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“Out Late” is Time Out’s nightlife and party column by DJ, Whorechata founder, and Staff Writer Ian Kumamoto, which publishes every other Tuesday. The previous edition was about Markus Kelle, who works the door at Battle Hymn.
If you were to look at pop culture iconography for a split image of who Americans are, you'd likely arrive at some variation of two prototypes: One of a woke coastal elite and another of a Bible-thumping redneck living in “flyover country.”
The reality of who Americans are, obviously, is much more complicated—our identity seemingly shifts with every election cycle. Our culture is constantly at odds with itself and contradictions are abundant. What other nation prides itself on being a country of immigrants while simultaneously touting them as an existential threat? The latest, most jarring example of these mind-numbing dissonances, for me, has been New York nightlife's newfound obsession with the Wild, Wild West.
We've always had western-themed bars, of course: Flaming Saddles Saloon in Hell’s Kitchen, where sexy cowboys dance on countertops, comes to mind. But in 2024, it felt like some honky tonk bar was opening every other month, and this time they were taking themselves seriously. First we had Desert 5 Spot in Williamsburg, then we got Daisy Dukes in the Financial District, Gottscheer Hall’s Honky Tonkin’ in Queens and by the end of the year, Common Country in Kips Bay. What the hell was going on?
Dan Daley, the managing owner of Desert Spot 5's parent company Ten Five hospitality, attempted to give me some answers. Daley has spent most of his life in New York, but wanted to bring a nightlife venue that offered a live music experience that was “raw” and “real”—something far from the “manufactured nightlife” many of us have become accustomed to.
“People are over nightlife that feels artificial where everyone is just listening to loud music and staring at their phone. They want spaces with soul, where every detail matters,” Daley tells Time Out New York. “Desert 5 Spot resonates because it’s authentic—from the vintage couches we sourced in Montana to the custom and vintage artwork and the small touches that make it unique … it’s handcrafted down to the smallest details, and people can feel that.”
“They want spaces with soul, where every detail matters.”
There seems to be a growing cultural affinity for simpler, more physically tangible pleasures—note the staggering popularity of claw machine arcades, for example. On the surface, the Wild West represents the epitome of that simplicity: What's more uncomplicated than a cowboy, whose sole pleasures in life are his animals and his small town dive bar?
These honky tonk bars are drawing their aesthetic inspirations from Hollywood depictions of the Wild West, which were dramatized interpretations of a period in American history between the 17th century and the 1900s, canonized by movies like Stagecoach, Rio Bravo and countless others. In these movies, the heart of these cowboys’ missions is to fulfill Manifest Destiny, or the belief that America was meant to expand as far West as possible. The biggest obstacle to this progress were outlaws and “Indians,” or the Native Americans who already lived there.
If you notice a tint of discomfort, it's there: I'm queer and an immigrant who grew up in Texas, not exactly the type of person who felt welcome in that part of America. Whenever I saw a Western, I looked way more like the savages on the other side of the cowboy's gun—an affirmation than I was the “other” that needed purging.
And yet, maybe it's more complicated than that. Cathal O'Brien, the co-founder of Daisy Dukes Honky Tonk in FiDi, says that he and his business partner had been thinking about opening a western-themed bar three years ago, but when they saw that country music was the fastest growing genre in the U.S.—especially among Gen Z—they knew they had to act on it fast.
“Looking at the likes of Beyoncé and all these diverse musicians going into country has validated the hype for us. I think this genre brings a lot of different age groups and personalities together and allows us to also capitalize on targeting wider demographic,” O'Brien says. “With NYC being such a diverse and creative city, I think there is some interesting synergy there and we are seeing that be true from the success we've had so far.”
“I think this genre brings a lot of different age groups and personalities together…”
That, of course, bring us to Beyoncé's vision of country, which she served to us on Cowboy Carter last year. The premise of her album was that Black Americans were instrumental in creating country music despite the fact that it has evolved to become a predominantly “white” genre. Beyoncé was most galvanized by her experience at the 2016 Country Music Awards, where she performed and experienced racist backlash. Cowboy Carter was an affirmation that all Americans, especially Black people, could own country, too.
Not everyone agrees that the Wild West aesthetic are inherently bigoted, either. “Vietnam and feminism played crucial roles in discrediting the Western, a genre viewed as unredeemable racist, sexist, imperialist, and violent,” Steven Mintz, a professor of history at UT Austin who has extensively researched the wild west, tells me. “But the Wild West was never just about national expansion or imposing law and order. It was about freedom, exploration, self-reinvention. It was about breaking free from societal norms.”
I'm not sure how on board I am with Mintz's analysis—I come from a different place than him—but I can see where he's coming from. New York City's nightlife has always been a refuge, because it imagines a world where society's most marginalized run the show. But my knee-jerk reaction to the countrification of New York nightlife comes from an uneasy sense that we're returning to an aesthetic that is tied to values antithetical to the New York I love.
Perhaps the obsession with the Wild West is a sign that our country is more conservative than many of us imagined, even in our wildly liberal city. We did, after all, just re-elect a president whose entire platform is built on pitting the white American “us” against “them” the brown “alien”—a modern-day cowboys versus Indians.
Only time will tell if our newfound obsession with the Wild West is a symptom of nostalgia for a previous America or a subversive reimagining of a more inclusive American identity, à la Beyoncé. Until we know for sure, I'll be honky-tonkin’ with caution.
Here's a short list of new honky tonk bars you should check out.
Desert 5 Spot (94 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn)
Open Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 1am; Friday and Saturday from 5pm to 2am; and Sunday from 6pm to midnight.
Common Country (344 Third Avenue, Manhattan)
Open Tuesday and Wednesday from 5pm to midnight; Thursday from 5pm to 2am; Friday from 5pm to 4am; Saturday from midnight to 4am; and Sunday from noon to midnight.
Daisy Dukes Honky Tonk (47 Stone Street, Manhattan)
Open Wednesdays from 4pm to midnight; Thursday and Friday from 4pm to 2am; Saturday from 2pm to 2am.