Saturday night at The Lonesome Rose

The Lonesome Rose is a classic Honky Tonk bar out in Tobin Hill in San Antonio.

I visited the bar on a recent trip to Texas and I have to say it was everything I hoped an American Honky Tonk Bar would be … and more.

There was a country and western band on stage with a lead singer wearing boots, jeans and a red kerchief and a guitarist who looked like Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords. The walls were covered in neon beer signs, photos from Westerns and mounted stag’s heads. And a table with three women dressed as Dolly Parton sipping on cocktails.

The Dollys were at the Lonesome Rose for a Dolly Parton look-alike competition. 

They asked me and Harry, a journo from Birmingham, to dance with them and regretted it within a couple of bars of the first song.

“Those boys sure are stiff,” they muttered as we left the dance floor after only one song.

The bar continued to fill up and the crowd got rowdier as people came in from Halloween parties still dressed in their outfits.

There were a couple of Indiana Jones, a Marge Simpson, a Cocaine Bear and a man wearing a skull over his face who we christened ‘Antelope Man.’

The bar staff were dressed as Cheech and Chong who they said were still very popular in San Antonio.

Much Lone Star was consumed. 

So much so that I had my very first shoey with a guy called Giuseppe simply because his last name was Ricciardo.

Beyond that details get fuzzy. 

It must have been good, though.

The next day I went back out to The Lonesome Rose to buy a t-shirt.