
Death of the Country Club - RickJWagner
https://www.city-journal.org/country-clubs
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abtinf
Another (now dead) comment here called country clubs the domain of rich
racists. So I thought I might share my story.

When my family immigrated to the US in the 1980s, my parents had limited
English fluency and familiarity with the culture, so they couldn’t find any
work. My father managed to work as a day laborer at country club one day. He
had a conversation with one of the club members, expressed a desire to work in
his broken English, was referred to another member, and then was connected
with a permanent (menial) job at a local hotel. It made a big difference in
our lives.

I don’t have any other experience with such clubs, but I’m thankful that at
least one of them recognized and helped a hard worker get ahead.

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Ninjak2
The author of this story failed at research. The Santa Clara Golf & Tennis
Club is a public institution operating on land owned by the City of Santa
Clara. It's the exact opposite of a ritzy, expensive club. It's closing
because of developer greed, meanwhile other public golf courses in the area
(San Jose Muni, Sunnyvale Muni, Shoreline, etc) are doing just fine. None of
those courses would ever be mistaken for a Country Club though.

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Spooky23
The chairman of my wife’s old company invited us to a dinner at a fancy
country club. He had to spend $20k a year in entertaining.

Nobody has the time to do that anymore. That’s too rich for most political
people and too time consuming for most business people.

~~~
cascom
I’m a little skeptical of that number, while I don’t doubt the annual dues
might have been $20k/year even clubs with mid six figure initiations are
unlikely to have a $20k/year food and beverage minimum

~~~
Spooky23
It may have been dues with some sort of credit. They basically ate out and did
all family functions there if I recall.

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all_blue_chucks
Who has time to play golf? Even though we can afford it, we are constantly in
back-to-back "sprints" during the day and tied to our computers so we can
respond to pages for "devops" at night.

In the rare downtime we get these days, the pace of modern highly paid
professions leaves us too exhausted for lengthy sports like golf.

Leisure is dead and will stay dead until life takes precedence in work-life-
balance again.

~~~
baroffoos
This is a reflection of your own personal experience and is not reflective of
all or probably even most peoples life. I would say the majority of people
have plenty of time in their weekend for a game of golf. They may have filled
their weekends up with other activies but if they wanted to play golf they
could.

~~~
jdietrich
The golf industry disagrees. Lack of leisure time is one of the key factors
driving the steep decline in the golf market.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/05/why-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/05/why-
america-fell-out-of-love-with-golf/)

~~~
scottlocklin
People don't lack leisure time at all. They just spend it fiddling with their
phones.

I don't like golf, but I do like the idea of playing a relaxing yet
challenging game outdoors which takes 4 hours to complete. Beats the shit out
of fiddling with your phone.

~~~
baroffoos
I saw the stats on how long per day the average instagram user spends on the
service and its mind blowing. Pretty much everyone has lots of free time but
its just crammed full of social media.

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sonnyblarney
My folks belonged to a club, we were not wealthy, but my parents enjoy golf
and it's a super important place for them to engage with their peers. It was
an important community to them.

We also belonged to a Ski club (again, not super expensive), and it was
essentially our community. I think most of our family friends were part of
that club or neighbouring one's.

Most of them were a little well off (think Dentist), but most were definitely
not rich, though sure there were some.

Though clubs have been seen as the domain of the rich, they are really a great
thing, I wish there were more of them.

The only real negative attribute I see is that they can be seen as a strong
sign of class: people will be judged on what club they belong to, and the fees
will determine status. It doesn't have to be that way however.

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TaylorGood
Depends on your locale. I’m in Orange County, south of LA where country clubs
and yacht clubs are alive and well.

Younger generations are joining both.

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Buldak
This reminds me of casinos, whose decline is also oft-reported nowadays. The
financial difficulties of millennials notwithstanding, I expect that casinos
just aren't as culturally appealing to today's youth as they were to their
parents, and I wonder if something similar could be said of country clubs.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Vegas is doing very well on the whole.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
Not due to gambling, though. Kids these days go for the clubbing.

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cascom
Frankly I’m skeptical - is the article talking about high end private clubs
owned by their memberships, or the corporately owned “country clubs” or clubs
associated with a real estate development or planned community? They are two
totally different things...

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woodruffw
There's something awfully tone-deaf about a conservative magazine using John
Updike, Sinclair Lewis and Philip Roth to bemoan the decline of country clubs.
These men's works ( _American Pastoral_ , _Rabbit, Run_ ) _excoriate_ the
culture of the 50s and 60s rat-race-to-the-country-club.

The fact that the literature of the period employs the country club is _not_
evidence of the country club's positive aspects -- it's frequently evidence of
the exact opposite.

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vivekahuja
Nice post that you shared! I think with the trend of more urbanization, upper-
middle class millennials have substituted some of the aspects of country clubs
(social community mixed with athletics/sports) with expensive boutique group
sports and fitness experiences like CrossFit, SoulCycle, and perhaps Equinox.
Some of the true upper class friends I have still do things like pay dues for
expensive social athletic clubs.

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RickJWagner
Bowling went through a similar decline.

Societal forces, worth of underlying real estate, etc.

We need something similar, else we risk further erosion of social fabric.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
If country clubs _ever_ contributed positively to social fabric they have
hidden this phenomenon very well.

~~~
WalterBright
> Leisure for today’s younger adults more often involves streaming TV shows in
> a high-rent city bedroom, not playing 18 holes on a suburban green.

Not sure that's better.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
It sure as hell ain't worse.

Anyway, the "high rent" bit makes me reject it wholesale. This was targeted at
yuppies, not the people excluded from country clubs. Who gives a shit about
yuppies (including us all): they can buy whatever they need.

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opnitro
This is basically good.

