Local Coffee House and Gift Shop hosts Drag Queen bingo every weekend. Cross-Dressed comedians call-out bingo numbers, sexual innuendos, lascivious humor, and explicit language. Not for the faint of heart, but most definitely an eccentric style of bingo.
Bingo Night at Five 15 – Media Mojo & More; it doesn’t get any better than this! The Coffee House and Gift Shop in Royal Oak, Michigan presents the most exuberant form of bingo found in ‘these parts’. A staff of Drag Queens MC or Host the bingo shows, calling out the bingo numbers, and cracking off-color jokes for adult, audiences only. Five 15 Media Mojo & More currently offers one show every Friday night, with a second to be added next month and two shows on Saturday evenings.
Rainbows, Drag Queens and Bingo
Trixie Deluxxe sings a rendition of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands’ by changing the lyrics to ‘if you know you’re straight clap your hands’ and ‘your Walmart clothes will show it’. The audience laughs, applauds, and Trixie moves on, calling-out G-6” from the small stage where this cross-dressed diva woos the crowd.
It’s all about the Drag Queens, according to Kaitlyn Shields, who came to bingo night at Five 15 for a bachelorette party and compared Drag Queens to Rainbows as they just make things better. A locally notorious event in Royal Oak, Michigan, co-owner of Five 15, Gary Baglio touts crowds of 250 avid bingo connoisseurs or more on weekends. It is not just bingo, its bingo brought to you by racy Drag Queens like Trixie Deluxxe, Hershae Chocolatae, and Lauren Jacobs, otherwise known as The Queen of Mean.
Trixie Deluxxe, decked out in a wig, lots of make-up and lipstick, a low-cut bright colored dress, cleavage revealed and just a bit of back hair is calling out the bingo numbers during one recent show. Everyone in the audience is fair game for jokes, punch lines about fashion, gay humor, sexual references and indecorous suggestions. Lynn Barbara, recent bingo participant, was accompanied by several friends describes Trixie Deluxxe’s jesting by saying she says what everyone is thinking. Trixxie Deluxxe comes all the way from Orlando to host the show one weekend a month.
Five 15 sells tickets for the bingo game and Drag Queen show for $20. The shows are typically sell-out crowds and are often sold-out weeks prior to the event. Reservations with a credit card are required, a policy that even five star restaurants do not usually require. So, how much is the jackpot? Co-owner Baglio says is it so much more than just a bingo game. The ambience is unquestionably limited to 18 years and older, and undeniably a marvelous time and a change of pace from the conventional night out.
Come One, Come All to Drag Queen Bingo
One might ask “Who frequents these bingo Shows?” Co-owner Baglio says first and foremost, those who are good sports about being the object of jokes. It helps, anyway, since the crew of Drag Queens may be heard joking about a woman’s shoes, whether or not a bride-to-be is pregnant, who dies their roots and a multitude of other goads.
One recent sellout crowd included two bachelorette parties, around 20 massage therapy students and their guests, mothers with their husbands, gay folks, straight folks and ladies bent on heading into middle age with gusto and humor. Mindi Hammond, 46, speaks of the Drag Queen Bingo favorably and said there is nothing like cross-dressing while playing bingo. Trixie Deluxxe could be heard at a recent show declaring the real housewives of Macomb County have arrived. Another small group at a recent event is demonstrative of the diversity in the crowd. Accompanied by his wife and two other couples that they have known for years, Ken Kostrzewa, 67, describes this bingo affair as not anything like your mother’s bingo.
Introduced at Five 15 about three years ago, co-owner Gary Baglio says that Drag Queen Bingo is popular in other cities in the country, so they decided to ‘give it a go’. Baglio initially marketed to the gay community assuming that would be the population most likely to enjoy Drag Queen Bingo. Abundant crowds in that market lasted for about four to five months, at which time Baglio says there was a ‘lull’. Word spread fast and more and more women began showing up for girl’s night out, bachelorette parties, birthday parties and other such get-togethers. According to Baglio, women were the primary attendants of the event but now more husbands are attending the event with their wives. Prizes are not strictly monetary in this most fascinating bingo genre. One might find themselves winning mugs, T-shirts, and other such novelties with naughty slogans and suggestive clichés.
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