THE LURE:
steering away from some lame lines
After my sojourn last weekend, I decided to stay close to home on Friday night and hoe it down at The Saddle Rack, a Country Western Bar tucked away in a business park in my home town, Fremont. In honor of the cowboy theme of the bar, I’d decided that I wanted to use a line that played on the cowboyish term, “giddy-up” because yup and giddy are both words that I am particularly fond of. When I ran the giddy yup thing by my friends though, that started to seem like not such a good idea…
“wanna hear a pick up line?” I coaxed one of my companions.
“Sure” She amiable replied.
“Ask me if I’m giddy” I instructed her.
“What?” She asked, confused and not sure she’d heard me right.
“It’s part of my line, just ask me if I’m giddy?”
“So wait, how are you going to find a guy that is going to ask you if your giddy… the odds of that are so small”
“No no no. I will say to them what I’m saying to you now. I will say: Ask me if I’m giddy”
“Oh…ok.”
“Are you giddy?”
“Giddy-…yup!”
“Haha. Oh ok. I see what you did.”
At that point I figured that the line was 1- not going to go over well in the wild , 2- pretty stupid, which I’d already known, but before I’d said it out loud, I’d told myself it was just endearingly lame… now I was like nope… just stupid… so I went back to the drawing board.
The Saddle Rack was actually riddled with bespectacled folks last Friday night, and I had come up with
a better response for the impromptu “you know what they say about people with glasses?” line that I’d botched the previous week, “quite magnificent spectacles to behold.” So I considered trying that again, but decided it was best not to recycle a losing line, so I was still trying to think of an even better pick up that I could use to rack in the cowboys when my friends and I moseyed on back to the bull pen to give the mechanical bull a whirl. By the time I’d finished rocking that robotic steer’s world, I figured all I’d need to do to rope in any guy in that water hole, would be to just ask them if they’d seen me up there on the bull.
THE CAST:
Riding my bull.
Dragging my friend along with me, I galloped full speed, in my snazzy cowgirl boots, through the parking lot of the Saddle Rack at 8:59 PM on Friday night, hell bent on avoiding the 9:00 PM cover hike from $10.00 to $15.00 and was elated when we made it in just in time. (On Saturday night, there is even more incentive for financially savvy (cheap) ladies like me to be early birds since the cover goes from $10.00 before 9:00 to $20.00 after). Once inside, my friend and I met up with 3 of our other friends who’d snagged a table near the dance floor with a good view of the stage. At that point, the house band, Diablo Road, was beltin’ out really “country western” style country music covers (none of which I was familiar with) to a room full of mostly 40 something cowboys who like to come early on Friday nights for the line dancing lesson they give from 7:30-9:00 PM.
My friends and I took advantage of the low-ish noise level and short lines at the bar stations to catch up with each other over $2.00 Jello shots and $5.00- $7.00 beer and cocktails. While we waited for things to liven up, one of my friends, taking note of the fact that the front woman from the band was giving shout outs to people who were celebrating special occasions, decided to request a song and a shout out of her own. We all laughed when my friend took her seat as the singer was reading her napkin note, declaring, “We have a single lady here with us tonight, who is celebrating being free from the jerk wad who broke up with her on Valentines day!” Around that time, towards 10:00 or so, the band started to diversify the style of music they were playing, sneaking in some Rock or pop along with more mainstream country like Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.
By 10:30, as folks were getting more loose and daring, the giant cage next to the band’s stage was packed full of girls dancing and undulating inside it’s cast iron bars like they were trying to bust out of stripper jail. It was around that time that one of my friends and I decided to giddy on up to the mechanical bull at the back of the bar. One at a time, we each threw down the $4.00 ridding fee, and saddled up. My friend went first, showing that bull -and the crowd her stuff for about twenty or thirty seconds before tumbling off onto the rubber mats in the bull pen. Then it was my turn. In my mind, sportin’ my gold and silver sequin top, I imagined I looked like a sexy cowgirl disco ball for the 45 seconds or so that I was up there. However, when my friend showed me the video she’d recorded of me, it seemed that I just looked more like a shinier than average flailing chick on a mechanical bull, but I was still pleased enough with my performance that I’d decided to work it into my pick up that evening.
I didn’t immediately see anyone I wanted to rope in with my line, so about twenty minutes had passed before I spotted a handsome stud with jet black hair, a stylishly groomed beard and black twinkling eyes seated at a table by himself. I waited a second to see if he might have a girlfriend nearby. Didn’t seem to, so I strode over, leaned towards him and asked: “Did you see me ride the bull earlier?”
“yeah I think so” He replied.
“You know, bulls aren’t even what I ride best!” I said, arching my brow suggestively.
“Really?”, my bearded companion inquired with a laugh.
“Yup… I can ride a bike like nobody’s business… I actually bike to work every day.” I said
My new acquaintance was laughing even harder as he asked: “Oh really, How far away is your office from your home?”
When I told him it was 11 miles each way, I could tell he was impressed. Especially when he said:
“Wow I’m impressed”
“yeah, it’s pretty impressive.” I conceded.
Then we reverted to the usual small talk: Do you live around here? Come here often? What do you do for a living? There was some banter about the bull and how much like a disco ball I’d looked. I felt like I really was bringing a pretty good game that night, but this guy didn’t seem to be moving it forward.
Meanwhile, I look over and 4 guys are standing around my newly jerk wad free friend. Damn, I need to take a page from her book, I thought to myself. She was DEFINITELY on her game! The bearded guy and I had pretty much run out of momentum in our conversation so I told him I had to get back to my friends.
As soon as I walked over to them though, a girl appeared by his side and then hopped in his lap… either she was much more on top of her game than I as well, or that was his girlfriend and would explain why he wasn’t trying to get any friendlier than just having a cordial conversation with me. Either way, I didn’t let it ruin my night.
My one friend went and made out with one of her men from the harem she’d just assembled and I hung back with our other friends and watched a few more people get tossed off the bull before calling it a night. I’ve been to the saddle rack at least a half dozen times before and I’ve never had a bad time there, this weekend was no exception to that either. You’d have to try pretty hard to have a bad time at a place with so much to do and such a lively crowd.
THE SPOT:The Saddle Rack, Fremont, CA
The saddle rack is a good bar for pretty much any occasion from dancing with your girlfriends, to taking a date or going to pick up guys. I am not a particular fan of country music, but it’s still fun to go hoe it down on the dance floor there or just people watch since there are plenty of interesting diversions at the bar: mechanical bull, line dancing, gogo cage, live music. There are 4 separate bar areas, (besides the barber chair), and two dance floors: an upper floor for line dancing and a larger floor right in front of the stage for more freestyle dancing. Plus they have a wait staff that is very attentive to groups that are seated at any of the dozens of tables around the main dance floor and bull pen and 2 dance floors. Drinks are average price $5.00 -10.00 and they have some snacks available for a few bucks ( popcorn, hot dogs nachos etc) if you need to fuel up so you can keep dancing and riding all night long. In my mind The Saddle Rack has just about everything you could want in a bar, so do I think going there will make you giddy – yup!
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