Cactus Moon on a Rodeo Weekend: Yee Haw

Definitely, Cactus Moon on a rodeo weekend is not a thing to be missed.

After having dinner with a group of anthropologists, Andrew and I took our antho spirit to the club. It was good field research.

I had never been to Cactus Moon, so the sheer size and volume of people alone was pretty impressive for Tucson in my opinion. Not to mention, almost every one there was "authentically" country. What I mean is, if you were wearing a cowboy hat, you were wearing a real cowboy hat, maybe one you even bought at the vendor on the premises! But what you were definitely NOT wearing was one of those "fashion" cowboy hats. This has to be a hat that will really stay on while you ride a horse, you dig?

In pointing out the symbolic capital of the authentic cowboy hat, I don't mean to say that the scene was stereotypical. No siree. For example, I saw a woman dressed like Delta Burke from Designing Women on the dance floor. I am not exaggerating. She tore her cowboy's shirt off and made sweet mouth love to his bare chest during "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy".

I also must comment on the music. Fine two-steppin' was periodically interrupted by dance music and some flat out hip hop. As a matter of fact, I think I heard Rapper's Delight at least once. People did not boo the cowboy DJ, they cheered for more and shook their Wrangler-clad booties with as much gusto as they shook 'em to Garth Brooks. Women jumped up on bars in the spirit of Coyote Ugly. Joy abounded.

I found the crowd, bouncers and bartenders to be mostly nice - polite even. Maybe I'm imagining things, but I also felt there was a greater heterogeneity of women's body types and dress than you might find at a regular club.