Friday, March 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Imagine you're a gay cowboy with a mean lasso and a quest for a brass-plated buckle.
You're raring for a rodeo, like the ones you've heard tell of in most every state west of the Mississippi -- except Nevada.
Ironic, because the first Gay Rodeo kicked off 21 years ago right here in Nevada, up in Reno.
Back then, Gay Rodeo caught on like a cattle stampede, spreading across the plains and right on up into Canada, forming gay rodeo associations in dozens of states.
Everything was going fine until the mid '80s, when a bunch of right-wing fundamentalists raised a fuss just before the national finals and rode the Reno rodeo right out of town.
If you're a gay cowboy like Gary L'Abbe, this just didn't seem right.
You and some friends decided it was time to bring the rodeo home to Nevada, where it all began, moving the location a bit southward, hopefully a bit leftward.
In other words, Las Vegas.
You rounded up a hundred amateur cowboys and cowgirls -- doctors and judges, hairdresses and horseshoers.
You rented out Horseman's Park, paid the stock fees, printed the fliers, altogether spending about $40,000.
You named your rodeo "Big Horn," after Nevada's native sheep, sure, but also fully intending the double entendre. You do have a sense of humor, after all.
You even had a higher cause -- raising money for a local group home for AIDS patients.
What you didn't have was a success.
The 1996 rodeo bombed, drawing only 513 diehards, compared with crowds of thousands in other cities. It barely raised enough to break even, let alone donate to charity.
Well, it was one of the hottest days of last summer, a sweaty 110 degrees.
It was so hot that even the right-wingers chose to stay inside. There were no outbreaks or protests, not in Vegas. Nobody seemed to notice at all.
You can't understand it.
After all, you had crowd-pleasing "camp" events unique to the Gay Rodeo circuit, such as goat dressing, where participants pull a pair of tighty-whitey Jockey shorts over an unwilling goat's behind, and the wild drag race, where a cross-dresser must mount and ride a steer across the finish line -- giving new meaning to the term "rodeo queen."
And for the rodeo purist, you had all the standard events, too: bull riding, barrel racing, team roping, you name it.
You even had a macho-imaged beer, Miller Lite, signed on as a proud sponsor.
So you decide to try again. This time, you're going all out.
You move the rodeo out of the heat to the first weekend in March.
You sign up the Maxim hotel-casino as a sponsor; a block of 50 rooms sell out a month before the event.
You send a letter to every member of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, asking for support. Excalibur, Lady Luck and the Aladdin come through with complimentary dinner vouchers for raffle winners.
You set up parties at local country-western gay bars such as Backstreet, for those you know will come to town but never quite make it out to the fairgrounds.
And you nervously sit back, waiting for the starting gun, wondering, this time will Nevada embrace her prodigal cowboy or let him ride off into the sunset?
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