Out of which our dear Miss Rodhouse says our ticket procurement sprang (sprung? Anyone an English teacher?)
Your fearless leader has nubs for fingernails in anticipation of getting tickets to the Angola Prison Rodeo. Or not getting tickets to the Angola Prison Rodeo. Like any popular event, tickets are a bear to score. We have been up since midnight Wednesday doing autodial on two different phone numbers, and manual browser refresh. We finally went to sleep at two, but set alarm for every 15 minutes to check.
Having no luck and just seeing “Fall Tickets on Sale July 15” on the official website, we resorted to AI. After about a dozen frustrated back and forths with Claude, a real person with a real phone number was suggested. Having no other options we gave it a go.
Miss Smith was a delight. I explained that we had been up since midnight of the day before and wanted to know if we missed it. She told us that the tickets really were not on sale on the 15th. A phone call back was promised. Lo and behold, she did call back before the official sale time (!) Secured seats in the shade (think aluminum benches in sun as an alternative). Happy dance done.
While we are going to write about the rodeo in detail, a little on the events. These are professional animals and professional purses. The inmates are not professionals. Ambulances are on the scene.
There are normal events like bull riding (exhilarating), bronco riding (they don’t stay on for long), steer wrestling (what you’d expect), and barrel racing. The latter is done by beautiful girls, as is the opening ride out. This is sorta creepy because if you think about it these are a whole pile of men serving life sentences and no women behind bars with them. Ahem.
But there are lots of cool events you will see nowhere but here. A coupla of them involve dodging pissed off bulls. Our favorite is called Prisoner Pinball (we didn’t know it had a name), where inmates stand in hula hoops on the ground, and the last one standing (or squatting, you shall see) wins. The same few guys win it all the time. Another dodge-the-bull event is four guys playing poker and seeing who chickens out last. The best event is the last one, where a red tag is tied between the horns of, you guessed it, a bull, and the inmates try to grab it. There is a lot of money awarded. The same guy wins it every year. You have to be fast.
And did we say the participants are garbed in old-school black and white stripes?
P.S. We have been going down the rabbit hole, finding 1500 old photo negatives in an archive somewhere in Louisiana. Stay tuned to see our favorites. Remember, we went through 1500 photographs to pick the best ones so you don’t have to.