From raves to drag, classic bingo is finding a new audience in Georgia

It’s time to play bingo.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

“Oh my God, I thought it was magical,” Kim Ganey said a few days after a Bingo Loco show in Atlanta. “As soon as you hear like a wild rumbling and whatever, it gives you this adrenaline rush, like a concert.”

Ganey marked her fifth time attending Bingo Loco decked out in a bright red shirt and glittery earrings that proclaimed “Hello 50s!” This time around, she brought a group of her co-workers.

She’s not the only person who’s found a renewed fervor for bingo, the game typically played in the halls of retirement homes and churches. It’s a stereotype that’s beginning to prove untrue as bingo finds new audiences and earns itself a more energetic reputation with bingo raves, drag bingo and even an at-home board game.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Bingo finds a new audience

Ganey has learned it’s better not to tell her friends and family where she’s bringing them when she buys tickets for Bingo Loco.

“I feel like there used to be kind of a plague if somebody hears bingo,” she said. “They think it’s for old people.”

It’s better that they see the worldwide bingo rave for themselves.

The rave originated in Ireland among three friends working in the nightlife industry who were searching for their next business endeavor. In 2017, the trio was noticing a rising desire in “competitive socializing,” co-founder William Meara said.

“People wanted more of an interactive and immersive experience in a night out. Rather than just watching a show, they wanted to be part of the show,” he said.

The experience they landed on was bingo, a game Meara used to play with his aunt at her local bingo hall.

Bingo offered them the perfect vehicle to center the rave around, he said. It’s an easy game to explain, almost any age can play, it’s scalable for large crowds, and it offers a focal point to build the rest of the entertainment around.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

What began as an expansion into Ireland and the UK has grown into a partnership with venues across Australia and in more than 220 cities in North America.

“I landed in Dallas with a cowboy hat, knocking on doors, trying to get Bingo Loco to venues nationwide,” Meara said. “Americans loved it more than the Australians, the Irish, the Scots combined.”

For those who find themselves at a local Bingo Loco, expect the evening to begin with music and fanfare as the host steps onstage to introduce the game and its simple set of rules. Throughout the evening, the host calls out numbers and punctuates them with pithy jokes, callouts to nostalgic pop culture events and spurts of song and dance.

When someone yells “Bingo Loco,” they haven’t automatically won the prize, which could be anything from an air fryer to a disco bike helmet or brightly colored sex toy. Instead, they must compete for it, whether through a dance battle, an air guitar solo or a karaoke performance.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

“We all want to share in this little victory, but also it’s kind of fun to see someone who, like, is overjoyed that they’ve got a bingo get on stage, do a lip sync battle to Bon Jovi, and then walk offstage with nothing because someone came up and beat them,” he said.

In the U.S., the average age of a Bingo Loco player is 30 and older.

“I guess this organized chaos is way more appealing to people in their 30s who like to dance, but maybe also sit down,” Meara said.

The event attracts girls nights, date nights, bridal showers and people like Ganey, who are just looking for something different to do on the weekend.

The 57-year-old event planner loved the club when she was younger and even worked as a radio DJ, but now she’s less interested in the traditional club scene.

“I try to go somewhere where I can still get that club sense and scene, but without it being the whole tense space of socializing like a club is,” she said.

Bingo Loco is certainly reminiscent of a club environment with its strobe lights, hit songs and dancing, but it wraps up at 8:30 p.m. instead of 2 a.m.

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Credit: Olivia Bowdoin

Entertainment while the sun is up

Some form of bingo has been played for centuries — accounts date back to 16th-century Italy — and cultures around the world have adopted their own variations.

The American version of the game is believed to have found its modern identity and popularity in the 1920s and ’30s with toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe, who was visiting a traveling carnival in Georgia when he saw people playing a game called “beano” with dried beans.

Lowe brought the game back to New York, where he manufactured bingo boards for the U.S. Somewhere along the way, the legend says, a player accidentally yelled “bingo” instead of “beano,” and the name stuck, said Mirek Stolee, a curator at the Strong National Museum of Play.

How it earned its reputation as a game played by older people is a little more of a head-scratcher, Stolee said. The game has been associated with money since its inception in Italy when it was played as a lottery. He theorized that because it became a popular fundraising game, “maybe the demographics of the places using bingo as a fundraiser might skew older.”

Drew Keenan is the executive officer at the Marietta Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2681, which holds bingo daily. He said before COVID-19, they could see 125 to 130 people a night, but after the pandemic that number dropped. While it hasn’t recovered to pre-COVID levels, “we do see it making a comeback,” he said.

Keenan attributes part of that to a recent revision in Georgia’s bingo laws that allows nonprofits more opportunities to operate bingo games and allows them to increase the prize money.

He said in the past six months, more young people have come in to play — people in their 30s, 40s and even 20s.

“People are looking right now for cheap entertainment,” Keenan said. “It’s inexpensive, it’s local ... it takes up the whole evening ... and again, I think it’s as much the money as it is social circle, the socializing.”

For those who would rather play at home, there’s even a new music bingo game available at Walmart, called Hitster Music Bingo, where players race to identify a song and mark their bingo cards.

The game is moving into venues beyond bingo halls, including themed events like R&B bingo at spots like Euro Atlanta in Marietta, music bingo in Smyrna and one of its more popular forms, drag bingo.

Credit: Courtesy of Wild Heaven Beer

Credit: Courtesy of Wild Heaven Beer

Drag bingo started in the early 1990s as a way to fundraise for AIDS support organizations, with drag queens as the hosts. Now, several bars and breweries around Atlanta have recurring drag bingo events, including Atlanta Hard Cider, Wild Heaven Beer and Lips Atlanta.

Drag artist and activist Taylor Alxndr (pronounced Alexander) said drag bingo seemed to pick up after 2020, along with the popularity of drag brunches. Alxndr started hosting Brewhaha Drag Bingo at Finca to Filter’s West End cafe, and when that location closed, they moved it to Wild Heaven Beer’s West End and Toco Hill locations.

Those daytime and early evening performances have become Alxndr’s “bread and butter” in recent years, they said, because it’s “more accessible, more family-friendly and I don’t have to be out at a nightclub until 3 a.m.”

Drag bingo allows for more genuine connections between the host and the audience, Alxndr said, especially compared with club settings where it’s loud and the drinks are flowing. With bingo, Alxndr can call numbers and tell jokes while sharing more of their personality with attendees.

“The connections I’ve made through bingo have been some of the best connections I’ve made in drag over the last six or so years,” she said. “I think that’s an aspect of drag that people don’t really remember or take into consideration. Like yes, it’s glitz and glam and it’s fun, and it’s energy, but it’s really about building community and making connections.”

Drag performer Taejah Thomas was asked to start hosting weekly bingo at drag club Lips Atlanta about three years ago.

Credit: Courtesy of Taejah Thomas

Credit: Courtesy of Taejah Thomas

“We had to figure out a way to explain to our very seasoned generation that this is not your typical bingo,” Thomas said.

After calling the numbers, Thomas and the show’s co-host exchange catty remarks and fire off jokes to keep the crowds entertained. It draws a consistent group of regulars, and they often see between 40 and 80 people at a show every week — the crowds approve of bingo.

“Two things that are always going to be popular when it comes to drag entertainment, in my personal opinion,” Thomas said. “There’s going to be drag brunches, and there’s going to be drag bingo.”