New York Bingo Halls

Interesting NY Times article by N. R. KLEINFIELD: Link

A New York institution, I tell ya. A dying one too, like Keno here.
I remember old movie houses converted into Bingo Halls as a kid in the 60's and 70's, all in outer Boroughs or neighborhoods like Washington Heights.
Before the NYS Lottery, there were number runners, OTB, and bookies; still some bookies operating out of false candy store/news agent fronts.
(OTB is "Off-Track Betting") All of these things hail back to the seedy 70's of New York, before re-gentrification, Donald Trump, the go-go 80's.

Personally, I don't get Bingo. At the Fiesta, some players clear out of the tables for an hour to go to the Bingo room upstairs.

Quote: Paigowdan

A New York institution, I tell ya. Personally, I don't get Bingo. At the Fiesta, some players clear out of the tables for an hour to go to the Bingo room upstairs.

Bingo is weird. Non-players can't understand it but players love them and are more superstitous than craps players. I worked one 2 or three times to help out a local group. (For those who never lived in NY the bingo hall has an owner and various non-profits rent the concession giving the owner a cut of the proceeds just like a renting a McDonald's or "renting a game" from the mafia depeding on your level of cynicism.) Anyways, my part was selling "special" game cards. Players wanted one from the top, bottom, middle, buy two not-touching, whatever. Same as yelling "SAME DICE." As far as giving good customer service, most didn't want anything but to "get their GD cards" and a few out-and-out ignored you when you thanked them for their business. Of course some were nice. All were bingo-crazed.

The "smoking room" was a treat. Even with modern filtration you could have a years worth of secondhand smoke in minutes in there. Even a guy who recently gave up smoking said how nuts the smoking room was.

The group had a good slot time (a weekend night, Saturday I think) and made some cash. No idea what they had to kick back to the owner. You could never make money on this if not for volunteer labor.