Bingo’s end Harmless? Yes. Against the law? Yes BY SAM PFEIFLE

Once upon a time, yours truly lived in the West End. On cold nights, no club was closer than the Free Street Taverna, so it was doubly fortunate when I stumbled upon Chicky Stoltz’s Sunday bingo. What a blast. First, at 8 p.m., everyone in the place would watch The Simpsons on the little TV in the corner over the bar. Somehow, it’s much funnier with 30 other people. Laughter’s infectious.

Then we’d all turn our attentions to bingo. Chicky, resplendent in a smoking jacket (this was back in 1999, remember, when smoking was basically encouraged in bars) and holding a martini glass, would turn his little bin round and round, and in a nasally voice dripping with sarcasm call out each number. It’s amazing how little attention you need to pay bingo. You could talk, drink, people watch, and never lose track of your numbers.

Eventually, someone would call out "Bingo!" and saunter up to the head table for verification. Chicky would scour the card like an East German private checking your papers, and a true bingo would receive a prize: Barry Manilow’s greatest hits, Tampons, travel Battleship, all manner of great stuff. I couldn’t stop rallying people to come and check it out. It satiated competitive urges, made Sunday nights interesting, and filled conversational lulls.

My wife (then simply my girlfriend, I believe) and I once won a pregnancy test and had it out on the bar in front of us later in the night. "You going to use that?" the bartender, a woman, asked.

We giggled. Not ready for kids yet!

"Well, I’ll trade you a beer for it."

Deal!

Well, you know how things go. We moved out to the hinterlands of Gray, and I lost track of bingo at the Free Street. But the Free Street didn’t lose track of bingo.

"We used to go and see Chicky host," explains Country Rhodes, "and one night he just didn’t show up, and so me and some friends just started calling bingo from the bar." Then owner Pete Kostopolous nominated then to take over just about straight away, and bingo grew into a full-fledged comedy show: "It’s a cohost kind of thing," explains Rhodes, "with a straight man, etc., a DJ doing music, more audience participation."

Sounds like a blast to me, and I’ve heard any number of people say it’s as funny as it’s ever been. Unfortunately it’s against the law. And now it’s over.

Huh?

Maine State Gaming and Firearms "said it might as well be Texas hold ’em," says Rhodes, "because there’s gambling involved, even though it might have been an 88-cent douche that you could win."

Yes, bingo is a game of chance, just like card games, and games of chance are strictly regulated (see "Hold ’em, Fold ’em," July 16, 2004, by Sam Pfeifle).

"What happens," explains Sergeant William Gomane of the State Gaming office, "if you’re looking at any game of chance, if it’s played in a for-profit establishment, they make money off of selling beer or food," and that makes it illegal.

So, yes, despite the fact that there’s no cover charge, that nobody wins anything of value, and that it’s essentially just an excuse for a comedy act, it is illegal, and the Gaming office told them to stop it. So bingo went away for a while. Then, noticing that non-profits can run games of chance, the bingo guys hooked up with the Haven Project, which was "recently started up," a group that works to end teen drug abuse and homelessness. "Basically, it’s a bunch of social workers who went out on their own," says Rhodes, "fans of bingo who wanted to keep it going."

They hoped to get a $36-a-month license from the state. But there was another obstacle in the path: "You can’t have beer during a beano game," Gomane says flatly. Even in private establishments, if you can believe it. It may technically be illegal for you and your family to play bingo in your own home if dad’s sucking down a Budweiser in his easy chair.

The crazy thing is, poker and beer can happily coexist. "We do license nonprofit organizations that do have bars — the Elks and your Eagles, social clubs, they’re licensed to have games of chance," says Gomane. But they don’t have bingo — bingo and beer could never be together.

And, hey, what about all those bars that are for-profit and have trivia contests? Well, "trivia is considered skill," says Gomane, "any game of skill they can do: darts, pool, that kind of thing."

Why can’t you drink and play bingo?

"Probably it’s more of a family-type game," theorizes Gomane. Then he goes on to the larger picture: "These games of chance are designed for organizations to make money to give back to the community, not for for-profit establishments to make money off nonprofit organizations." Hmmm. That sounds like what bingo was doing, no?

As an outside observer, I asked Gomane, does it make sense to you that it’s illegal for a free game of bingo to be played in a bar?

He hedges: "The state’s rules are designed over a long period of time and they work for the majority of the public," he says. "It’s just the law. And remember, for every new law you put on the books, you have to have oversight, and it gets to be very expensive." Gomane only has two inspectors to cover the entire state.

So the question becomes: How did anybody notice bingo in the first place?

"There’s a theory," says Rhodes, with some deflation, "that the slightly offensive porno flyer that I put around, that somebody might have fingered us because of that." Ouch.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com