In eighth grade, I watched Hal Needham’s Smokey and the Bandit for the very first time. There was a charm about bootlegging a load of beer across the south using a big rig and a Pontiac Trans Am that struck a chord with me and even today it’s one of my favorite films. It was essentially a Western, except horses and grand deserts are traded for fast cars and open highway. Most influential though was how well Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed carried the lead roles. They had a complicated swagger about how they carried themselves on camera. They had trademark smiles, knew all the right words to say, and dressed in signature cowboy hats and boots. Ever since seeing them, the cowboy style has been an interest of mine and I bought my first pair of boots in high school, black leather-sole R-toe Justins not too different from the exact style often rocked by Reynolds on the big screen. I bought them from Cavender’s Horsetown West located at 1293 Shallowford Rd near Woodstock, a quite expansive and well-equipped western store with a huge array of styles and brands to choose from. Now, years later, I have returned to the very same store.
Heading there the general area that the store is located in is a quiet suburban area outside of Marietta, not unlike Alpharetta, Kennesaw, Norcross and other OTP cities and a thought popped into my head about how odd it is to have a western-themed store in one of these areas. I would have thought that generally, you would have to go much farther out from Atlanta to find a store such as this, but it made me recall not only fifteen years ago dirt roads scattered the areas I grew up in and around Kennesaw and only now is the area so built-up that you can hardly tell it’s the same place. Regardless, it is quite convenient to have such a dedicated western clothing store so close to the city. Looking back at the heritage of the south while living in a modern emerging city such as Atlanta it’s easy to forget that western culture once was king here as a former hub for country music, stock car racing, and the transportation industry. Horsetown along with its expansive customer base from areas in and around Atlanta are surely remnants of this, as the building sits in between a massive open field and a suburban housing development, signifying the encroaching urbanization.
“It was almost overwhelmingly Western but at the same time, it’s exactly what was right for the setting.”
Arriving at the store I noticed that the appearance of the store was quite basic, and it would be difficult to tell what it is while only driving by, apart from the massive horse statue on top of the building of course. Though I will say that the charming barn-like shape of the building along with the subtle signs showcasing various boot brands and the parking lot chocked full of pickup trucks tells you exactly what you are walking into as soon as you pull in. As soon as I walked in it was exactly as I had remembered it from the very first time. Huge western-style paintings and signs adorned the walls, which were themselves finished in wood, giving it a log cabin look. The smell of leather fills the nostrils, it was almost overwhelmingly Western but at the same time, it’s exactly what was right for the setting. Something very noticeable about the store was its lack of windows, but to make up for that was the abundance of lighting inside the store, making everything pleasing to the eye and very easy to see. The atmosphere was almost like stepping inside an old, homely and well-decorated restaurant or a Twin Peaks, while also being enough like walking through a mall to make it an exciting shopping experience that fits the atmosphere.
Beyond the registers and inside the log cabin walls are rows and rows and rows and rows of boots in every known style, size, and brand on Earth. Everything from English-style riding boots to steel-toe work boots and shiny cowboy boots meant for the dance floor, all lining the aisles back-to-back. As I strolled these aisles, an array of fitting music met my ears. From modern country hits from artists like Jason Aldean and Luke Combs and classics by Cash and Waylon to 1980s soft rock like Dirty Dancing and Christopher Cross. I tried on several sizes and the store’s staff was eager to help, even though I knew pretty well what I was looking for. Each of them wore boots themselves and many of them had cowboy hats on, and from the conversations I overhead with other customers, they really knew their stuff about western wear, unlike half of all Autozone cashiers. I eventually settled on two pairs of brown rubber-sole square-toe boots, a pair of Ariats for work and a pair of Justins for casual wear and I was quite satisfied with being able to find the exact products I wanted. One thing to note is that most cowboy boots in stock are no longer made in the United States as they once were. My first pair of cowboy boots were some of the very last Justins handcrafted here in the US and the Ariats I bought this weekend were manufactured in Vietnam and the Justins in Cambodia. It does not really bother me at all, but I do know that it is a factor in buying products for some. Still, there are quite a few manufactured here, though be prepared to spend a premium for them. I expected the boots to be over $200 like my first pair, but the Ariats were $178 and the Justins were $128, and my budget being $400, I bought two pairs. So if you do plan on making a trip here be prepared so you are not caught off guard by how expensive cowboy boots can be.
After choosing my boots I took a moment to look at the store as a whole and noticed the array of other products they sell. They had a woman’s section, a section for saddles, cowboy hats, belts & buckles, spurs, shirts, and much more. This place is truly a one-stop shop for anything even vaguely related to the aesthetic. They even had retro, classical, and Mexican styles to complement the usual looks. However, the section I was interested the most in on my way out was the jeans, as I remembered I needed a new pair of jeans to bolster my closet filled with pairs that regularly get destroyed at work. As I stepped into the aisle, I realized just how many pairs of jeans there were. It isn’t like your local Walmart, where whole sizes are missing and only certain fits are sold. Horsetown had every single size of jeans imaginable and in every color made by almost every brand you could think of. I eventually settled on a pair of cowboy-cut regular fit Wranglers that would help conceal the boot shafts. It made me really realize how well the store was set up to provide customers with every need you could possibly think of. I was able to knock off two bucket list items as well, in both the boots and jeans, so I left much happier than I came in despite my wallet weighing a couple hundred dollars less afterward.
As I opened the door to leave I was satisfied with my weekend shopping trip and I highly recommend going to Cavender’s Horsetown West when you are in the market for anything I mentioned before. You will leave with what you set out to find and on top of that be treated to an experience as you are transported into a western world. An atmosphere you can’t be so easily immersed in anywhere else in the metro-atlanta area and you’re able to take a little bit of that with you into your daily life. This very atmosphere is the same one I felt when I watched Smokey and the Bandit for the very first time nearly a decade ago. Being able to incorporate that into the styles I wear at work, school and anywhere else I may go means the world to me and I’m glad that a place so near can take me back to Burt Reynolds, Jerry Reed, and a Kenworth West-bound and down across south Georgia.
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*Cavender’s HorseTown West on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cavender’s+Horsetown+West/@34.0551463,-84.5154606,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x88f56c9982e49471:0xc95da090ab16dcbd!8m2!3d34.0551419!4d-84.5132719
*Cavender’s HorseTown West: https://www.cavenders.com/storedetails/?StoreID=310
