2016-01-15
Cowboy Craze Hits U of I Campus
It’s easy to tell the urban cowboys from the real ones - the urbans are the ones in picture-perfect never-been-worn cowboy hats and brand spankin’ new boots with the store polish unmarred; the real ones LOOK real. A turquoise or maroon hat and spike heels on the boots are a dead giveaway. The two groups, as a rule, don’t associate much with each other; neverless, they can both be found in many of the same places. Before the North Idaho Cowboy Bar in Troy burned, it was a good place to find cowboys; the Capricorn Ballroom is STILL a good place to find them; they also frequent many of the other watering holes in and around Moscow and Pullman.
All this helps to point out a fairly new trend (ask a real cowboy about that and the chances are good that the answer you get’ll be along the lines of “This ‘trend’ is about as new as piles on a cow path”). Maybe the trend was around long before John Travolta and Urban Cowboy, but that movie seems to have brought it out of the closet. And in response to the upped sales of cowboy paraphernalia - hats, boots, belts, Western shirts, boot-cut jeans - the prices on these items have shot up, too, at least in places where cowboy is “in.” That doesn’t seem to faze ‘em, though; more and more disco-bright cowboy hats and spike-heeled boots and fancy vests are showing up all the time. Maybe in a few years the fad will die out and the real cowboys will have their peace again - but until, watch out, Duke!