When Colorado Cafe– the country-western saloon in the wilds of Wachtung, New Jersey– closed over the summer after more than two decades of honky tonkin’, we mourned the loss of its mechanical bull, Buck Off. Before places like Johnny Utah’s, Viva Toro, and the now defunct Mason Dixon opened, Buck Off was the closest mechanical bull to Manhattan. And even after those johnny-come-latelies opened, Buck Off retained a place in our heart, since he was the only mechanical bull you could ride while, on one side of you, old-timers in non-ironic cowboy hats line-danced White Horse Saloon-style, while on the other side Jersey bros downed Jell-O shots and fist pumped to a cover band playing Bruce and Bon Jovi.
Anyway, maybe it was our nostalgia for the Colorado Cafe that made us jump at this post in the Free Stuff section of Craigslist: “Free vintage mechanical bull.” The anonymous poster, located somewhere near the Bushwick-Bed Stuy border, claimed that the “raw hide bull with a face” was “just taking up too much space in storage and I honestly don’t know what else to do with it.” We want to believe, but two things make us suspicious: First off, there’s no reply address given. And second off, the photo in the ad is one of the first results you get when you do a Google Images search for “mechanical bull.”
We’re guessing this is all a load of bull. There’s a sucker born every 8 seconds.