Word: bingo
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...librarian supplies directions: take that elevator there, cross the lobby, take another elevator to A-level, and, bingo, you're there. But the second elevator has a sign on it: OUT OF SERVICE. PLEASE USE ELEVATOR AT OTHER END OF BUILDING. The stairs are handier, but they lack directional signs and so lead the uninitiated to an underground garage. Back up one flight, through a vast, empty room, into another room containing only a security desk (unattended), just in time to see the ostensibly broken elevator arrive (let's call it Kira's law: cosmic jokers all come out when...
Steve Blad, in his Mr. Bingo tuxedo and jewelry, surveys the players from the center of the hall. "A quiet crowd," he says, his mouth twisting. "I'll get 'em riled up in a little bit." Mr. Bingo is a master at "riling up" a crowd, and has been ever since he took over a bingo parlor for the Otoe- Missouria Indian tribe near Red Rock, Okla., five years ago. At the time he was a marketing analyst with a three-piece suit and a little money to invest. A few years later, Steve took his "foolishness" to Big Cypress...
Within a year, Steve and his group of investors had turned the Big Cypress bingo parlor into one of the most lucrative bingo halls in the world. He claims he took in $15 million last year, 51% of which went to the Seminoles. He and his investors kept the rest. Steve doesn't like to say precisely how much money he makes because, as he puts it, "there's a lot of poverty on the reservation, and I don't want any hard feelin's. But I made in the six figures, well into the six figures last year...
...Oklahoma parlor was only modestly successful at first. The players seemed bored to Steve. He wondered how to inject a little life into them. He spent six months doing market research on bingo players and discovered, among other things, that most don't play just for prizes. "They play because they're lonely," Steve says. "So I invented a little foolishness to make them happy while they're losing...
...Steve showed up at his bingo parlor in a lavender tuxedo. He put Aretha Franklin's Freeway of Love on the p.a. system and began to dance down the aisles. Steve led a conga line around the hall, stopping every so often to toss dollar bills into the air. The women shrieked and grabbed for them, and when they did, Steve Blad, 5 ft. 8 in., 250 lbs., began gyrating in a pelvic dance. His fat belly rolled, while the women began gyrating right back at him. He kept up this routine. One day they tore off his clothes. "Thank...