It seems there are people who think pole dancing is too mainstream

By Alex Wukman

The Houston Business Journal dropped let slip the gem that on Friday, March 25, Professional Bull Riding, Inc. will be opening PBR Houston, a night club dedicated to bull riding, in Bayou Place. Being more than a little familiar with Bayou Place, Free Press got curious when we saw the description of PBR’s new space: “nearly 9,000 square feet of party space including a 2,000 square foot outdoor terrace” which sounds an awful lot like the old Roc Bar space.

So let’s see if we’ve got this: the city lost an overpriced live music venue in downtown and it’s being replaced by a bar for people whose only idea of Houston is Debra Winger riding a bull in 1979?

Since we here at Free Press Houston are such thoughtful and considerate professional journalists we decided to do a little bit of research on bull riding nightclubs in Houston to see what the market for a place where people can, as the Houston Business Journal reported, “act like “urban cowboys” and take a chance on the mechanical bull.”

After a little bit of research we found that, apparently, there are people who move to Houston and want the “typical Texas ambiance,” we also found that there are tour guides who cater to them.  Yes, that last link was to Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong.com site and it does go to a page filled with “Things to do on a date in Houston.” Either the person who wrote that post is an eight-year-old boy, has no clue what dating is for or hates people. The unidentified author advises people to take their dates bull riding and amateur drag racing. 

 Admittedly, those would make for some pretty cool first dates, but how do you top them? Naked para sailing over a volcano spewing lightning lava? Fighting alien vampire dinosaurs with Lemmy from Motorhead on a space shuttle crashing back to earth? 

We couldn't find a photo of Lemmy saving the planet from an onslaught of vampire velociraptors from Alpha-Centauri, so we thought boobs.

 Aside from the sheer weirdness of taking someone you just met drag racing there is another problem with these suggestions: they are dangerous and loud. While that can lead to fun times it also makes it pretty hard to ask the person you are considering sleeping with about the last time they had an STD test when you’re trying to get your Kia Sorento to speed down a quarter mile in under 20 seconds.

We also learned that the people who ask the internet where to find bull riding in Houston have no clue that there’s a rodeo somewhere in Texas almost every weekend or that the only club that still advertises owning a mechanical bull is a country and western line dancing bar, yes they still exist, on FM 1960.