Cowboys and Suburbanites

The New York Times does it's stiff-necked best today to tell a story of suburban development swamping a great American tradition—the rodeo. In traditional hotspots in California like Clovis and Hayward, cowboys are getting penned in by tracts of estate homes. The juxtaposition makes for some patented sneers about the "Peet's-Coffee-and-pinot-noir culture of the Bay Area" giving way to "the Jack Daniel's salute" (a whiskey bottle held aloft). But the Times doesn't convince us it's truly broken up about either the sprawl or the cowpokes' loss of territory. Nor does rodeo itself seem particularly threatened: fans who have long since moved off the ranch get their fix from stadium-sized shows, which are televised on ESPN. The old-timers who run the remaining small-town rodeos even seem to get a kick out of the suburban dudes. "This was big-time cowboy country," says one saddle-bronc rider. "Today, the newcomers don't know what-all."