     | september 10, 2010
|
 | |
| | |
| september 10, 2010
|
| |
  |
Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy Catherine Price -- 03/19/2006  The parking lot of the Saddle Rack might as well have a huge sign out front saying “Hipsters Not Welcome”—irony, it seems, is to be checked at the door. Women wear short ruffled skirts and cowgirl boots. Men have black Stetsons and belts with large buckles. Shirts are tucked in. Jackets are fringed. And everywhere you look are Chevy pickup trucks. Unsurprising, perhaps, in many parts of the country. But this is Fremont, California, close to Silicon Valley. About 35 miles from San Francisco, it’s an affluent area best known for its technology companies, not its cowboys. The club itself is huge and cavernous, in a 15,000 square foot former industrial building that owners Andy Buchanan and Gary Robinson have converted into a western-style dance hall. The current club replaced the original Saddle Rack in San Jose, which was closed and demolished in 2001 to make room for townhouses after 25 years of business. Inside, three bars and a margarita booth keep cowboys happy. A live band, “Wild at Heart,” plays country hits for dozens of denim-clad dancers, who prance in counter-clockwise circles, stomping and kicking in the two-step, the Horse Shoe and the Cotton-Eyed Joe. There is a separate stage for line dancing and a new—and out-of-place—oxygen bar, where weary partiers can perk up with hits of 02 in flavors like Watermelon and Tangerine Dream. And, of course, there is the mechanical bull. Headless, legless (though intriguingly, with a tail), it has a perpetual line of people at its gate and a sign proclaiming it the “Best Buckin’ Ride Ever.” When it comes to dancing, the Saddle Rack-ers don’t mess around. As the band breaks into Big & Rich’s hit, “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” an older man named Terry stands in the middle of the floor, pretending to reel a woman in like a fish. Within the first few beats of the song, the dancers form a large, pulsating circle around him, moving in perfect synchronization as if part of the same Texan organism. They might be smiling, but don’t be fooled—this circle stays unbroken. “Get off the floor!” a woman in a white cowboy hat snarls as she and her partner high-step toward a hapless onlooker. “The floor’s for dancing!” A few feet back, 50-year-old Dianne Lancaster takes a break from the dance floor. When a roar erupts from the general direction of the bull pit, Lancaster glances behind her and shakes her head. “You’re really marketing yourself if you ride the bull,” she says, untempted. “And I’ve already got a boyfriend.” At the bull pit itself, a young woman is getting ready to ride. Thin, with a short white skirt, boots, a silk camisole and a cowboy hat, she has the attention of dozens of men who lean on the corral’s fence. They hoot and holler and tell her to go slow as she straddles the bull’s plastic torso, briefly flashing her panties to the crowd. The controller starts her gently, letting her ride the bull in a rhythmic, rocking motion that would make Britney Spears blush. But no one beats the bull. One button push and she goes flying, skirt fluttering as her body slams into the pads. end of page 1 [ 1 ] read more ... [ 2 ] |
