Next year, he wants the event to be bigger. A number of participants identified themselves as longtime volunteers of the rodeo and thanked him for creating the event. The hundred or so people who showed up for Out at the Rodeo weren't many by rodeo standards: Tens of thousands of people attend on even a slow day. They also sponsored a group in the AIDS Walk on Sunday. Out at the Rodeo invited attendees to meet up at designated times at Le Grand Wheel, the pig races (for families with little kids), the Champion Wine Garden, and the Committeemen's lounge. Mason and Hulsey recruited Neon Boots, F Bar, Ketel One, Pinto Ranch and My Gay Houston to sponsor a Western wear shopping night, fashion show and dance lessons, with the proceeds going to AIDS Foundation Houston.
They made a website, hammered out a mission statement and looked for sponsors. Mason, who works in marketing for a custom home building company, asked his soon-to-be grassroots business partner, Hulsey, to check whether anyone owned the domain name "outattherodeo." It was theirs for the taking. Would that help show how cosmopolitan the city really is? What if we did something like that at the rodeo? he thought. He thought of events he'd enjoyed when he lived in California: gay days at Disneyland and at a county fair. The referendum, he thought, gave outsiders the wrong idea about Houston. "Every major news network picked it up," he says. MASON, 32, was devastated in November after Houston voters rejected a non-discrimination ordinance. The man added, "Let us know what date you want to come back, and we'll set some space up for you." "Thank you all so much for coming out." Out at the Rodeo participants.
"Too bad you couldn't get anyone to show up today," joked the cowboy. Doug Mason, Debbie Storrs and Eric Hulsey at Out at the Rodeo. The man was the walking embodiment of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and Mason braced himself for whatever he had to say. It was packed with noisy, gleeful Out at the Rodeo visitors.Ī tall, old-school cowboy, wearing a committeeman vest, approached him.
Mason was most surprised at the final event of the day, a meetup in the committeeman's lounge. More than 100 people showed up to a day of meetups planned by Out at the Rodeo - more than twice the turnout that Mason and the group's co-founder, Eric Hulsey, had anticipated. But Saturday, March 5, that changed a bit.
0 kommentar(er)
