M y first time watching “Urban Cowboy” a few nights ago, more than four decades after its 1980 debut, felt less like watching a movie and more like discovering a chapter of Houston’s lore.
Long before craft cocktails, food halls and Instagrammable patios took over the region’s social and nightlife, the Houston area had Gilley’s, a Pasadena honky-tonk so enormous and unruly it became a symbol of Texas after John Travolta’s Bud Davis lit up its dance floor in his cowboy boots and conquered the club’s mechanical bull.
On screen, Travolta’s Bud clocks out of the refinery every night, jumps into his Ford pickup and drives into a world where the towering petrochemical plants along the Ship Channel are an afterthought and the mechanical bull is a rite of passage. Off-screen, that same world drew countless locals and tourists who wanted a taste of what they perceived as an authentic Lone Star State experience…