Do you know what I hate about white people? Skiing. Its basically winter golf.
Do you know what I hate about white people? Skiing. Its basically winter golf.
Why yes let’s deforest the side of a mountain so we can run down it and possibly hit trees at fatal speeds. Im fucking glad climate change is making this bougie bullshit harder to do. I went skiing once, horrible experience. Everyone in the skiing lodge was a rich white asshole and it felt like I walked into a country club, no a hitler youth recreation club. If you own a timeshare let alone an entire house at a ski resort you deserve the fucking wall!!!!
Do Americans think skiing in general is the same as alpine? Skiing isn't any more bougie than going for a hike.
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Yeah, every criticism I've seen in this thread applied exclusively to alpine skiing, and almost exclusively to alpine resorts.
Cross-country is basically just Other Snowshoeing. Brand new gear costs maybe a couple hundred bucks, used gear is perfectly functional and ubiquitous (at least here in Canada) and the only infrastructure or anything that needs to exist is just snow having fallen.
I'd argue alpine skiing isn't bougie if you live within two to three hours of a mountain. Secondhand equipment is cheap, and lift tickets were affordable until relatively recently.
Yeah, I disliked it because it felt crowded and I felt pressured into it by my family, but I grew up in an area much closer than two hours and there was never a significant class element to it as far as I could tell. Kids who didn't have their own equipment, like me, would just borrow. Maybe as an adult there's more complicated stuff that you need specific gear for but I couldn't tell back then.
I don't know where you are, but where I live this has never been the sort of second hand stuff that is even remotely accessible to poor people.
I have been able to alpine ski about twice in my life. With rented equipment. Plenty of places around me for doing it, the lift tickets alone make it way too expensive.
And when it comes to cross country, which is a kind of national sport where I live, we all did do that as kids. But, it isn't cheap. Plenty of kids can't afford the equipment and those who have the good stuff obviously enjoy it more and don't get laughed at.
During covid year one me and my partner thought about doing it again as it's outdoors, but soon found out there is no way poor folks buy even cross country adult skiis that are actually usable. Used isn't all that cheap either.
There are endless tax payer money maintained ski routes in this country during winter that take over walking routes, hiking routes etc. You are not allowed to do anything there but ski during the ski season. The people who do it are all upper middle class or otherwise in a position where they can afford the equipment. The poors don't even get to use the area for walking during this time.
Now that I don't live with my parents, nor can they pay for my ski passes, I can't imagine spending $100-200 for a ski pass, plus the cost of driving to and from a ski-hill that's 90 minutes away from me :(
I couldn't afford downhill skiing as a child (and we lived right next to a ski hill) and I am still vaguely resentful. Used to bring a sled up the hill by foot and go down it though. The only way I got to learn how fun it is was my mum winning a union raffle for a skiing weekend.
My brother twisted his ankle the first day, so it wasn't very fun for him, but that is what we call a skill issue.
Ah solidarity, I also won a week long ski pass as a teen with lift tickets and rented skiis. I went to it with a friend and we spent all day every day in the slopes. That along with a school class trip are the only times I have alpine skied in a country of endless ski slopes, haha. It was a lot of fun, the rich kids did it all the time. Tony Hawk games and snowboarding was a big thing at the time and it was the rich kids in my class exclusively who had snowboards and were able to do that and flex about it.
There's a reason why you never see successful winter sports athletes from the global south.
Because we have no snow for the most part lol
Climate definitely doesn't help. Hard to do snow sports where there is no snow.
Southeast Asia seems to be serious about building up infrastructure for a number of winter sports so maybe in the future that will be less true.
You clearly don't have an adequate appreciation for how bad golf is if you think this is an appropriate comparison
It’s pretty fun. I don’t think anyone who has to drive a long way and pay big for outdoor clothes and equipment rental is having fun though.
Some of the nicest memories I have are stunting on rich tourists in fifteen year old thrift store gear that got refurbished at a shop in the off season.
It’s nice to go fast.
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I do like the sound of dead skiers.
you literally cannot walk around where i live because of snow from november to late april but the city bike paths all get groomed for nordic skiing so its an actually a very viable way to get around
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Fun fact, the OG big covid wave in my country was almost single handedly brought in by bougie skiiers partying in Austria, in the middle of a pandemic.
They just had to go skii, in a pandemic.
The genetic variant testing has revealed that not a single actual wave or mass spread ever happened here from outside the circles of bougie whiteness, no matter how hard they tried to make headlines of the "Chinese tourist" with covid.
And the fact that energy is spent in putting fake snow on the ground for these people so they can do their sport in climate change destroyed mountains is also a thing. They fly to these places to ski on artificial snow...
Not to mention how this "sport" and the tourism done in Lapland around it exploits and robs Sami peoples lands.
Wait they use fake snow? I know places thst have machines that make real snow, but it has to be cold enough
I mean the snow making machines, afaik they use a lot of energy. Where I live those are used to put snow into the cross-country ski routes that are everywhere as well.
The petty bourge loves this sport too, it makes them feel like they are properly doing their protestant seld-discipline. It has a lot of male coded and toughness coded undertones, there are a lot of sayings about skiing and "toughness". Ski route rage is a real thing that happens here as a result.
Fake as in not from the sky, but made on the ground with one of those machines. They consume around 20 GWh of power per year in every large alpine ski area[1].
I live in Colorado and used to go skiing a couple times every year as a kid (ie, when my parents were paying for it). It's pretty fun to go sliding down a scenic mountain at 30 mph, and it's rewarding to learn and get better. But now that I'm an adult I've decided that it's not really worth it to wake up early on a weekend, drive 2+ hours, freeze my ass off, spend a lot of money, and possibly hurt myself. Speaking of, you definitely want a helmet if you don't want to end up like Sonny Bono.
There are a few smaller and cheaper ski slopes that aren't crowded with rich tourists, but they're the exception. I've run into plenty of rich dickheads on the slopes, and lots of loud obnoxious Texans dressed fully in Cowboys gear.
That's where I'm at with it. Winter Park, Eldora, Loveland, all the I-70 and Wyoming ones- I have so many options nearby for skiing. I haven't been skiing since moving here because it's $200+ to freeze and die.
I knewa few people who would go in the evening and get cheap passes to stay late into the night getting blazed and skiing. I'm not in mountain territory tho, just big cold hills lol
its less rich people doing it here but still very white
unlike golf its a manner of conveyance so its weird to say its 'bourgeois' if theres people that just do it to get around snowy areas. the big resorts are great cancers on the landscape and society of the mountain though. rich assholes buy up all the property and all the required peons are immiserated having to make long dangerous commutes from adjacent towns or semi-indentured on-location
I hope you’re not implying that there’s anything redeemable about skiing.
It's a good means for traversing snowy terrain?
This would only be a defense of cross country skiing though.
isn't the problem with golf the amount of urban space and absurd amount of water it requires? (and, like, country-clubs have a history of de jure racial exclusivity.) like, class resentment is very understandable, but this sounds like someone who hasn't carved fresh powder, ya know?
tbf I imagine the snow machines consume a lot of water too. They certainly take a lot of energy as has been said elsewhere.
It's also much more dangerous than people think. Because skiing takes place on the snowy ground for the most part (excluding jumps and tricks), people think it's safe. But that's an illusion, if you have a fall at those speeds you're screwed.
I wouldn't be surprised if other sports like rock climbing or kayaking are safer.
Even the most basic skiing routes you go pretty fast and are uncomfortably close to trees lol. The only thing skiing has going for it safety wise is that speed control is pretty easy for amateurs to master, I find it incredible that anyone learns to snowboard without dying. Like all of the dangers of skiing, except also controlling where you go and how fast has a higher skill requirement.
In my experience the first thing they teach you is to just slide down the slope on your heel edge at 0.05mph.
Admittedly I've never snowboarded, but it was my understanding that steering was only a little bit harder, and even then failing to steer you'll probably just wipe out (because the added difficulty is how it impacts balance, along with the asymmetry) whereas failing to steer on skis might leave you accelerating forward.
doesn't seems that way all water sports are really bad cause drowning
I know one person who got a concussion and another who broke their arm while skiing
I know someone who died in a car accident. I know someone else who died from being too fat.
Who the hell said it was safe
Most winter sports are pretty
since white people are the only freaks who actually kinda like the cold.I say this as a Mayo myself who enjoys the snow.
Touch snow
in non-mountainous areas, they turn landfills into these sii hills so i think its a good fun way to use landfill land
People I know who go on skiing holidays are almost always rich snobs.
Skiing was more of cosmopolital sport decades ago. My boomer aunt loved it and my mom's side wasn't particularly rich growing up.
Counterpoint (there's no way that it hasn't been mentioned yet but I'm lazy and not going to look for it elsewhere)...
More white people die skiing than golfing.
Not to mention in most cases the town or county or state for all intents and purposes sells the land of the mountain to a private corpo to sell ski passes to you as if a fucking mountain is not a public good.
And bonus info on Protect the Peaks as Klee Benally just died, sometimes white people steal mountains that are sacred to local tribes and destroy them with skiing, massive tree clearing, etc.
Aw fuck F :’(
Kind of veering off topic but the whole way we view nature preservation is kind of fucked. Like why are we making a place like yellowstone accessible? There shouldn’t be any tourist infrastructure, people shouldn’t be going there, expect for the indigenous people who actually own the land, most wilderness should be closed off to the public.
As a white person who was never able to afford skiing, I approve this message.
What is this racist ass post even saying? Do you think skiing resorts o ly exist in primarily white countries?
The unbearable whiteness of skiing
I hate academic papers being locked behind paywalls!
My parents are skiing right now 😆 🔫
Disown your parents
We haven’t really spoken in over a year. They are Biden libs. We also never went skiing when I was a kid because we were too poor. But my parents inherited some money so = skiing.
your problem was going to a skiing lodge
Why does every fucking cartoon have an episode about it fuck you
Easier to draw/animate, perhaps?
That one Bond movie has a really iconic action sequence with it and it was used to good effect for gags in Loony Toons, so I think it's mainly imitating those though idk
as a white who has never lived anywhere that snows or has elevation, skiing has always seemed like a silly way to do terrible damage to your knees
Look on the brightside, at least you’ll get skin cancer.
if skin cancer gets me i'll have lived too long
Ball golf and downhill skiing: bad and bougie
Disc golf and cross country skiing: cool and good, sports of the people
going fast is fun and inherently cool, and anything that increases the chance of rich white people dying is also good for society overall. it's a win-win-win for everyone involved.
This is Sami erasure
"I used to be able to afford skiing when my parents paid for it but now I can't" lmao sorry you lost the financial backing of your middle to upper class parents, can't relate to any of that. No I'm not salty what are you talking about?
I don't know shit about skiing, so all I'll say is uhhhhhhhh "white people be like pizza slow french fries fast".
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Aunt Lu and Uncle Chan jumping the whiteness barrier while Aunt Tia and Uncle Tio are arguing with the whiteness police demanding to be let in. 200 miles away in the city Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima is working because Black people will never be allowed to jump the whiteness barrier.
Who refers to their uncle/aunt by their surname?
Eat shit
I downhill skiid as a kid a kid and thought it was kinda fun, and there was a slope in my home town. But i still agree with you, though I like cross-country skiing. Also, the names of the downhill disciplines make no sense. We have Slalom, Giant Slalom (?), Super-G (??), and Downhill (what should the other ones be called then???).