Sunday, August 5, 2007
Cocktail Hour from 5-6pm
Bingo! starts at 6pm
Free

Real authentic Bingo.
And Loteria!
And Bingo, Bingo!
It’s Bingo!
It’s at Betalevel!
It’s watered-down whiskey!
And cake with spoons.
It’s Sunday, August 5 at 6pm!
It’s hot!
It’s hot Bingo!
It’s hot Bingo, Bingo!

Hot Bingo, Bingo!
A social gathering and primer on traditional Bingo and its variants, i.e. a survey of Bingo through the ages starting Sunday, August 5th. Watered-down whiskey hour from 5-6pm, game starts at 6:00pm.

The Kickoff
Our first step will be a full set of authentic Bingo. After a break, a set of local favorite, Lotería, will be our first foray into its variants.

A Brief History of Bingo
Bingo can be traced back to the year 1530 in which a State run lottery game Lo Giuco de Lotto was originated in Italy. “Le Lotto” migrated to France in the late 1700s in a form similar to the Bingo we know today, with a playing card, tokens and numbers read aloud. Through the 1800′s these lottery style games spread quickly throughout Europe and many offshoots of the game were created.

In 1929, a game called “Beano” was played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. The beano game’s tools consisted of dried beans, a rubber number stamp and some cardboard. A New York toy salesman named Edwin Lowe, observed the game where players exclaimed “BEANO!” if they filled a line of numbers on their card. Lowe introduced the game to his friends in New York where one of them mistakenly yelled “BINGO!” in their excitement. “Lowe’s Bingo” was soon very popular and Lowe asked competitors to pay him $1 per year to allow them to call their games Bingo as well.

By the 1940′s Bingo games had sprung up all over the country with thousands of games being played every week. Today Bingo games can be found just about everywhere, and now online too.