Tom Lynch

Johnny Bingo, the California Clipper's resident muscle, checks IDs at the door, and force-feeds bingo cards. If you don't play, you obviously haven't been here before.

Monday at the Humboldt Park bar means Bingo Night, as local clientele--from the hip hipsters to the low loungers--gather to connect five, or make a "Z" pattern, an upside-down cross, a straight-edge "X" and anything else callers Steve Spataro and Steve Sowely suggest. They sit upon the Clipper's stage barking their I-19's and B-4's, getting raucous laughs and hollers whenever the O-69 bingo ball makes an appearance. "A classy crowd, a classy crowd," one of the Steves quips.

Game winners collect a brown bag of prizes from Johnny Bingo--a mess of small plastic and rubber toys, from racecars to tiny brown cowboy hats--and colorful bingo chips decorate the bar's floor, evidence of drunken ignorance. The Steves, along with the rest of the bar, smoke the shit out of some cigarettes.

"Did anyone cut out of work early today?" the pair asks the crowd.

"I got fired today!" shouts back a bingoette from a booth. She proceeds to tell a tall tale of being canned from a restaurant for making an overly sexual comment involving manual manipulation to male genitals. "I'm better off unemployed," she insists.

"Alright," a Steve continues, "in this game, you have to make an `H' pattern, in honor of handjobs." The crowd enthusiastically approves.

The first number? "B-9," goes Steve. "Just like our humor."

(2005-08-23)

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