Cowboys, famous and not so famous, in Las Vegas

Photo by Nikki Villoria

Neon cowboys

Nestled in the midst of the casinos, restaurants, bars and attractions of downtown Las Vegas, neon cowboys watch over the tourists. When the Pioneer Club closed in 1996, the 40-foot idol, Vegas Vic, age 60, fell into depression after years of waving and greeting tourists with “Howdy, partner.” He stopped his act. Meanwhile, Sassy Sally was living a rather consistent life as the neon cowgirl of downtown. During the construction of the Fremont Street Experience that year, the pair was lowered to the ground and in flashy Vegas style were married by a local minister. Vegas Vic resides at his previous 1951 residence location, now a souvenir shop. Sassy Sally, renamed Vegas Vicky, sits atop Glitter Gulch, a topless club across from her neon cowboy.

/Nikki Villoria

Behind-the-scenes cowboy

Behind the scenes, barn manager Marty Moore prepares the equestrian arena at South Point. “I handle basically everything from feeding and taking out the horses to tightening up the arenas and doing whatever the promoter would like as far as setup and dirt work,” Moore said. After three years at the arena, Moore says his focus and interest shifted from his racing background to the equestrian realm. “If you talk to cowboys here, you find out how much they put into what they do on the performance side, he said. “We try work hard here to give them the best facility that we can for them to ride in, rope in, barrel race in. We do all kinds of events.”

/Nikki Villoria

Eye-candy cowboy

As a sunset burns in the background, standing silhouettes of five cowboys are spotted, with a country drawl they’re introduced, and for the next four minutes, it’s a wild ride of line dancing, a little rope play and a lot of teasing, as these six-pack cowboys continue a shirtless performance. “Our show is a fantasy show. It’s 75 minutes of full fantasy fulfillment and cowboys are just one of those aspects of fantasy. And we do it with that trademark iconic song, ‘Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),’ and right there in itself kind of ties Chippendales with cowboys and that just brings it all together,” dancer Jace Crispin said.

For almost six years, the Chippendales have performed at the Rio, serving as the epitome of a Vegas-style cowboy. “It’s Vegas definitely,” Chippendales dancer Chaun Thomas said. “It’s lights, it’s action, we’re ripping off our shirts. It’s very sexy cowboys, not the Texas cowboy you think of being a big studly guy hitting the ranch with big ol’ buckles, the cattle rancher."

/Nikki Villoria

Political cowboy

One North Las Vegas cowboy jumps from politics to rodeos as he multitasks as a county commissioner and a competitive steer wrestler. Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins was involved in the local rodeo world throughout his years of schooling. Coaching sports and raising kids made rodeo take a back seat.

Once his kids were grown and in college, he roped a role in the Legislature and, recently, picked back up in the rodeo world. Within the past year Collins also started back in competitive steer wrestling. “I’ve been to five or six rodeos in the last couple of months and I’m going to probably go to another 15 or 16 rodeos before the end of the year,” Collins said. “In politics you horse trade when you’re passing laws and when you’re doing zoning and changing things, and cowboys, they horse trade,” he said.

/Nikki Villoria

Urban cowboy

Four days a week they saddle up and ride the city streets in search of crime, chaos and crowds to tame. The Metro Police mounted unit started in July 1998 to manage the expected crowds for New Year’s Eve 2000.

“We do work in the city and we do some work that people would consider cowboy work, such as we ride horses for our job,” Officer Kelly Korb said. “Las Vegas is a Western town, and history dictates that if you’re on a horse and you’re riding down the street, you’re a cowboy, and people consider us that. We’re police officers first, and our horses are here to help us do the work, too. We’re part of Metro, and we just ride a horse as part of our job duties. “It started for crowd control and ever since then we’ve been building on to we do. We do patrolling, search and rescue, demos, work with a mobile field force team — there’s a lot that we’ve added on,” Korb said.

/Nikki Villoria

Corporate cowboy

The smell of cattle and horses fills the air while hay and dirt cover the ground. For South Point General Manager Ryan Growney, the casino’s climate-controlled stables and the company of cowboys and more than 1,000 horses are highlights of his job. “My background was strictly rodeo, I grew up here in Vegas and until I was 15 my exposure was (National Finals Rodeo). We went every year — I thought it was a fantastic event.” Since July last year, this cowboy has occupied the general manager’s desk at South Point, working not only with the typical casino obligations but fulfilling his love of the cowboy culture. “Most of the time I’m dressed in a suit, but whenever we have events come to town, I put the boots on and the hat on,” he said.

/Nikki Villoria

Show cowboys

With backgrounds in trick roping and Western-themed performances, two Las Vegas cowboys — Will Roberts and Loop Rawlins — take center stage as the only cowboy act of its kind in Cirque du Soleil's "Viva Elvis" at Aria. “Being a cowboy in Vegas is kind of fun and we have the best cowboy bling bling you can imagine,” Roberts said.

With the Western culture in their back pocket and spotlights shining on them nightly, the definition of a cowboy comes into full play. “What does define a cowboy? A cowboy might be in a pickup truck; he might be in a regular car, it doesn’t really matter. It might be someone who learns how to line dance at a bar, it might be someone who just does karaoke at the cowboy bar once a week, it could be just the fact that you wear cowboy boots all the time or you just like to watch westerns,” Roberts said. “It’s a lifestyle. It’s not only the fact that you might swing a rope, or ride or shoot guns, that doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that you have something in your heart that has a sense of the country, a sense of pride in everything you do and a dedication to the lifestyle. What is a cowboy? You define what that is.”