"With all the refinancing people are doing," says Ruth Lucchesi, "they are buying the bigger toys, and a pool table is right in that category."
Customers willing to drop thousands of dollars on custom-made pool tables means big business for Ruth and husband Gary, who own custom pool table maker Eastern Billiards in Orlando. Sales are 50% higher than a year ago, they say. By June, they were only six tables off their end-of-the-year sales target of 200 tables.
Their three-person shop works with some of the best master craftsmen and companies in the business, such as AMF Renaissance and Peter Vitalie. They've worked with customer budgets from $1,500 to $40,000.
It doesn't hurt that the Lucchesi family is a big name in billiards. Gary's father started the business in Boston more than 35 years ago. Some of his most famous clients include actors Paul Newman and Art Carney. For a time, Lucchesi Sr. even imported the slate for his tables from a family slate mine in Italy. Gary left Boston in 1995 to expand the business and has grown his own big-name client list, which includes A.J. McLean of the Backstreet Boys and Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper.
HIGH-END TABLES
Table: The Royal Augustan
Manufacturer: AMF Renaissance
Price: $72,000-$76,000
Table: The Lady Shannon
Manufacturer: AMF Renaissance
Price: $34,000-$43,000
Table:: The Chippendale
Manufacturer: AMF Renaissance
Price: $20,000-$40,000
Lap of Luxury
A cross between a lap pool and a spa, SwimEx pools are popular with professional athletes and executives alike. A constant current allows swimmers to swim in place. The pools begin at 18 feet long and 61¼2 feet wide -- with the actual swimming space being 12 by 6 feet. Depths range from 42 to 60 inches.
The Rhode Island-based company has made SwimEx pools for the Florida Marlins baseball team and basketball's Miami Heat and has residential customers throughout Florida.
Price: Starting at $21,900.
The $250,000 Entertainment System
Attorney Jim Ferraro wanted a top-of-the-line home entertainment system for his dream penthouse in Miami's new Segovia Tower, which has been eight years in the making. He started designing his media room -- with help from Stan Beran, owner of Sound Performance in Miami -- five years ago.
Beran, who's designed media rooms for Jennifer Lopez and Oprah Winfrey, chose sophisticated components like Lucasfilm THX amplifiers, Hitachi and Zenith plasma screen TVs, satellite receivers just for music and touch-screen control systems from Audio Design Associates in Mamaroneck, N.Y.
"We didn't accept anything straight out of the box," says Beran. "For Ferraro, we sort of gave it a turbo-boost."
To control all the components, Beran installed an AMX keypad system.
Final price tag on the system: $250,000.
Some of the components:
AMX 10-inch color touch panel: $7,000
THX-certified ADA six-channel amplifier: $2,049
43-inch plasma screen: $8,990
Miller & Kreisel black oak subwoofers, set of three: $6,697
Playing Hard
For those who like to play hard after working hard, Alienware makes turbo-charged gaming systems. The Miami-based company hand-builds its computers using top-of-the-line components from the likes of Microsoft, Intel and Nvidia. It often gets first dibs on components before they hit the market, like Nvidia's latest GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, a super-charged graphics card.
The 7-year-old company, which recently revamped its desktop and laptop product line -- Area-51M -- recently won its 10th Editor's Choice Award from PC Gamer, an industry publication, for its cutting-edge technology, innovative design and customer service.
Alienware will demonstrate its high-performance gaming PCs at the GameRiot pavilion on the Lollapalooza tour scheduled to hit West Palm Beach in early August.
Area-51 (desktop model): $2,099
Service: 1-year 24/7 customer support
Processor: Intel Pentium 4
Motherboard: Intel 875P
Memory: 512MB DDR SDRAM
Hard drive: 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200
Video card: Nvidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB
Sound card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2-6.1
Area-51M (laptop model): $2,496
Service: 1-year 24/7 customer support
Processor: Intel Pentium 4
Chipset: Intel 845E+ICH3M
Memory: 512MB DDR PC-2100
Hard drive: 40GB 5400 RPM ATA100
Video card: ATI Mobility RADEON 900 128MB DDR
Sound card: Sound-Blaster Pro Compatible 3D Audio
Modem: 56K modem with V.92 technology