Business Spotlight: Golden Gate Western Wear

If you need a spur-of-the-moment gift, you can find it at Golden Gate Western Wear. Literally. And not just one kind of spur – this store has a large variety of spurs, riding slickers, vests and other accoutrements of the old west.

The store, at 963 Contra Costa Blvd., which has been in its current iteration for about eight years, specializes in clothes, western accessories and everything a cowboy or cowgirl needs to spend the day rounding up little dogies, or two-stepping and line-dancing the night away.

But, says owner Bill Knudsen, it’s products for the head and toe where the store really shines. Thousands of boots are in stock, in a range of styles and prices, from the jaw-dropping price tag of ostrich skin night-on-the-town cowboy boots, to the more down to earth workaday boots. Two entire walls are devoted to the display of boots, but Knudsen points out that for every boot on display, there are a dozen pair in the back. It’s doubtful this store wouldn’t have your size and style on hand.

If you’re going to have the boots, you may as well get the hat. And in that regard you’re also in luck, because the store is also known as Knudsen Hat Co.

“We specialize in all kinds of hats,” he Knudsen said. “We’re famous for our replica movie hats. We have exact replicas of hats that were worn by John Wayne, Steve McQueen, Tom Mix, Clint Eastwood, Robert Duvall.”

There are still plenty of people who ride horses on a regular basis, and who just enjoy living the western lifestyle, Knudsen said.

“America has its own ethnic clothing, and this is it,” he said. “We’re the most admired culture in the world. People forget that, and we’re trying to remind them. We’re heavy into the old west around here.”