Honky Tonk Bingo
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Honky Tonk Bingo was introduced in February 2004 to stir up business on slow winter nights at the Wicker Park bar. Owner Bud Eggert says he wanted to play up the bar’s hillbilly aesthetic–it’s in a former gas station–with a game that combined country music and barroom fun. To his mind, bingo was “a redneck thing to do.” He recruited Kevin Brennan, who already hosted live-band karaoke on Fridays, as his caller. Other bars with bingo nights–like Charlie’s Chicago, home of “It’s Just Bingo Bitch!”–had charismatic hosts like drag queens Frida Lay and Lauren Jacobs, and Brennan, an aspiring actor from Texas, decided to come up with a character of his own: Elston Yates, a raunchy Texan hick.
It took him a while to find his audience. “The first year was dark days,” recalls Brennan, who moved to LA last year. “Sometimes I’d be calling bingo to the bartender and the cook.” But the cafe’s large patio area was a big draw in summer, boosting turnout on bingo nights. Summer folk who got turned on to the game became year-round regulars. Word of mouth did the rest.
The local honky-tonk band Fulton County Line provides music every week, and the vibe, says Eggert, is “kind of, shall we say, R rated.” Women who sit near the callers, for example, are likely to be subjected to catcalls and recitations of the joys of O 69, a favorite ball among the bunch. Other balls prompt stories of bingo nights past. “One winter night last year this girl–let’s just describe her as a ‘handsome’ woman–started flashing us,” Briggs recalls with a wince. “Then she came up and wrapped her shirt around my head and gave me the whole Renaissance Faire treatment. Then she stuck one of the balls down her pants.” That ball, O 72, is now known as the “filth ball.”
“Bingo!” cried a man at the back of the room. The crowd stifled a collective groan and took the opportunity to drink. Briggs checked the man’s card and smiled. The game was Texas T, but what this poor schmuck had was more like a lowercase t–the N row and the second horizontal one.
