Word: bingos
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...Bingo and drag queens. Where, you might understandably ask, did this ever come from? Seattle, as it turns out. In the early 1990s, as director of development for the Chicken Soup Brigade, a support organization for people with AIDS, Judy Werle was charged with dreaming up fundraising events. "I checked out places where people gathered and spent money, because I figured if you had that, you could redirect the money to a good cause," says Werle. That logic led her to bingo halls. "They were totally full of obsessed people," she says. "But it was also extremely boring...
...Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, drag queens dressed as nuns, hosted the Brigade's first gay bingo (the game's original name), and the line wrapped around the block. The charity quickly scheduled more. In the beginning, the crowd was almost entirely gay, but slowly straight people started showing up - good news for the Brigade, now part of the Lifelong AIDS Alliance, which was eager to expand its donor base...
...success attracted the attention of other AIDS non-profits. A few years ago, a TV director named Glenn Holsten attended one event and was so touched by a family who had come to bingo to celebrate the life of a son they had lost to AIDS that Holsten decided to make a documentary. The result, Gay Bingo, released in 2001, shows the diversity of the players: gay, straight, old, young, black, white, single, taken. "The cliché is true," says Holsten. "It brings people together from all walks of life...
...From there, interest in the game only grew. It spread to Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles. And then even farther afield - to Utah, Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming. At some point along the way, drag queen bingo went commercial, with bars, clubs and restaurants hosting games as a way to draw in crowds and turn a profit. Then it went to cable: in Season 2 of Sex and the City, Carrie and the girls visit their favorite bar, which hosts drag queen bingo on Saturday nights. In New York City, you can now find a game practically...
...biggest games, though, are still AIDS fundraisers. Once a month, people pack the 800-seat Durham Armory in North Carolina for family-friendly, alcohol-free drag bingo nights led by BVD (bingo-verifying diva) Mary K. Mart. The crowd is about half gay and half straight, and on a typical night, $10,000 is raised for the Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina. In 2002, when the Alliance ran its first game, "we thought that if we got a hundred people and a thousand dollars, it would be a miracle," says John Paul Womble, director of development. The event sold...