Peachy Springs cusses out a baby, at her Tuesday night bingo game at the Alberta neighborhood bar Bye and Bye.

“Is that a fucking baby?!” she asks the packed bar through her bedazzled mic. “Are you leaving? This is a family unfriendly show.”

However, as it turns out, the game Springs is hosting started at 7 pm, so the baby is—for the moment—allowed. And the baby turns out to be the son of her friend. 

Upon realizing this, Springs cackles, lighting up the room with her braying register; it's somewhere between a Mark Hamill Joker and Trixie Mattel. Cheers from the heated patio come across muffled to the cavernous main room, but it's obvious she's working the whole space. Her fans have come to expect this kind of lightly offensive humor from one of Portland’s hardest working bingo hosts. 

“It’s the dichotomy of the stress of bingo and the filthiest jokes you’ll ever hear,” Springs told the Mercury, of her bingo series’ appeal. “It’s a very high-high, low-low cut of the release of stress, but I think people also come for the jokes.” 

Springs hosts nearly a dozen bingo nights every month at trendy neighborhood bars across Portland. She hit it off early with Three on a Match Group bars, including Paydirt, Tough Luck, and Holy Ghost and hosts one-off nights here and there at dedicated queer bars like Back2Earth and Astoria’s Xanadu.

“My whole goal, with my calendar, is you can go to my website or Instagram, find my schedule, pick any bar, and it will be a good bar. Almost Peachy-approved,” she said. “I try to pick places that people would enjoy coming to, so the aesthetic of the bar and the cocktail menu are super important to me.” 

Attendees come for two tight hours, and play for cash prizes. They stay for Springs’ delightfully abusive crowd work, her lewd and crude sense of humor, and her dedication to mid-century show tune classics. She holds court with the glamor of Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli fresh from a disco nap, and dresses like a Nancy Sinatra backup singer: flowy, shimmering gold dresses, a coiffed blonde wig, and a drag-world version of light, natural makeup.

Part of her humor is couched in the art of the embarrassing story—where she's generally the butt of her own jokes. Veteran players proudly call out details about her first sexual encounter like they’re about to win Trivial Pursuit. She estimates that the majority of her audience, on her regular nights, are returning players.

“The neighborhood gays have found me, but the neighborhood straights have found me too,” Springs said.

2019 was Springs' first year in drag, and she described going from bar to bar, offering her bingo hosting at trendy pubs as a free trial. Her first games started slowly, but on the other side of pandemic lockdown, the pubs became the ones pursuing her, as she packed her game nights with followers. 

“The first time I got paid $150, I thought I was RuPaul,” Springs reminisced. She has since raised her rates.

During shut down Springs performed remotely, leading online games with Zoom rooms of up to 600 people. She secured corporate gigs, hosting digital bingo parties for the employees of major media and technology companies, and parlayed those into live events for local corporations. She now officiates weddings, and says her wildest gig to date was hosting in the aisles of the now-closed Galleria Target for Portland State University’s new student week.

Before getting into drag, Springs was a student at Pacific Northwest College of Art, working towards a dream of designing rollercoasters. Her college-era job was as a host of Brew Cycle rides, steering party bikes of revelers through the Pearl District. Eventually she realized she was far more interested in cultivating party atmospheres and immersive experiences.

Hosting bingo seemed like a natural next move; Springs says she grew up playing it on family trips and still loves the activity.

“It’s a very simple game, and you still get a night out with the people you came with. Once there’s money on the line, it gets a little more serious, and people play," she explained. "With trivia, you have to focus so hard. With karaoke, it’s really loud, so you can’t hear your friends unless they're singing. Bingo is the happy medium between party vibes and relaxed game night with your friends."

Booking, promoting, and glamming up for her games currently occupies most of Springs’ time, but she’ll soon be branching out beyond the bingo card. Springs will pack up her ball cage for Jesus as she hosts Tough Luck’s Easter Sunday Brunch on March 31 with a cast of local drag artists, including Flawless Shade, Blossom Drearie, Henny, and Ry Bred.

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Peachy Springs hosts Easter Sunday Brunch at Tough Luck, , Sun March 31, 11 am, $12-15 (does not include brunch), tickets here, 18 and up