A north Fresno pool hall is opening downtown. It matches an iconic mural
For years, a bold mural on Fulton Street in downtown Fresno featured giant pool balls and the name Mecca Billiards.
Countless bar hoppers in the Brewery District have been disappointed to learn the business behind it wasn’t a place to play a few rounds of pool, but a supply and service store.
That’s about to change.
Sierra Billiards & Bar, the pool hall at Sierra and Blackstone avenues, will open a second location at the downtown spot built in the 1920s.
The building at 732 Fulton St. with the Mecca Billiards mural by FranCisco Vargas is across the street from Tioga-Sequoia Brewing Co.’s beer garden.
Right now, the building is an empty shell. The owners of Sierra Billiards plan to turn it into a pool hall much like their existing location.
They hope to be open by the end of the year if all goes as planned.
It will look much like the north Fresno pool hall, with 10 or 11 pool tables — and a really big bar.
“We have the biggest bar in Fresno,” said Tony Singh, co-owner of Sierra Billiards, along with Shamsher Singh and Gill Jiven.
Though there’s no way to independently verify that, it does have a 48-foot bar. It’s stocked end-to-end with all kinds of bottles of alcohol, including some high-end bottles — Glenlivet, Pappy Van Winkle and expensive mezcal.
The downtown Sierra Billiards will hold more.
“It’s going to be bigger than this for sure,” Singh said, with the bar about 50 feet long.
It will serve beer, wine and cocktails.
They also hope to host events in the parking lot, including vendor fairs with food trucks.
Singh took over the north Fresno billiards spot two years ago (it was Diamonds Billiards before, and Blackstone Billiards before that). He often visited Tioga-Sequoia, sipping a beer and eyeing the mural with two co-workers who nudged him to open a pool place across the street. He didn’t feel ready at the time, but he does now.
“A lot of people don’t realize how downtown is alive now,” he said. “Lately Fulton has started growing, and I want to be part of it.”
What about the mural?
Lots of people have worried the mural would be painted over. Vargas’ art is a fixture downtown, including the postage stamp mural he painted on Van Ness Avenue.
It will stay, though Sierra Billiards owners plan to change the word Mecca to Sierra.
“It’s a legacy, so why not?” Singh said.
Sierra Billiards is leasing the building, which for 38 years operated as Mecca’s showroom and service center.
Nanette Stockle still owns it.
She closed the business after her husband Richard “Rick” Stockle Jr. died from the degenerative disease ALS in 2020 at age 67. The business was started by his father (and if the Stockle name sounds familiar it may be because Richard Stockle Sr. ran Richard’s Prime Rib and Seafood for the majority of the Belmont Avenue restaurant’s existence.)
The building started as a stable for horses for stagecoaches and later became an auto warehouse. It was home to Graybar Electric in 1930 and then a printing company.
Richard Stockle Jr. always talked about putting a pool hall in the building that was open to the public in there. But in the hustle and bustle of running a business, it never happened.
The family talked to several businesses interested in leasing the space, but none felt right, Nanette Stockle said. But when she talked to the Sierra Billiards owners, she said it felt right.
“I think it fits right in there,” she said. “It’s exactly what we would like for the area. It’s what the people around us would like for the area, too.”
Plus, it’s what her husband wanted.
“It was my husband’s dream, to one day have a pool hall there,” she said. ”It’s kinda like a dream come true.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2025 at 12:00 AM.
