, this is a near virgin table that—if responsibly used and properly maintained—will provide years of entertainment and opportunity for wagering at Burger Schmurger.

You know who is going to screw that up? Your damn kids. Unlike the other places on my list, Burger Schmurger is a bar(ish) joint where you will likely bring your damn kids. Left unsupervised, your damn kids will use their sticky little hands to sling the pool balls across the table as if they were playing air hockey. Those balls are going to fly off the table and pick up dings that make me turn into a chimp. And how, exactly, will your damn kids choose to destroy that felt? Will they set their soft drinks on the table’s edge so that they can strategically spill them? Or will they clumsily try to strike a cue ball with an unstable, small-handed bridge and drive the stick into the felt? I promise you: however they do it, your damn kids, left unshackled, will ruin that lovely pool table.

So please—pretty please with a Grand Marnier floater on top—don’t use the Burger Schmurger pool table to babysit your kids. While you’re getting your barger on and your drank on, griping about that bad line call at LCC or bragging about that triple net lease on Knox you negotiated, if your damn kids get restless, send them out to play in the alley behind the restaurant. There’s a house next door that always has a huge travel trailer parked in its driveway. Tell your damn kids to go investigate. Or, better yet, send your damn kids across Buckner Boulevard. The Bath House and White Rock Lake are a short walk away. Adventure awaits!

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and have a blessed burger.

P.S.: If the threat of me eating your face like a crazed chimp doesn’t motivate you to ride herd on your kids, you should know that I basically grew up in the back room of the old Knox Street Pub in the early ’80s, totally unsupervised, hustling adults on the pool table there. You don’t want your damn kids to turn out like I did.