More of this in the world, please: #BART cars transformed into psychedelic bingo halls https://t.co/S61ZYEGMHA @SFGate #BARB
— Ashleyanne Krigbaum (@wambamash) July 17, 2017
A group of fun people called the Growing Artists Guild have been hosting something called Psychedelic Friendship Bingo for seven years now, and as SFGate reports, they took over a BART car actually several cars on different BART trains around 8 p.m. on Friday and played 45 minutes of bingo with invited guests and random BART passengers. They hung red and purple gels over all the lights, played music, and general turned several Transbay BART trips into magical parties.
The event was called Bay Area Rapid Bingo (BARB), and they first played a round, with Herbie Hatman MCing, while riding from MacArthur Station to 24th Street Station in Oakland. They then quickly disassembled the party, changed trains, and did the same thing in an East Bay-bound car. When they returned to Oakland, the gang all headed to Temescal Brewing to play a few more rounds of bingo, and the whole thing appears to have been done partly to promote a larger bingo/cabaret event that the group is doing on July 22, for which $40 tickets are still available.
Hatman tells SFGate, "It was great. Felt like the Bay Area that I've been missing." He also says that "the brewery might have actually gotten us the most promotion."
The event this weekend is at Tortona Big Top in Alameda, and comes with the tagline, "Game show! Dance party! Consequences!"
And it does indeed look like a slice of the San Francisco of yore, when freaks and performers ruled more of the airwaves and the nightlife than founders and biz dev bros.
Check out the main event, if you're so inclined, and hopefully they'll be taking over a BART car you're on in the near future.