Austin360 blogs > Bottlecaps & Wingnuts > Archives > 2005 > July > 07 > Entry
Saloons and cantinas and bars, oh yeah
So, the evening at the Fort Worth Stockyards got off to a good start.
Here’s the rest of the report:
The Cowboy Cantina is the bar nearest my hotel and the only cowboy cantina in the world where the crowd is watching bicyclists wearing high-dollar spandex in France. On two TVs, even. This is the place where I would return post-Willie-picnic to find the bartender spilling out of a bikini top and not much else (I swear I didn’t look, Shannon, I was too tired to notice her! Well, mostly too tired.) I’m guessing there’s a lot of competition between the bars here.
Pearl’s Dancehall & Saloon has Johnny Bush, but also a $10 cover charge. This is the one bar I haven’t managed to set foot in during my two visits to the Stockyards. But it looks like a fantastic place. I hereby vow that’s the first place I’ll go next time…
The Rodeo Exchange doesn’t have Johnny Bush, but still has a $5 cover charge, as well as air conditioning that would freeze the fuzz off a penguin. I move on, stopping briefly at the Longhorn Saloon, which is not nearly as obnoxious (read: popular, crowded) as it was last year.
Accidentally step into PR’s and then break my own rule of the evening by paying a $4 cover charge. A semi-B&W TV in the corner is showing rodeo catastrophes. I’m transfixed. Nothing like watching livestock kick, head-butt, gore, trample, fold, spindle and mutilate skinny cowboys in slow motion.
One complaint: Like most of the bars here, there’s no draft beer and no jukebox at PR’s. Instead, there’s longnecks (OK) and a DJ booth (puke). I abandon my $4 cover charge and head back to the Stockyards Saloon where there’s a live band.
My notes start getting hard to read at this point, but I do have one last bit of info scrawled down: The biggest reaction I heard to any song pre-picnic? At one point, the whole bar stops to sing along with Charlie Daniels’ “Long-Haired Country Boy.”
Ah, Stockyards. I don’t like everything, but I do admire the total lack of pretense.
Permalink | | Categories: By Dave Thomas
