Let’s Discuss This Absurdly Detailed Yelp Review Of The Concrete Cowboy Bar In Houston

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In my mind, Yelp has more undiscovered gold then any place on the web. That’s why when a buddy asked if I wanted to read a “ridiculous Yelp review” for the Houston bar, Concrete Cowboy, I was all-in. Full disclosure: I left my credit card at the Austin Concrete Cowboy a few weeks back. It’s probably still there. Rather than shamefully walking back in there on a Sunday and asking for it while a handful of employees and drunks judged me, I chose to cancel it. I stand by the decision.

But here we have the story of Andrew, a regular dude from Houston, Texas who had a bad night. We’ve all been there, but most of us decided against documenting it via a 600 word Yelp review. Glad you did, though, Andrew. Keep your head up.

I am your typical Houstonian Asian male: I sit in traffic for an hour, work from 7-3pm, and play video games naked until about 11-12am, leading to a habitual cycle of chaos. However, I do enjoy turning up on the weekend with my squadtourage and have amble experience with blacking out at multiple locations across Texas. Here is my play by play recap of my entire CC experience.

Alright, I know enough typical Houstonian males to know that this type of behavior is not exclusive to Asian dudes in Houston. Everybody sits in at least 1 hour of Houston traffic at all times of day, no matter what time of day it is. And our SVP of Media, a Houston native, can be found any night of the week with a headset on, sans clothes while bludgeoning some poor 11-year-old at FIFA while completely berating him verbally. Minor details, but they needed to be addressed.

Based on the first 100 words of this review, it’s pretty clear this dude is no more than 3 years removed from undergrad. Squadtourage? No one says that. It’s not a thing. Has to be an inside joke he and his boys caption their Instagrams with when Sunday morning rolls around. But I really love how he comes out of the gates aggressively building his street cred. This isn’t some spare who goes out every now and then. He’s a pro, so read his review carefully.

– My squadtourage consists of two accountants and a financial adviser. We had already gotten into Kung Fu and were pounding shots inside until we got the call that our friends were inside of Concrete Cowboy. Standing in any line with our demographics is possibly the worse move you could make in the Houston nightlife and therefore should be frowned upon. Luckily, one of our friends was having a birthday party and had already bought four bottles, so there shouldn’t be any issues to get in when there’s a list. Oh wait, there is. “Friend has a party inside? You’ve got too many guys.” Apparently, you need a 5:2 girl guy ratio to get inside, and I’m not the best person at math but that sounds like we’d need about twenty-three girls to get us inside, the equivalent to the U.S Women’s Soccer Team.

Alright, finally we get some details on our boy’s squadtourage. 2 Accountants + 1 Finance Bro = hella turnt. That’s the formula to reach peak lit, but you probably already knew that. I’m guessing the finance dude is a real Boiler Room type and not some nice Edward Jones type mitigating your risk. This dude’s betting the farm (your farm) on something high risk, and I respect that.

So they started out at Kung Fu, a classic mix of try-hards, professional spring breakers, couples playing video games, and girls that look like they were turned away from Rio or some other awful club. Interesting choice. For me and my “squadtourage,” Kung Fu is a place you stumble into late-night, not a primer. To each his own, though. I’m not here to opine on how you and your squadtourage should turn up. This alleged ratio thing is what’s truly important. A 5:2 girl-guy ratio to get into Concrete Cowboy? Even with your fellow members of the squadtourage inside buying bottles and telling everybody about it? That’s hard to believe. I mean, I’m guessing they failed to mention that two of the members were accountants. Should’ve emphasized that. Can’t be afraid to pull the accountant card, especially when there are bottles to be had. Dudes who pop bottles definitely fuck.

– After having friends trickle inside, we were the last ones waiting to get in. Three asian males standing at the front actively working as a wall bordering everyone in behind us. The bouncer would continually ask if there were more girls coming to match us and saw us with despair knowing that we were desolate of any form of the opposite sex coming to our rescue. I think I wore the wrong clothes because there were other dudes that were walking up shaking hands and getting into the club, even when he said there wasn’t enough room and he had to wait for people to leave. There was even a twilight zone moment when we saw three guys who were our mirror opposites walk into the club right in front of us. Bizarre but we’d come and waited too long to leave.

Demoralizing. Can’t believe this dude stuck it out. While I respect the mental toughness required to stand there hopeless and humiliated, I feel like he had other options. It’s Houston for crying out loud. Is the Gallant Knight still open?

– Finally made it inside around 1:20 am. Goal was to get trashed and black out because any good indicator of a bar is how well the cohesion of alcohol, music and crowd can throttle your tolerance and explode your fun meter. Seeing as how we had spent a majority of our night in line, we made a beeline to the bar to order a ticket to trashedville and no one can take you there faster than the four horseman. I’m by no means a bartender but isn’t a four horseman made of four liquors? She poured three bottles and I just stared at her as if I was waiting for her to finish her magic trick. But seeing as how we live in a consent culture, this only felt natural as we had already been screwed by the long wait in line.

Good move. Arguing with a bartender is not the hill you want to die on. I get that he was looking to explode his “fun meter” with a ticket to “trashedville,” but there are other ways to get there besides a 4 horsemen. Hell, I’m assuming that bootleg 3 horsemen shot would’ve gotten him there with no issue.

– Now that I had a mixture of inebriation agents infiltrating my system, we could finally move towards the celebration for obnoxious greetings with sloppy hugs and bottles. So as we slowly trudged our way to them, I noticed the inside is just a smaller form of Kung Fu, lacking in both space and broken arcade games. Even Red Door has some facet of decency when it comes to getting ratchet; there is zero of that at CC. There was only a small amount of us really getting down into the dirt with a larger group shouting and staring. This isn’t really even a grievance, more so my pro for the night but I’ve written too much.

So that’s what this is about, isn’t it? He waited outside with 2 dudes and took multiple Ls from some bouncer with minimal payoff. That’s a tough pill to swallow. He thought he’d be walking into an early-2000s Cash Money video and it ended up like one of those YouTube “whip-nae-nae” videos that 4 teenage dudes record in a high school parking lot.

– Near the end of the night, I had found myself dancing on top of a speaker and with my past experiences with dancing on speakers, this had possibly been the most dangerous. I mean I’ve danced on speakers at house parties, lock-ins and churches but wow, having a hanging speaker above a planted speaker? Are you asking for drunk negligence? Because that’s how you get drunk negligence. My dancing motions were severely limited to half a quan and I had to be aware of my proximity of head to giant speaker. I don’t know what civil engineer or twerk architect thought this was a good idea, maybe they had measured it to fit the standard 5’2 ratchet female addicted to retail but I’m 5’11 and had rightfully secured my spot on that speaker. I feel like this was just pure foolishness.

The music is good though. But then again we walked to velvet taco afterwards so who knows how well my judgement that night was. Place gets 1 star for dank music, I think.

Man, this somehow got even more depressing. Read the writing on the wall. When it’s not your night, you can’t force it. Pack it up and go home. Hit up a street vendor. Order a pizza. Just don’t be the guy off dancing by himself while everyone else is closing deals. Also, not sure, but I don’t think drunk negligence is a thing. I’ll hop on Westlaw and check it out, though.

But let’s discuss how angry The Concrete Cowboy is after reading this. Not a good selling point that they have male accountants trying and failing to hit the quan on top of their speakers. Just a bad look. That’s way worse than the ABSURD (and probably wildly exaggerated) 5:2 girl-guy ratio.

What’d we learn here? Don’t show up to The Concrete Cowboy with a bunch of accountants and no babes..

Read Andrew N.‘s review of Concrete Cowboy on Yelp

[via Yelp]

Image via Shutterstock

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Dave

Lawyer. Writer. Dude doing business. I'm the meatloaf guy from tv.

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