Jonathan Griffin

Once upon a time, everybody knew Bingo. In San Francisco in the 1970s, it’s said she couldn’t walk down the street in North Beach or Chinatown without someone calling out her name. Bernice Bing, the statuesque artist known to most as Bingo, was easy to spot in her sharp zoot suits, boots and jet-black hair. She was born in Chinatown in 1936; when it became the heart of the Beat movement in the 1950s, she found herself at the centre of a community that was not only wildly hedonistic but also close-knit, pluralistic, non-judgemental, socially progressive and spiritually visionary. Later, she worked with at-risk youth in the area, including gang members whom she persuaded to take part in art workshops. She helped found the South of Market Cultural Center (SOMAR, now known as SOMArts), which she ran in the 1980s. Why, then, is Bing – who died in 1998 – so little known today?