In Levi's World Wrangler is King
SFist went to the rodeo yesterday. Yeehaw! This year was the 60th Grand National Rodeo at the Cow Palace and boy howdy, was it fun.
The rodeo, livestock show and other related events lasted the whole week, but we showed up at the end for the event finals. We don't know much about the rodeo -- everything we know we learned watching 8 Seconds -- but we've always wanted to go, and it was as much fun as we expected. We learned a few things along the way we thought we'd share with you.
10 Things SFist Learned at the Rodeo:
1) You can ride a bull even if your back is broken. But when you get thrown off and he steps on you, chances are good you'll need some help to get out of the ring.
1b) If you come back to wave to the crowd with a bottle of Jack Daniels in your hand we will understand because while we have never been stepped on by a bull, we have had days just like it.
2) The phrase "Cowboy Up" gets infinitely more annoying the more you hear and see it.
3) Wrangler jeans are a really unfortunate choice if you don't have a great butt, but if you're a professional cowboy with a great butt and some chaps (for some of us, the chaps are really the key), they are the greatest pieces of material ever sewn together.
4) The list of competitors will keep us stocked on character names for our romance novelist third careers for decades.
5) Cowboys are awfully polite people. Except we think they lie about their hometowns. They're from places we've never heard of and probably couldn't find on most maps. They must make them up. Tonasket, WA (Pop. 994), anyone? (Though, to be fair to wee Tonasket, they did pass an anti-Patriot Action resolution. Go them!)
6) You can never go wrong dressing for the rodeo in head-to-toe Americana. But we look terrible in a cowboy hat.
7) If you have two cowboy brothers named Luke and Casey, it's kind of a disappointment to learn that the third is Tony. We were hoping for Vance or Rusty.
8) You can feel empathy for animals. Not the bulls. Not the broncs. The flag girl horses with glitter on the tails? So wrong!
9) Bull riding is alright. Bronco busting is neat. Steer wrestling is cool. Team roping looks like fun (and takes an incredible amount of skill). Barrel racers are insane. But the truly impressive event for novice watchers like us was tie-down roping (calf roping). A guy comes flying out at top speed, lassos the calf, dives off the horse (which then has the job of backing up to keep the lasso tight -- that's a smart horse!), wrestles the calf down and ropes three legs so fast his hands are a blur. That happens, typically, in about 10 seconds.
10) You are not a cowboy until the bronco you're riding pees in your face. And then? You're a sheepish cowboy.
We spent $35 on our ticket ($25 plus completely ridiculous Ticketmaster charges), plus parking ($8), program ($6) and countless hundreds of dollars on junk food (hot dogs, fudge, cotton candy, kettle corn, nachos) and beer (mmmm, beer). All worth it. There's a lot more money in rodeo than we realized, but probably not enough, and there should have been far more people in the stands than there were, but it was a truly great day. And now, when we're flipping past OLN and see a guy on a bull, we'll probably stop, admire his bravery/stupidity (and his Wrangler butt) and pop open some JD for him.
The Grand National Rodeo happens every year, about the same time, at the Cow Palace. Don't get it mixed up with the Exotic Erotic Ball. That would be weird. Though the chaps might still come in handy.
The big daddy of all rodeos -- the National Finals Rodeo 2004 -- will be in Las Vegas in early December. SFist looked for tickets, thinking what a great road trip it would be, but they're so very expensive at this point we figured we'd be better off watching the 44 hours of coverage expected by ESPN. Jack Daniels at our house!
SFist Mary Lynn, contributing.