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Urban Cowboy's Lyon Porter

• Jeff Borman and Matt Brown

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Lyon Porter is one of the most talked-about hoteliers of our time. Alongside co-founder and partner Jersey Banks, he transformed a five-room Brooklyn townhouse into the first Urban Cowboy. 

The industry, and the media, pay close attention to the brand, which now spokes into hotel properties in the Catskills, Nashville, and the newest location, a Gilded Age Denver mansion, which opened within the last year.

We talk about the origins of Urban Cowboy, catching cities and regions at the right time, the unique method of sourcing items for each property, how big hospitality chases (and fails to catch) boutique authenticity, and what's next for the brand.

Matt Brown:

Hi everybody, it's no Show with Matt Brown and Jeff Borman. Lion Porter is one of the most talked about hoteliers of our time. His well-known backstory is a veritable folktale son of Shaker Heights, hockey phenom, real estate wunderkind and, of course, alongside co-founder and partner Jersey Banks, he transformed a five-room Brooklyn townhouse into the very first urban cowboy. The aesthetic they've created is a symphony of textures, found objects and vibes that make you feel something when you walk through the door, and it is a concept that other hotels aspire to but rarely meet. The industry and the media pay close attention to this brand, which now spokes into hotel properties in the Catskills, nashville and the newest location, a Gilded Age Denver mansion, opened within the last year, and he's also launched Cowboy Creative, his personal design studio, where the urban cowboy magic can apply to cocktail bars, bowling alleys, lofts and tree houses from Sea, the Shining Sea. His Instagram and his creative portfolio are the stuff dreams are made of. Lion Porter, welcome to no Show.

Lyon Porter:

Well thank you. That was probably the most beautiful introduction I've ever had on one of these things, so appreciate the love. I'll try to live up to it in the next little bit.

Jeff Borman:

Next time you're introduced or you need a bio, you're welcome to just get the AI transcript of this. It's all yours now.

Lyon Porter:

Let's go. I got my new bio for my Raya profile.

Jeff Borman:

When you created Urban Cowboy, what specifically was missing in the marketplace that you thought you could fill? Well, I think.

Lyon Porter:

For me it was less the marketplace, because I had Jersey and I always talk about being accidental hoteliers. What was missing for me was a third space in New York City where we lived. I was, at the time, a real estate broker. I also had a private driver and was wearing, you know, three-piece suits. I was. I sold a few billion dollars of the real estate on the residential side in New York after I played hockey, and for me, at that moment in my life, I was going through a divorce, I was 32 years old and I was missing. You know, especially in New York it's like bars, restaurants, clubs, hotels, like I was missing that kind of clubhouse.

Lyon Porter:

That third space and this is a lot, this is before the word and term third space was a thing, right, I designed my dream townhouse before I got divorced, and so it was my first time designing for myself. I designed a lot of real estate projects to make them more sellable, but I didn't think of myself as an artist or a designer or creative, and so it wasn't a gap in the market, it was a gap in my life. And this thing, this townhouse in the second stop off the L in Lorimer Street stop in Williamsburg, brooklyn magically coalesced around a few things. One was cowboy was about freedom. The idea of a cowboy in Americana was always about freedom, right? And so we called Urban Cowboy. I didn't think anyone would show up, up, and and it was our five room bed and breakfast in Brooklyn. But this is before Brooklyn was a brand and we were in Williamsburg and we were the second quote unquote hotel in Williamsburg. We weren't a hotel, we were a townhouse with five rooms and we lived on the ground floor and then, you know, hosted everyone.

Lyon Porter:

And so Jersey at the time was in between apartments. We were dating and I like, hey, you airbnb'd your apartment, you can run a hotel. And she's like, I'm like, how hard could it be? And literally, you know, first time designing, first time being an artist. You know, we, we opened it up without an instagram. The first people came and stayed and they're like well, how do we pay you? And we're like, do you cash? Like we like it was that remedial of hot. So for us it wasn't a hole in the market and we had no idea what we were doing.

Lyon Porter:

But then we started to play with this idea of kind of like if you have the key to the house, meaning the front door code, you're, you're in, and it was like basically a private members club third space with no membership dues, open bar, sauna, hot tub, log cabin in the back, and we were like the second quote-unquote hotel in brooklyn and that's when brooklyn took off as a brand. We had people from japan, from sweden, movie stars. All of a sudden we would get a hundred people or 200 people applying to stay for there for the weekend and Jersey would say, like you know, please apply, what's your Instagram? And so people had to apply to stay and we would vet like, okay, what would be the coolest you know people to have in our house? And we lived there and she'd put out breakfast and we'd make them free drinks and we had private chefs. So we had a butler and we had just, you know, if we had a 50 or 100 person party and he didn't like it, it's like no problem, go to the wife, no problem, here's a refund. We had this kind of very irreverent sensibility about it, like you're entering into our life and people seem to really like it.

Lyon Porter:

And this is also when Instagram was instant and this really amazing photographer named Jared Chambers if you want to look him up on the gram came and he called right before and he goes I want $10,000 and I want the whole house for a week and I'll post you on Instagram. And this is before the word influencer was a thing and I was like we just opened, we have no money, you can stay in the cabin for the weekend. He's like I'll be there tomorrow and like on the way there, I was like Jersey. Should we like get an Instagram? Do you think that'd be a good idea? You know this is 2014. He posted a beautiful picture of someone in a clawfoot tub which became a signature right and the rest is kind of history. Everyone showed up, the world showed up, every magazine in the world showed up.

Lyon Porter:

We did a shoot with name it, we did it and so it was time and place and us and if we got, you know, it's like biracial couple in Brooklyn having fun, throwing parties, hosting people from all over the world, and the media just was like, oh my god, like if we got called hipsters one more time, like the hipster hotel, the most Instagrammable hotel, like all this kind of happened organically and my first time again designing for myself, and it was a passion project and it exploded.

Lyon Porter:

It was a place to meet people and our friend group was always there. We called it couch theory If you sat on our couch, something would happen, and it always did. And so you have these international people and locals and New Yorkers and people from all over the world staying. But you'd also have our friends and you know whether it was just you know us making cocktails or cooking dinner or whatever, you were invited into our home and that was the first Romakawi. That was Brooklyn. That's how we built a brand with zero marketing dollars that exploded and that's kind of the origin story of what it filled in my life not necessarily the market.

Matt Brown:

Urban Cowboy hotels have been described as theatrical, experiential, cinematic. When you were building out the first Brooklyn property and I'm sure there were many trips, I wonder what your over under was to Crest Hardware. Rest in peace during that time. As you were kind of fixing this place up and then later, when you were kind of scaling up in Nashville, did you know that you wanted to create something with this kind of heightened sense of theater? Did you know from the beginning that this was going to be the brand aesthetic, or did that kind of evolve as the train was moving?

Lyon Porter:

I just designed my dream house in Brooklyn. It was fully designed before I decided it was going to be bed and breakfast. So all of our design imperative is just about what speaks to me and I always tell people from a design sensibility that I'm a collage artist. I go out and it drives everyone insane and I've done projects with very corporate-minded people and they're like, where are you putting that $5,000 couch? And I'm like I don't know, but it's perfect for what I see. And so I look at furniture, found objects, art, wallpaper, textures, colors is like my clippings and I look at them and I spread them out and I drive everyone crazy. I was like, well, design room number one. And I'm like, no, I swirl, I collage art with the found objects.

Lyon Porter:

I just did it in a cowboy bar or six project and I got over 400 mounted horns. That is a lot of horns. It was very horny, the project was extremely horny and it's like you go into that holding area and you're like, oh my God, there's a mountain lion, there's two bison, there's a possum holding a beer can, upside down, like that. Like there was insanity on the. I went nuts on the taxidermy, but I kind of again, it's also always channeling whatever the design imperative is for. That's like the catskills project, our lodge in the catskills on 200 acres, 11 buildings with an 1800s bowling alley and a hundred year old fool. Like that design imperative was taken from all of my time in the adirondacks, all the Gilded Age lodges, right.

Lyon Porter:

Urban Cowboy Brooklyn was industrial mixed with rustic. There's a log cabin but there's also garage doors. There's steel but there's also wood. It was Williamsburg. It was my dream house.

Lyon Porter:

Urban Cowboy National was an 1890s Victorian, but it was my second album, so I wanted to. You know, every second album you get super experimental and try to get away from your hit, right. And so I mixed Southwestern and Art Deco and did a Southwestern Deco overlay with all that crazy pattern, geometric wood that then you saw everywhere after that, like literally everywhere, right, and it's been odd and weird and you think about whether it's the style or the design or the cowboy. I mean, we did all of this before there was Southwestern Patterns on runways, before Beyonce did it. You know, a country album, like, as we've grown, we've been open for 11 years, um, this americana cowboy outlaw country aesthetic has now permeated into fashion. It's permeated music, it's permeated design, um, and we were doing a lot of these kind of rustic luxury.

Lyon Porter:

Um, tongue-in-cheek, but again into your cinematic theme. Like I love it when people will say if r had a hotel or if Wes Anderson had a hotel, it's like the best compliment to me. Jersey always says I should just do set design. She's like stop doing hotels and just do set design, because I design in symmetrical vignettes. That's what makes sense to me.

Matt Brown:

What is your design process like now, say, for Denver, you know, as the brand has gotten bigger? Once you get a property or have your eye on a new property, are you still doing all of it? Or is there like a mission impossible team that kind of comes together to help you?

Lyon Porter:

It's a mixture. I'm still doing all and leading all the design, but there's a team behind me of people that will. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are Like. For instance, I'm designing a hotel jersey. He's like, well, where is the closet? Where's someone going to put something? And I'm like don't mess up my symmetrical vignette, screw the closet. So a lot of our hotels will just have like hooks and racks, which again drives everyone crazy. So there's this intersection of like if I'm designing a $20 million loft or something in New York, my residential background comes in and I get really specific on that and like the design imperative changes right. If it's for a client, it's different.

Lyon Porter:

My own projects I get obsessed with eliciting an emotion. I will shun all practicality to create something that I feel hits you when you walk in and it's like this is a special place and it sets a stage and a tone and experience. Like we burn enough Palo Santo to like I don't even want to talk about how much Palo Santo we burn, but people smell that and they go. What's that smell? And it's like well, well, you know, we started that in brooklyn and um started building palo santo every day and everyone loves it. And like these little tiny. You know it's smell, taste, touch, sound, and you know you create the stage for people then to pick up on the cues the cloth the tubs are. It's elemental. We burn a lot of firewood, so I love elemental design. I love activating things like live fires, bathtubs. I like putting a symmetrical bathtub perfectly on a window, right Like there's. You know, I create these things for people when they're on vacation to say, hey, look at me, I'm on vacation. And that wasn't purposeful, that wasn't how I thought about it, that's just what happened. And then people start spreading by word of mouth in social media what you're doing, because you're allowing them to fall into that imperative and also fall in love and take a bath and sit by a fire and and do it in a beautiful space that isn't like every other space and, I think, from a design imperative.

Lyon Porter:

When I put together the team, it's like how do we like, for instance, the dive motel? We did disco balls on party switches. It says party switch to light up switch. You flip the switch, the disco ball starts turning and four channels light up on a wood paneled wall that that say dive, radio, sex, drugs, rock and roll and sleep. It's an experience and it's not that crazy to do, but no one ever done that before, right, it's been copied a bunch, so you know whether it's a disco ball or a horn or a bending branch willow artist creating a basically human bird nest in the Catskills. These are all things that are meant to elicit an emotion and create the stage for an experience that is not your normal life. You're on vacation and we build experiential environments that we focus on lifestyle versus luxury.

Jeff Borman:

You've done how many projects now?

Lyon Porter:

I mean with the studio, we've done I don't know 30 projects. With the hotels, we've done our own. We've done six projects.

Jeff Borman:

What mistakes did you learn from? Like the early days messed it up, but you got it ironed out now.

Lyon Porter:

It's hospitality in an operating business. So I would say we're still figuring it out every day, every time I think, well, if we ever, if we ever open a bar, you know we'll, we'll, uh, we'll, make a fortune. And we opened a bar in Nashville at our second location, and it's you know, it's funny Um, it's been so iterative. We opened that bar at the. That bar is a really good example of your question. We made every mistake you could possibly make. We opened a bar with one cook cooking the best chili you've ever had in your life over an open fire pit. The health department showed up and said what are you doing? And we're like, we're cooking chili. Like, well, you have to cover it. So we covered it. Now we have a covered deck. Well, now you have to enclose it. We enclosed it. We had gates that were closed and it was like we can never do more than you know that. But in COVID everyone was outside. So we opened the gates. That made everyone go to the garden. Now the garden's magical. And then they go to the front mansion where there's a wine bar and that's a full activation or property. The full activation of that was always the vision. It took six years to execute iterative. We started small, open the food program, then had a tasting menu. Now we have Roberta's pizza, like We've made, I would say, every single mistake you can make.

Lyon Porter:

Again, we had no experience, but there's a magic to that because we also come with a corporate mindset and I was literally on a call with a private equity guy today and he was like all the big brands are trying to do what you guys have this feeling, this thing, and they're all opening these cool boutique brands but they don't feel boutique Because they're done with this corporate stamp repeat it, order it in china, throw it out in five years. Um, I pick things that are 40 years old that I hope look good in 40 years and it's not a throwaway mentality. You're trying, I'm trying to build things that last and not just stamp it. So I made all the mistakes. But also that iterative nature and that lack of corporate knowledge has been a gift and also a curse, right, because I wouldn't say we're the most efficient.

Lyon Porter:

My design process is not efficient, it is art and I think that people feel that when they walk in the door you know back to the bar. I watched the first season of Cheers when I designed the bar. It looks nothing like a Boston bar but it's my Cheers Pulling in these, like I'm very as a film minor, I'm very affected by media and movies like and pulling in these kind of thematic um things to create inspiration. Like you know, a lot of people have humbly been like that's my favorite bar in the world and it's like that makes me smile and makes it all worth it, right? Yeah?

Jeff Borman:

I think there's a challenge in hospitality with authenticity. Uh, big brand management companies across different industries, from beer to travel. They try every way to appeal to a consumer that wants a unique experience and variety. Right, anheuser-busch can buy Red Hook, sam Adams can buy Dogfish Ed, and they'll ruin the brands. For certain, they will take craft beer and make it mass market 100% counter to the reason the brands were successful to begin with. 100% counter to the reason the brands were successful to begin with. And hotels are often the same. Usually they are Soft brands are desperately trying to bring the boutique, local mom-and-pop shop feel under a gigantic conglomerate's umbrella and loyalty scheme. Why do they fail in your mind?

Lyon Porter:

I think it's about finding that soul in the sauce and continuing to add that ingredient. A lot of times, efficiencies of larger corporations will try to value, engineer out that ingredient and make it more profitable, which is why they bought the thing in the first place. So there's a creative tension there, and I think the ones that have done it successfully like if you look at, for instance, RRL Ralph Lauren's fashion brand that is a large conglomerate owned corporate fashion brand that is obsessed with details, putting out something new and unique every single season. I wear a lot of RRL. I love RRL.

Lyon Porter:

Ralph Lauren is an inspiration of mine in the sense of, you know, he created a somatic fashion brand, right.

Lyon Porter:

That painted a picture of a story of who you wanted to be and how you wanted to feel it, and so I think there are some wins, there are some stories that, like that, have scaled in the right way, but I think the majority don't add that soul in the sauce, right? And then you feel that. And if you felt that, and then all of a sudden you don't, the whole reason you were going into it was because it felt handcrafted, it felt unique, it felt special and you know, as we've grown, I've really tried to keep you know the hate the word and everyone says they hate the word but some sense of authenticity. This has always been a brand of like let's build hotels and all the places that we love for our community and then actually building a real community around it is something we're, you know, also very much focused on. So, yeah, a lot of it was and is, I think about that, and when you take on, you know, more more corporate mind state, I think a lot of that gets lost instead of celebrated.

Jeff Borman:

Ian Schrager exited Morgan's after creating it and building it into a just a really cool set of hotels. And when he did that, I mean he exited and then thought, well, I might as well get paid a bunch of money to do it again this time. Call it addition, another one of my favorite brands in the business, but this time to have Marriott's powerful development team out there raising capital, pushing projects around the globe. So my question to you is, after hearing this pod, one of the majors let's just say IHG is going to call you and they're going to make you an offer to buy you out. What's your price?

Lyon Porter:

Do you do it? I think it would be about alignment with the team, and I think that we've reached a critical mass of, I think, as big as we could get without some sort of infrastructure beyond this. The team we have is amazing. Big as we could get without some sort of infrastructure beyond this, like you know, the team we have is amazing. Uh, we just opened our sixth project and, uh, people are showing up.

Lyon Porter:

Um, I think, when you think about doing larger things, like scale doesn't scare me in the sense of more rooms. It's all the same effort, um, and I like I always reference, like, the bowery hotel, one of my favorite hotels. It has a lot of rooms. You don't feel that, though, when you walk in. So I'd be excited to do projects with a group that celebrates the vision while also creating efficiencies and allowing us to add even more experience in and celebrate that soul in the sauce, more experience in and celebrate that soul in the sauce, but also have the infrastructure to, you know, get economies of scale, as it pertains to, like you know, there's a lot of service that goes in and there's a lot of like moving parts with an operating business.

Lyon Porter:

So I think we're open to conversations and we are having them, and I think it's just finding, you know, the right alignment with someone who we think will be fun to grow with and be additive, and we're going to be additive and stick in our lane in that you know scenario, and then they need to be additive and stick in their lane and then that marriage, which it would be, I think, could be a really powerful and exciting one.

Lyon Porter:

You know, ian's done it, like you mentioned, with addition really well, and there's some other people who have done it really well and there's other people have done it and the brands disappear, right. And so, you know, we've been, we've had knocks on the door and we've had conversations and we've always been trying to be really thoughtful with that, because I think that's, you know, it's like getting married, right, you're going to be doing that for years together and so open to dating and having those conversations, and it's just a matter of finding that alignment where it's like, hey, we got all that stuff that you're not the best at, because we're not the best at everything, but we really like how you guys do this and I think that would be something that would be interesting to us.

Matt Brown:

It's time for the lightning round Lion. What's a found object that was too good to not keep for yourself?

Lyon Porter:

Yeah, yeah, which one? I think it's probably. Like. You know, it's funny, just like looking around, not that the viewer or the listeners can see this, but like there's this really cool chair right here. You see, this thing it's like Swedish 60s. I was going to put it in a hotel and I actually bought two of them and put them in denver. You know, I just bought it and I was like, well, I might put that in my house. You know, um, uh, what was cool about brooklyn was, you know, I always look at it like I'm buying it from my house, right, because I spent a lot of time at this place. So you know, I bought a4,000 chair that looks like the Chrysler building that's in Nashville, but I look at that as my house, right. So it's like you know all of them. Well, it's funny.

Lyon Porter:

I just mentioned two chairs. When we were opening Nashville Jersey, I had like 18 chairs in the parlor. Like no couches. I'd somehow just bought like chairs and she's like peopleches. I'd somehow just bought like chairs and she's like people don't want to just sit on chairs, man, like we can't do this, and I have an affliction and an affinity for beautiful chairs. So I find myself owning a lot of chairs and holding on to a lot of chairs sure, some call it an affinity, others might call it a sick obsession um yeah, I'll take.

Lyon Porter:

Take it as a compliment when you're buying a four thousand dollar chair, you have a problem. Yeah, sure, put it. Yeah, yeah the limits.

Matt Brown:

Now we've been looking at some of the some like some of the stills from your bowling alley work and it's so cool. Is there a type of property like that, maybe even another kind of third space type property, that you'd like to take a crack at?

Lyon Porter:

You know, what's funny is so the bowling alley was an old Kmart with 40 foot ceilings. It looked literally like nothing. So you know, I can make spaces feel like something that have nothing in them. I mean, that was like an empty warehouse, basically.

Lyon Porter:

But something I'm taking a crack at right now in Tulsa, oklahoma, with the studio is it's a UFO. It's a disc on, like, the corner of an intersection off the highway that a guy built as a love letter to his wife after she died, and he was a builder, and I have crazy plans. Now we're building it with a pneumatic elevator, like one of those like pressurized elevators that were beaming people up, and we're electrifying it. That's a fun one because it's so architecturally different and it's a disc on top of a podium 40 feet in the air that we're, like you know, making it into a UFO for a client, and I've been working on this for like two years, and so that's a fun one that I'm actually doing.

Lyon Porter:

Now I'm building a dream house in Nashville that will probably sell, but like doing custom tile with Lindsay from Red Rock Tiles and like hand-painted murals from a tattoo artist and like. So a lot of the projects that I'm currently working on are dream projects and um, that's kind of all we're really taking on now is things that I'm really passionate about that are that are just like, really unique, like that. We those are a lot of the reaches that we get people that aren't looking for your kind of traditional restoration hardware west elm style designers a, a Skiff's article described Urban Cowboy as a brand of boutique hotels that has a Cheers vibe.

Jeff Borman:

Did that sit comfortably or make your skin crawl?

Lyon Porter:

Well, like I said earlier with the public house, I watched the first season of Cheers when I was designing it, so that sits well with me. I think if we build a place where people want to come to every day and sit there and have a good time and find a community, I mean that was like the core of Cheers, right. Like when you watched it you felt like you're going to hang with your friends at the bar and you know that I look at that as a compliment.

Jeff Borman:

This is such a an appreciated space and yet not understood, and I, when I'm I guess what I mean by that is brands know how much customers want this space that you've figured out and they just can't pull it off. So I listen, I appreciate your time and walking us through the questions that I, when I think about the failings and the missteps. These are the questions I have and I appreciate having you here to help me think through it.

Lyon Porter:

Thank you, of course. Yeah, I mean, it's a very unique space, right? Experiential hospitality is what I look for, right, things with soul in the sauce, and I think the economies of scale are what help these things make money and are profitable. And I think that there's an intersection right now between hospitality and residential and third spaces and spas and bathhouses and hotels, and it's really fun to see what a lot of people are putting out there right now, and I think that it will continue to evolve into this mixture of more and more experience-driven hospitality, which is what people are demanding. Right?

Lyon Porter:

We just happened to kind of do it on a whim and fell quite smackly in the middle of, you know, brooklyn in 2014. And you know Nashville we were the first boutique hotel in Nashville. Like, we opened the Catskills one week before COVID, who knew that an escape from New York property would be the best idea ever? So a lot of it is time and place and luck and moments, and are excited to continue the journey and and uh, really appreciate your guys' time and it was nice to chat about it.