YOO & THE CITY: PALS gather for bingo, Faces worth price of admission

This article was originally published on 4/19/2007

Everything old is new again. So goes a Peter Allen song. It’s a mantra of fashion (fedora pants), cinema (Rocky Balboa) and TV (poker games).

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When they say it’s a drag, that’s a good thing at bingo night at the Knights of Columbus Hall. Among the hosts are Alexandria Martin (left) and Auntie Dote, who calls out the numbers.

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People plyaing bingo night at the Knights of Columbus Hall.

Not so for bingo, the familiar gambling Lite game, which still has far to go before it reaches fad status. The game is associated with stuffy church basements or lounges filled with cigarette smoke. It practically reeks of blue dye.

But, once a month on Buford Highway in DeKalb County, bingo takes on a different look —- of sparkly lip gloss, Tammy Wynette wigs and stiletto heels.

For more than a decade, the so-called PALS bingo night has been an underground pastime mostly to gay folks in Atlanta. The proceeds go to Pets Are Loving Support, or PALS, a nonprofit that takes care of animals belonging to people with terminal illnesses like AIDS or cancer. The first bingo benefit was held in 1996.

The event takes place at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Buford Highway near North Druid Hills Road.

There are some familiar elements: numbered balls, square boards covered with colorful markers and the jubilant cry of “Bingo.”

But this isn’t your mom and dad’s bingo. Here, for example, beads with certain body parts are handed out as mementos. Photos of beloved dames, including Brigitte Bardot, Dolly Parton and Anna Nicole Smith festoon the ticket booth. And the hosts are dressed, well, differently: men possessed by the spirits of Barbara Mandrell and Joan Collins, and their wardrobes —- hoop skirts, frosty wigs and enough makeup to last through a nuclear holocaust.

The event has a different theme each month. Last month was a tribute to actress Joan Crawford, an icon to many gays known for tough love toward her children. (Can you say, “wire hanger?”)

This is how a typical bingo night goes down on Buford Highway.

The door opens at 6:30 p.m. You shell out $20 to play 10 games. You hope you win the top prize —- $500 —- or at least that $20 back. (The sponsors take half your prize money for the PALS charity.)

You grab a draft beer at the bar. Sausages are sizzling in the kitchen.

Soon, entertainment begins. At the most recent event last week, the opening act was a body puppeteer, a drag queen with two life-size dolls attached to a pole. All three, puppeteer and puppets, were dressed in mod-era miniskirts and neon-hued wigs. The three vaudeville artists moved furiously to a Shania Twain song, “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.”

Next came the three hosts, all in drag. There was Bubba D. Licious, a noted drag performer dressed in Kathy Lee Gifford hair, a lime green leisure suit and foot-tall heels; and Alexandria Martin, a persona who weighed twice as much as Bubba and constantly wolfed down hot dogs. Rick Westbrook, the group’s director of operation, was Auntie Dote, who called out the numbers.

Lady luck was present, too. Andrew Palmisano, 25, won two games —- $20 first and then $60.

“Someone might think I’m cheating, but I’m not, ” he said.

Bill Watson, a retiree, has been coming for years. He brings a green purse with a leopard pattern to carry his markers.

“I played a total of 15 years, and I won one game, ” he said. “I have bad luck no matter what.”

ON THE WEB: Play BINGO! www.palsatlanta.org/bingo.htm