POTTSTOWN, Pa. — Armed with only a reporter’s notebook, a couple of pens and a small cooler (my intention, anyway), I set off — with no small amount of trepidation — to “meat bingo.”
Visions of sirloin steaks danced in my head as I drove the half hour from my Berks County home south to Pottstown.
I wondered about the competition. How many would compete for the meat? Who would run with the ribeye, and who would get stuck with hot dogs ... or, worse yet, have nothing to show for a $20 investment and 2 ½ hours of fierce concentration?
That’s about when I realized I’d left the small cooler sitting on my kitchen floor. “Rookie move,” I scolded myself internally.
I realized I would have to show up at the bingo table with better focus. To miss a number would, very likely, mean going home without a pork chop.
State Street Bingo at 799 North State Street in Pottstown.
“Perhaps the pregame nap was not a sound strategy; it’s left me a bit foggy,” I thought to myself as I pulled up to the bingo hall and discovered my 40-ounce water bottle was practically empty. Even a rookie like me knows hydration is key.
I had much to learn.
As I walked through the double doors into the expansive hall lined wall to wall with long white tables, all eyes fell on the new meat.
Philadelphia resident Maya Sheed, 25, who has been playing bingo with her grandmother since she was 2, turned out to be my bingo angel.
Maya Sheed, 25, has been playing bingo with her grandmother since she was 2 years old and enjoys working at State Street Bingo in Pottstown.
She checked me in, accepting my $20 for what turned out to be a pad full of bingo games with nine games — “played at the same time?” I asked nervously — on each sheet, plus strips of three games each for special prizes including breakfast, lunch and dinner, and a jackpot game that would ultimately fill one person’s freezer with one of each meat prize given away that night and sourced from Burt’s Farms in Bechtelsville. My little cooler would never have sufficed.
Maya explained patiently that it is not too difficult to keep up with nine games at once if you scan down each of three rows of three games each looking for the number that’s called. “You’ll be fine,” she said, sensing my nervousness. “I have faith in you.”
I thanked the bingo gods when I realized a few games in that the number called will only appear in the row in which it was called — looking back, I’m not sure why that made a difference, but it did at the time — and later when I noticed that the previous numbers called in each game were overhead on a lighted board, with the current number flashing in red.
High-tech bingo. “You’re out of your element, Danny,” I thought later as I struggled to keep up with the pace of the number caller.
A regular at State Street bingo wears his colors.
After Maya’s pep talk and assurance that I would survive, I found a seat next to a young woman sitting by herself and busy marking the centers of each sheet with the pink ink she had chosen. Ink?! Back up to Maya, who explained that bingo markers cost an extra $1.50 to $2. I splurged on the “Bingo Brite Grape” because purple is my lucky color, headed back to my seat and began peppering my poor neighbor with questions as the clocked ticked toward our 6:30 start.
“Do you fill in all the centers before the game starts?”
“I do,” said Noele Shipper, who had traveled all the way from Reading. “But I’m a little OCD.”
No more time for questions. It was off to the races!
Playing for a Cause
Most games were played as regular bingo or four square — blobs of paint in all four corners counts as bingo, as well as traditionally completed lines up, down or diagonally. Specials spelled out a letter, like “B” or “D” or “L”, and it required great restraint not to blob a number that appeared on my card but was not part of the intended letter path.
During a much-welcomed break — not that it’s not fun, it’s just very intense, and remember I needed water — I met Danielle Bailey of Bechtelsville, executive director of the Transplant Alliance Foundation, which runs the bingo hall, with all proceeds beyond operating costs supporting the nonprofit.
Framed letters from individuals who have been helped by the Transplant Alliance Foundation adorn the walls of State Street Bingo in Pottstown. So far this year, proceeds from the nonprofit have helped around 30 transplant patients readjust to life following surgery.
“We are a charity,” she said, elaborating that only nonprofits can obtain a state bingo license.
“My mom was a two-time lung-transplant recipient,” Bailey said. “When she saw the struggles of all the people that she came in contact with, she wanted to be able to help.”
Bailey’s mother, Mary Jo Lovely, who passed away in February 2021, had approached her daughter, who was already involved with fundraising, with the idea of cash bingo to support transplant recipients through the aftermath of surgery, and the Transplant Alliance Foundation was born.
“We started in a little clubhouse in Limerick,” Bailey said, surveying the most-recent expansion of the State Street Bingo hall at 799 N. State Street in Pottstown.
Bringing Home the Bacon (Or Hot Dogs)
Back at the bingo table, it was down to the last five games (plus the jackpot) and nary a chicken wing for either myself or my neighbor.
“Bingo,” she yelled in delight, it seemed to me almost too soon after the game had started. Maya came over and confirmed the win, offering me words of encouragement as she passed. “You’re doing fine.” Was I that obvious?
“Bingo,” neighbor Noele shouted with delight again before the ink had even dried on my meager smattering of dots.
After it was all over — I was filled with a moment of jackpot hope when I only had two spots left to fill out my entire card for the big win before someone beat me to the meat — I asked Noele what brought her here.
Meat Bingo regular Noele Shipper of Reading smiles broadly as her bingo win is confirmed.
“I found it on Facebook,” she said. “Ironically, when I was in grade school they had basically like a meat bingo that we would go to occasionally on a Saturday night at my church. And we were talking about it like two weeks before this popped up. And I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, here it is. I'll try it!’”
Not without some ribbing from her friends.
“They always make fun of me. They’re like, ‘It’s meat bingo!’ And I’m like, ‘Exactly!’”
A haul of hot dogs did not faze her. “I’ll have a barbecue,” she offered cheerily.
“Yeah, who’ll be laughing now,” I thought, imagining those who took a pass on the fun stuffing their faces in her backyard.
State Street Bingo will soon be open seven nights a week, with events including gift card bingo, cash bingo with jackpots up to $3,000, free bingo on Thursday nights and special events like Sports Bingo, Designer Bag Bingo and TikTok’s Bingo Rocks PA. Learn more at statestreetbingo.com.
