Big Scary Bingay
It was BIG and SCARY and fit for the glitziest, ritziest show in town. And that was only the enormous, sparkly spider affixed to Marie-Louise’s bottle-green, velour-enshrouded shoulder.
At one table sat the Bride of Frankenstein and at the front of the room, Trudy Valentine, and Sandy Togs strutted and pranced and camped it up, all dressed in drag which was nothing unusual! With a theme of ‘scary’, Trudy wore a fiery orange, spiked wig and a black, shiny vinyl, skimpy dress with a skull and cross-bones at the front and nothing underneath! Sandy Togs’ long, blood-red hair flowed over her black, vampy dress hitched above thigh-high black and white striped socks and transparent plastic mega heels.
Big Bingay is held twice a year to raise funds for the Aids Council of NSW (ACON). Ian, Marie-Louise and I went at the last minute earlier in the year and this time around, encouraged by Ian, we decided to put together a table. It was again held at the Paddington RSL and it was the weekend of Halloween hence the ‘scary’ theme. The room was decked out with plastic skeletons and pitchforks and we all took up the challenge of dressing for the occasion.
Marie-Louise made a spectacular and rather provocative wicked witch of the West in fishnets, red shoes, a green velour dressing gown, a teensy weensy black dress, red scraggy wig and feather duster for a broomstick. The aforementioned spider was a gift to her from an impressed passerby on Oxford Street earlier in the night.
Snake tattoos adorned Lisa’s upper body, wildly impressing and attracting many curious and awe-struck glances. Ian donned his ‘usual’ mongrel drag attire of fishnets, pink hot pants and black, ripped chesty bonds T-shirt, held together with over-sized safety-pins.
Amit and I scratched and clawed in wicked cat masks - I had also picked up a matching leopard-print singlet for a bargain $5 from Supre on Saturday. Last but not least, Nick wrapped himself in a black and white kimono with correctly-tied sash and a black-haired bobbed wig to complete his transformation into a “scary” Japanese person.
Like the best of the usual RSL crowd, we knuckled down for some competitive Bingo. Mitzy Macintosh called out the numbers in between a barrage of insults, lewd comments and anecdotes and her side-kick Naomi spun the barrel and entertained with soulful renditions of ‘We will survive’ and other great songs from Priscilla and Moulin Rouge. The pair also host weekly Bingay nights at the Imperial hotel at Erskineville where Priscilla was filmed and Mitzy performs regularly in the drag show there.
Participants had to call out ‘Bingay’ when their numbers matched and were escorted to the front by Trudy or Sandy to pick up their prizes from a range of kitsch trash. Ian managed to score a set of steak-knives and a mega sack of Omo washing powder. The room was very hot so by the end we were all flagging but we had a lot of fun and best of all, we were supporting a great cause. Over the whole night, $8000 was raised for ACON which was a worthy effort. See all the photos on flickr…
Oh it was a great night, lots of fun! And it’s inspired my next party which has to be dress ups!
There was quite a lot of action going on around the table with texta fights as well. It took two showers for me to get the red ink off my skin.
Naughty Amit!
It was a blast! Dressing up is so much fun! The texta tatoos were an “interesting” example of body art. look forward to your party, Lisa
Yes perhaps we could have a ‘body art’ party where we all paint on each other!
That could be very naughty!
erkkk.. paint body art on each other.. this could be VERY interesting
The bingay even sounded like it was fun, pity we couldnt join in
It would be interesting - I’m imagining Chumki dipping her paw and putting Henna paw prints everywhere
You all look fantastic. :-0
We had such a blast. wish andrew was here he woudl have loved it too. You might have to just rock up for our next dress up party Andrew
I may have to turn up as the Reaper Man (ie the Grim Reaper). It is such a happy character
. I have once caught a bus from Lane Cove to Maroubra as the Reaper and back again after attending a fancy dress party a few years back. It is so much fun to tap someone on the shoulder and politely say “I’ll see you soon” in as deadpan (sorry, bad pun) a voice as possible 
.
Oh, and for anyone that is looking at the time stamp for both these posts, yes it is late (or early depending on your point of view). It is about 25 degrees at the moment in Melbourne (and yes, that is at 1:00 in the morning and no this is not in farenheit!). Looks like it is going to be another scorcher again tomorrow/today. And this is 3 days in a row of warm weather (so much for 4 seasons in 1 day)! Oh for some sleep!
It’s a real scorcher in Sydney today too! If you will insist on wearing grim reaper outfits, you may feel a little hot in the long, black robe and all
Oh its getting hot in here!! in more ways than one!
Bring that outfit to BB, Andrew, to scare off the thugs.
I think that it would be a bit too hot for the Reaper to appear in BB next weekend. I don’t think that I’d get on the plane in Melbourne with it either - something about not having weapons on the plane methinks
I think I will scare off the thugs with my glaring white legs seeing as they will be bared if it is hot!
Wow! Don’t bare too much, Ruth. We won’t need to bare our teeth…….I’m sure it’ll be VERY safe for us wee ones to walk around the town. Ian sent me the sequel to the Rex Hunt episode. There’s always two sides to every story. It was a nasty incident though.
What happened to Rex Hunt?
There have been mixed reports - at first it was reported that he was attacked by a gang of youths outside the Beach Hotel near Main beach. They’re now saying that he was verbally abusive before it happened and there were less people involved than initially claimed. It is a bit scary though but probably blown up out of proportion.
I love Byron except for the backpackers!
I don’t think it happened outside the Beach Hotel, but somewhere in Jonson St. The funny thing is that nothing was reported to the Police so no investigation can be done. Rex Hunt used to be a Policeman in Vic so it’s a bit strange. It sounds as though the local boys were provoked by Rex Hunt who dropped his sunglasses and one of the youths picked them up. The cuts on Hunt’s head were from the women’s stiletto heel when she missed hitting a boy. There were reporters in Jonson St last Sat morning, but I don’t know who they were interviewing. Apparently many people have cancelled holdiay bookings due to the bac publicity. BB is as busy as ever.