20 | Gaycation Magazine www.gaycationmagazine.com

By David Perry

Say what you will, but line dancing is a very adaptable art form. The sequin-spangled saddle in place of a disco ball took a little getting used to, but the crowd at Billy Bob’s Texas did not miss a beat when the Kenny Chesney ended and the Kylie

Anybody who calls it “Dallas-Ft. Worth” clearly never went to Ft. Worth

Heart of the WestMinoque picked up. Things just a little more hip-grindy.

The world’s largest honky-tonk — a country music dance hall — Billy Bob’s is one of the undisputed must-dos along the rhinestone-studded roads of Ft. Worth. Outsiders may think of Ft. Worth as nostalgia-obsessed also-ran to Dallas. And they’d be right.

Except for the “also-ran” part. While Brokeback Mountain romanticism

abounds in places like the Cowgirl Hall of Fame and the Ft. Worth Stockyards, this is not a city stuck in its past, however colorful. The city nicknamed “Where the West Begins” may be spun from the

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Heart of the Westyarns of O. Henry and Louis L’Amour, but Ft. Worth proves any good fairy tale can be reinterpreted to fit the modern age.

Learning From History“Everything in Texas is big” and they mean it.

The serving sizes, the sequin-counts, of course the hats, and occasionally, the colossal screw-ups.

In 2009, Ft. Worth burst onto the gay scene for all the wrong reasons when local police descended in an armed swarm for no reason in particular on a local gay bar, the Rainbow Lounge. Coming on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, the city found itself on the wrong side of a stampede of outrage from

citizens and, worse, the media, which reported verbatim the subsequent trial, cartoonish gay-panic defense, homophobic indifference from the mayor, and big, fat slap in the face from the court in favor of the Lounge.

There was nowhere to go but up, and the city passed some of the most sweeping LGBTQ protections in Texas.

That a place is raid-worthy is all you need to get me on board, but the most damning thing I experienced was the doorman determining I was old enough to enter without an ID-check. Not to trod on any toes, but the Rainbow Lounge is…well, a club. And a dancefloor. And some notably