One More Stop Before Heading Home: Summer’s Last Dance
This rodeo season, we’re creating a place to keep the night going—with music, community, and something zero poof in your hand.
Great Rodeo With More Choices
Summer is rodeo season. Communities gather under the hot sun to enjoy roping, riding, and racing. But alongside this cowpoke culture of courage and entertainment comes a long history of drinking.
Alcohol may be abundant at rodeos, but it doesn’t have to be a necessary part of the festivities.
At the 2025 Truckee Rodeo, 101.5 Truckee Tahoe Radio invited The Speedy Foundation to be a part of creating another stop before the end of the night…Summer’s Last Dance. As people left the rodeo, they could stop for one more community event before heading home or out on the town—music and dancing under the lights, with tacos by Casa Baeza, cold crisp Tahoe Artesian Water, free ice cream cones, and a chance to connect.
Last year, The Speedy Foundation handed out free ice cream cones. It was a simple idea: give people something else to enjoy—and something else to hold—instead of automatically reaching for another beer.
It also demonstrated something at the heart of Zero Proof, For You: changing drinking culture doesn't always require a dramatic intervention. Sometimes it starts by simply offering another choice.
Try a Small Switch
When alcohol is prevalent and heavily promoted at rodeos, concerts, festivals, and other community events, it can be easy to drink without giving it much thought.
Changing that doesn’t have to mean giving up alcohol entirely.
Start small. Keep track of how many drinks you consume throughout the night. Alternate an alcoholic drink with water or a non-alcoholic beverage. Grab a soda, zero-proof drink, snack, or treat instead of automatically ordering another round. Decide how many drinks you want to have before the night begins.
Most importantly, pay attention to how you feel.
Being sober curious or experimenting with drinking less can give you an opportunity to learn more about your habits and your relationship with alcohol without requiring you to adopt a label or make a permanent commitment.
Sometimes simply interrupting the routine can help us realize how much of our drinking is intentional—and how much is just habit.
Have Fun. Stay in Control.
Rodeos are exciting enough without adding unnecessary risk.
Alcohol can affect judgment, coordination, reaction time, and decision-making. And at the end of a long community event, the choices we make about what happens next matter—especially when it's time to drive home.
Being mindful about your own consumption, planning a safe ride, and looking out for friends and family can help keep a community celebration safe for everyone.
Enjoy the rodeo. Cheer loudly. Stay for the dancing.
Leave the risky behavior to the bull riders.
One More Community Stop—Without One More Alcoholic Drink
This year, Zero Proof, For You is returning to Summer’s Last Dance on Friday, August 28th.
And we're building on what we learned last year:
Instead of ice cream, The Speedy Foundation will be serving zero-proof beverages for a donation, giving rodeo-goers a chance to drink differently while supporting The Speedy Foundation. Thank you to Tahoe Artesian Water for supporting this event with “The Local Choice” in water.
Super Swirl will be on-site serving their “Freshly Made” ice cream.
Casa Baeza will be serving tacos to keep everyone fueled for the dance floor.
And, most importantly, Summer's Last Dance is intentionally positioned as one more stop on your way out of the rodeo—a chance to extend the evening with one more community experience before heading home.
Come over. Grab a zero-proof drink. Listen to the music. Dance for a while. Catch up with people you haven't seen. Then head home when you're ready. The goal isn't to tell people they shouldn't have enjoyed a beer at the rodeo. It's to create an alternative to the automatic “Where should we go for another drink?” What if the answer instead was: “Let's go dance for a while.”
Connection Is the Point
That's the bigger idea behind Zero Proof, For You.
Alcohol is often intertwined with how we connect—after skiing, at concerts, at fundraisers, over dinner, and at community celebrations like the rodeo. When alcohol is the default, drinking can sometimes become less of an intentional choice and more of simply what comes next.
We want to create more possibilities for what comes next.
With third spaces and free community events becoming less common, opportunities to simply gather matter. Summer's Last Dance gives us one of those spaces: music, movement, neighbors, friends, and a reason to stick around that doesn't have to revolve around another round.
More Choices Can Change a Culture
Changing your relationship with alcohol doesn't have to mean choosing sobriety.
For one person, it might mean having a zero-proof drink between beers. For another, it might mean calling it a night after the rodeo. Someone might be the designated driver. Someone might be taking a break from alcohol. Someone might be in recovery. And someone else might order a zero-proof drink simply because it sounds good.
All of those choices belong here.
That's the community we're trying to build through Zero Proof, For You—one where drinking alcohol is a choice, and not drinking is just as normal. So when the rodeo events wrap up on August 28, the night doesn't have to be over. Make one more stop at Summer's Last Dance.
Grab a zero-proof drink. Make a donation. Dance under the stars. Connect with your community. Then take that good feeling home with you.
More choices. Less pressure. More connection. - Zero Proof, For You.