Foul Bingo

You've heard of Bingo, but have you heard of Chicken SH** Bingo? Allow me to enlighten you to one of the more redneck activities Austinites enjoy on any given Sunday. This past Sunday I introduced, my friends Jessica and Eric and my out-of-town guest Steve, to the wonders of Chicken Sh** Bingo.

The setting for Chicken Sh** bingo takes place inside a true dive bar on the North side of town called Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon. Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon is a tiny white and Texas orange building with a steeple flanked by a futon store and car inspection site amidst a series of strip malls. The one room setting is just large enough to contain a bar, a band, a few tightly packed tables, and a pool table. Decorations include a Nascar billiard light, beer signs, Kodaks of customers from what appear to be the 80's, a sign that reads general dentistry, two tiny TVs, and of course, a set of longhorns. It is unclear how long this place has been around as there is no working website for the bar. Furthermore, collaborating historical information on dive bars in the Austin area is sparse. Google Fail. Using context clues I will presume that Ginny's has been around for at least 20-30 years, if not longer.

Ginny!

The bar's namesake, Ginny, is an actual person. She appears to be in her 70-80s with a a grown daughter and granddaughter reportedly also named Ginny*. Ginny still serves up beers and regulates the proceedings of Chicken Sh** Bingo weekly.

On Sunday's the pool table is covered with plywood board with a chicken wire cage placed atop numbers 1-50. The bar begins to fill up around 3pm and overflows into a tailgate in the parking lot until the proceedings begin around 5pm. Tickets are sold to the quickest customers to queue around the table for $2 a pop. Ginny then fills the cage with feed and places her chicken in there for the masses to await her excrement to fall on their chosen number. When it falls the pot of around $100 in "donations" is awarded to the lucky ticket holder.

Possibly winning tickets

While you await the chicken to sh**, Ginny provides the humans with $2 Lonestar Bottles and free chili dogs served out of Ginny's crock pot. The famous Dale Watson Band performs and a few customers attempt to two step in the tiny space provided. The staff are wonderful, they treat you like you are a guest in their own home trying to make you feel as welcome as possible.

Chicken not Sh**ing

I have attended Chicken Sh** Bingo on various occasions, but have never won. They generally run 3 rounds, however, on this most recent visit, the first round took over an hour and a half for the chicken to do her business and we had to leave before we could win. I suppose there is no way to regulate the speed of digestion, but it would have been nice to see the Sh** we came for.

Be forewarned this event isn't for everyone and they only take cash.Nonetheless, I will continue to attend and one day I will go and the Chicken will Sh** on my number. I just know it.


http://www.yelp.com/biz/ginnys-little-longhorn-saloon-austin

*not verified, just found in my nearly fruitless google search.