Silver Spurs Rodeo… exotic culture close to home

Went to the Silver Spurs Rodeo on Saturday (http://www.silverspursrodeo.com/).  I’ve been to a Professional Bull Riding event at the Amway Arena before (!), so I was expecting this to be old hat.  I was way off – there are a lot of differences between a rodeo and a bull riding event.  The biggest shocker was the apparent cruelty of some of the events.  In calf roping, for example, a guy on a horse ropes a calf by the neck, jerks the calf around, runs over to the calf, picks it up, drops it on its side from waist height, and then ties its feet.  It was shocking for a city girl like me.  Or, as many know, the way to make a bull or a horse buck is to tie a rope around its genitals.  The event I found most oddly cruel was a game where about 100 children were placed on the rodeo floor, and then made to chase calves with ribbons tied around their necks and tails.  The children got a prize if they caught a ribbon.  Many kids fell, or got stepped on, kicked, or trampled, and the calves fared worse, if possible. 

Apart from the animal acts, there were some oddly surreal moments, too.  We walked in to a horse quadrille, a sort of square dance on  horses, featuring little girls dressed like as many Jon-Benets.  The strangest moment of the night, though, was a skit.  The audio was impossible to hear, so what I got from it was that an alien came to Kissimmee in a UFO, fought a jedi to the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, and then turned into Ricky Bobby.  Trust me, it made even less sense at the event.

On the whole, though, much as it doesn’t sound like it, the event was pure entertainment.  We all laughed, cheered, and booed as appropriate (and sometimes not so appropriately), but we were definitely on the outside looking in.  I found myself thinking of festivals I’ve seen traveling internationally, and you get the same sort of feel – that the rodeo is an exotic, strange, un-understandable rite that serves a purpose you’ll never fully grasp, but that you can appreciate nonetheless. 

Couple other housekeeping notes: the Silver Spurs Arena is fairly new, surprisingly clean, and domed – which was great on the rainy day we went.  Unfortunately, the dome keeps in some of the more livestocky smells, so it was a little ripe in there.  Expected more out of the “rodeo food” that the website touted – it was like a concession stand at a sports event, but with less variety.  There were plenty of open seats, and the crowd was less enthusiastic than I would have expected. 

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