The fun police are at it again, and this time they’ve targeted a favored pastime of nursing home inhabitants everywhere. Until this week, Chelsea’s Cafe hosted Tuesday Bingo Nights. It was forced to cancel the tradition after questions arose about its legality. According to Title 55 of Louisiana Administrative Code, subsection six, businesses without gambling licenses cannot provide gambling paraphernalia to customers. Gambling paraphernalia includes “but is not limited to, playing cards, poker chips, tokens, markers, buttons, card tables, dice, seating cards and containers or other means of storage of wagers for safekeeping during any prohibited game.” Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission legal counselor Brian DeJean said the ball tumbler, game cards and place markers used in bingo are examples of gambling paraphernalia, making the game illegal. And the potential consequences of holding bingo nights could be severe if they continued to occur. “If 50 people show up, that’s 50 different violations,” DeJean said. “And if each person gets a card, that’s 50 people being handed 50 cards, they’re looking at 100 violations with the potential of $500 per violation.” For the lack of a more profound opinion, this is dumb. First of all, it’s difficult to imagine how Chelsea’s weekly bingo nights can be constituted as gambling, as participants are not asked to wager anything to play. Second, and more importantly, what was so wrong about holding these bingo nights? Was anyone morally corrupted from their participation? Was anyone harmed at all? It’s one thing to follow the letter of the law, but this simply does not appear to have any basis in logic. In short, classifying this bingo game as “gambling” does not pass the “smell test.” Another chronic inhibitor of all things fun, Campus-Community Coalition for Change director Nancy Matthews, said the bingo games, which extended past 10 p.m., could also have been in violation of a drink special ordinance that passed in March 2005, as Chelsea’s offered free drinks as prizes to bingo winners. Even if you’re a proponent of this ordinance, which this board is not, it is difficult to see how this game was its intended target. This prize in no way encourages the “binge drinking culture” the CCCC has often cited as the basis of the drink special ordinance. The prize is what it is, a token reward for winning a contest. The cancellation of Bingo Night at Chelsea’s is just another example of fun and creative outlets becoming increasingly scarce in Baton Rouge. We hope this is the final example, but that appears doubtful.
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