Bingo Was His Name

Remembering the four-legged mayor of Silver Lake

Comments (0) By Seven Mcdonald Wednesday, Apr 16 2008

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Dale is in the midst of planning a public memorial in front of Bingo’s mural. She has posted fliers, and her friends and employees are calling many of Bingo’s known friends.

“I knew I had to do something public,” Dale says. “I just want people to come and tell stories about Bingo and eat bacon.”

Giammario Villa

Joe Keeper

Stephen MacDougall

Giammario Villa

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“My wife is gonna make pigs in a blanket,” Keeper says, “and I was thinking I would get bacon and fry it up and hand it out, kind of like matzah — toast Bingo with a piece of bacon.

“He was the heart of the neighborhood,” Keeper goes on. “Bingo gave a lot more than he took. He was a truly altruistic person. With a person, it’s a two-way relationship, but with Bingo, it was him giving all the time. Bingo was an extremely public person. On my birthday, he would come in and give me a kiss and he would stand on my foot. He didn’t have a bad thing to say about anybody. I mean, how many times in your life do you get to meet somebody like that? Bingo was a complete person; he just happened to be trapped in a dog’s body.”

“You are Bingo’s mom,” says a gentleman who walks into Pull My Daisy. “I am so sorry!”

When he leaves, Dale says she doesn’t know who the man was — he was just one of the hundreds of people who knew and loved her dog.

“You know, Annie [Sperling], who painted the mural, came to touch it up, so that it would be perfect for the memorial on Sunday. And on his name tag, she added my name. And she said to me, ‘Well, Bingo belonged to you and you belong to us. In a neighborhood of nonjoiners, you two were joiners, who could rally the rest of us.’ Doesn’t that shit just kill you?” Dale says, her voice cracking.

“People can really say the right things sometimes. I know he was everyone’s dog, the universe’s dog. But I was the lucky girl who got to take him home at night.”

Click here to read Seven McDonald's 2004 article on Bingo, "Silver Lake's Top Dog."