Lucky for me, a Sunday night when you're unemployed is pretty much just an extension of the weekend. So, last week, I set out to find the best Sunday party in New York.
The winner? Bingo at the Standard Hotel.
I know, I know- Bingo is an activity pretty much exclusively reserved for your 90 year old grandmother. But each week, the Standard Grille puts on the wildest, raunchiest game of bingo you can imagine. People dress up in costumes (the theme that week was "Jurassic World") and drink massive bowls of punch until they're pretty much blacked out.
It's magical.
If two people call bingo during the same round, they are forced to have a dance off to determine the winner. This happened only once last Sunday night, but was everything I could have asked for. It was a man in a FULL Jurassic Park getup, complete with a blow-up dinosaur, versus a middle aged woman in an outfit that was neither age appropriate nor night-of-the-week appropriate.
The woman went WILD. By the end of the dance-off, she was basically topless, straddling the blow up dinosaur and shaking her boobs into some poor, unsuspecting intern's face.
Unfortunately, she lost the tiebreaker. People also booed her off stage (otherwise known as the booth she was dancing on) which was a little hard to watch. But still, kind of amazing.
Between every round, there is also a game called "Balls Karaoke" in which audience members are selected at random to sing a song, replacing some of the lyrics with the word "Balls." My personal favorite of the evening was a remixed version of the Boyz II Men classic ballad "I'll Give Balls to You."
Once bingo is over, the Grille turns into an all out PARTY. By 2am, my friends and I were grinding with our amazing, flamboyant waiter and twirling around to "Balls Karaoke" with sparklers.
As I was leaving, a cute boy stopped me and we got to chatting. He was, I figured out fairly quickly, completely blacked out. And casually happened to be 19 years old. At some point in the conversation, he admitted that he had gotten so drunk at Sunday Night Bingo to make up for the horrible week he'd had.
"What happened?" I asked.
"My dog got run over" he told me.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that nothing makes me more upset than the thought of sick or dying animals. Growing up with 5 dogs, two of whom died under fairly tragic circumstances, pretty much traumatized me. So already, this conversation was uncomfortable.
"I'm so sorry," I told him "one of my dogs got run over when I was younger and it was terrible."
"Yeah. I am going to hunt the bastard who did it down and kill him," he said. "I haven't eaten or slept for a week because I've been plotting his revenge."
.... What?
For the next 45 minutes, he and I looked through hundreds of pictures of the dog that had been run over while he, I kid you not, played Sarah McLaughlin's "In The Arms of an Angel" on repeat from his iPhone. By the end of it we were both crying and people were starting to stare.
Upon finding me in this weird, weird situation, my friends decided the best way to end the night would be to go up to Le Bain, the club on the roof of The Standard. The guy with the dead dog decided to come along, too. I had somehow failed to notice, though, during our 45 minute cry/bond-fest, that his Hawaiian shirt was COMPLETELY ripped in two. This made getting into the club incredibly difficult, considering that shirtless, crying, blacked out 19-year-olds are not exactly the clientele Le Bain is looking for, even on a Sunday night.
Feeling the defeat he had caused, our new friend decided his best option would be to call it a night and check into a room at the hotel, because getting across town to his dorm sounded "too hard" in his drunken state (must be nice to be a finance intern). We bid him adieu and spent the rest of the night on the rooftop flirting with two obnoxious guys in tuxedos, who also turned out to be under 21.
I would highly, highly recommend Standard Bingo (I tried to go back and have my birthday party there this past weekend, but it was full- probably with interns). Just don't expect it to be the place to find your Summer fling– unless you're into underage, unstable dudes in bad outfits, or middle aged ladies who dress and dance like strippers.
The winner? Bingo at the Standard Hotel.
I know, I know- Bingo is an activity pretty much exclusively reserved for your 90 year old grandmother. But each week, the Standard Grille puts on the wildest, raunchiest game of bingo you can imagine. People dress up in costumes (the theme that week was "Jurassic World") and drink massive bowls of punch until they're pretty much blacked out.
It's magical.
 |
| Yes, Please. |
The woman went WILD. By the end of the dance-off, she was basically topless, straddling the blow up dinosaur and shaking her boobs into some poor, unsuspecting intern's face.
Unfortunately, she lost the tiebreaker. People also booed her off stage (otherwise known as the booth she was dancing on) which was a little hard to watch. But still, kind of amazing.
Between every round, there is also a game called "Balls Karaoke" in which audience members are selected at random to sing a song, replacing some of the lyrics with the word "Balls." My personal favorite of the evening was a remixed version of the Boyz II Men classic ballad "I'll Give Balls to You."
Once bingo is over, the Grille turns into an all out PARTY. By 2am, my friends and I were grinding with our amazing, flamboyant waiter and twirling around to "Balls Karaoke" with sparklers.
As I was leaving, a cute boy stopped me and we got to chatting. He was, I figured out fairly quickly, completely blacked out. And casually happened to be 19 years old. At some point in the conversation, he admitted that he had gotten so drunk at Sunday Night Bingo to make up for the horrible week he'd had.
"What happened?" I asked.
"My dog got run over" he told me.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that nothing makes me more upset than the thought of sick or dying animals. Growing up with 5 dogs, two of whom died under fairly tragic circumstances, pretty much traumatized me. So already, this conversation was uncomfortable.
"I'm so sorry," I told him "one of my dogs got run over when I was younger and it was terrible."
"Yeah. I am going to hunt the bastard who did it down and kill him," he said. "I haven't eaten or slept for a week because I've been plotting his revenge."
.... What?
For the next 45 minutes, he and I looked through hundreds of pictures of the dog that had been run over while he, I kid you not, played Sarah McLaughlin's "In The Arms of an Angel" on repeat from his iPhone. By the end of it we were both crying and people were starting to stare.
Upon finding me in this weird, weird situation, my friends decided the best way to end the night would be to go up to Le Bain, the club on the roof of The Standard. The guy with the dead dog decided to come along, too. I had somehow failed to notice, though, during our 45 minute cry/bond-fest, that his Hawaiian shirt was COMPLETELY ripped in two. This made getting into the club incredibly difficult, considering that shirtless, crying, blacked out 19-year-olds are not exactly the clientele Le Bain is looking for, even on a Sunday night.
Feeling the defeat he had caused, our new friend decided his best option would be to call it a night and check into a room at the hotel, because getting across town to his dorm sounded "too hard" in his drunken state (must be nice to be a finance intern). We bid him adieu and spent the rest of the night on the rooftop flirting with two obnoxious guys in tuxedos, who also turned out to be under 21.
I would highly, highly recommend Standard Bingo (I tried to go back and have my birthday party there this past weekend, but it was full- probably with interns). Just don't expect it to be the place to find your Summer fling– unless you're into underage, unstable dudes in bad outfits, or middle aged ladies who dress and dance like strippers.
No comments:
Post a Comment