5 SPORTS FOR RICH PEOPLE
1. Golf
Golf has become much more egalitarian in the past couple decades, thanks in large part to a mixed-race, feline-named adulterer. Golf is an expensive sport for obvious reasons, but we’ll rehash them here anyway because a certain writer has a certain word quota to meet. To play golf, you need clubs. Clubs can be cheap, but good clubs cost as much as a bad car. Unless you want to hit the ball up and down your neighborhood streets, you’re going to need a course. Public courses don’t carry the downmarket stigma they once did, but the best (read: most exclusive) are still the country clubs, which exist, as they always have, as monuments to conspicuous consumption. $25,000 per year is not unheard of to play a round of golf once a week, which works out to about $500 per round. Not cheap. Further, if you really enjoy golf, you’re going to want to check out the finest courses the country and world have to offer, so that means you’re going to need to fly places. And don’t forget to factor into your golf budget that golf clubs are often subject to exorbitant bag fees (thanks, terrorists!) so you get hit with another $100 each way just cause you love ‘merica.
Golf has become much more egalitarian in the past couple decades, thanks in large part to a mixed-race, feline-named adulterer. Golf is an expensive sport for obvious reasons, but we’ll rehash them here anyway because a certain writer has a certain word quota to meet. To play golf, you need clubs. Clubs can be cheap, but good clubs cost as much as a bad car. Unless you want to hit the ball up and down your neighborhood streets, you’re going to need a course. Public courses don’t carry the downmarket stigma they once did, but the best (read: most exclusive) are still the country clubs, which exist, as they always have, as monuments to conspicuous consumption. $25,000 per year is not unheard of to play a round of golf once a week, which works out to about $500 per round. Not cheap. Further, if you really enjoy golf, you’re going to want to check out the finest courses the country and world have to offer, so that means you’re going to need to fly places. And don’t forget to factor into your golf budget that golf clubs are often subject to exorbitant bag fees (thanks, terrorists!) so you get hit with another $100 each way just cause you love ‘merica.
2. Crew
Much as lacrosse players try to shake the connotation that they are rich kids, crew members take every opportunity to embrace it. If you’ve ever seen a picture of a crew team, it’s pretty apparent. They look like the poster boys for the Hitler Youth. All white, short hair, smug smiles. All the ingredients are there. Crew’s origins lie in England, so it’s no wonder that sport has gotten picked up on the mean streets of Houston or Albuquerque. Crew is an expensive sport, despite appearances. Those boats and oars ain’t cheap, but beyond that, you need boathouses, which means you actually need to buy real estate on an urban river, you need an arsenal of training equipment, and you need a school-sponsored program, which generally are assumed to belong to Ivy League schools, though the Midwest and Northern California have some killer ones as well.
3. Lacrosse
Lacrosse is a gateway rich person sport. It’s not entirely exclusive, but it’s one of the first conscious steps that a rich athlete can make towards engaging in rich-person sports. What’s funny about lacrosse is that there isn’t anything inherently “rich” about it other than its origins at Catholic prep schools in the mid-Atlantic states. It’s played on a regular ‘ole field, the equipment is pricey, but no more than football gear or an expensive baseball bat, but for some reason, it’s the official sport of entitled white kids who don’t want to be thought of as entitled white kids (but still actually do). Other ways lacrosse players in high school or college “break the mold” of being rich white kids are: listening to Widespread Panic, smoking lots of pot, driving an American SUV, having longish hair, and wearing leather necklaces that they got on near their parent’s friend’s winery in Spain.
Lacrosse is a gateway rich person sport. It’s not entirely exclusive, but it’s one of the first conscious steps that a rich athlete can make towards engaging in rich-person sports. What’s funny about lacrosse is that there isn’t anything inherently “rich” about it other than its origins at Catholic prep schools in the mid-Atlantic states. It’s played on a regular ‘ole field, the equipment is pricey, but no more than football gear or an expensive baseball bat, but for some reason, it’s the official sport of entitled white kids who don’t want to be thought of as entitled white kids (but still actually do). Other ways lacrosse players in high school or college “break the mold” of being rich white kids are: listening to Widespread Panic, smoking lots of pot, driving an American SUV, having longish hair, and wearing leather necklaces that they got on near their parent’s friend’s winery in Spain.
4. Skiing
Skiing has recently overtaken heart disease as the number one killer of rich people. That’s not true at all, but it certainly seems that way with perennial celebrity deaths occurring every winter. While most people would consider skiing more of a hobby than a sport, it certainly requires more physical exertion than golf, which is widely regarded as a sport, so it stays on the list. The best skiers in the world are definitely not rich people, but the majority of recreational skiers are, unless they have made the decision to live in a ski town. Ski’s are a grand. Boots are a grand. Lift tickets are approaching the century mark as well, so there’s not much to say that subverts the argument that skiing is a rich person’s sport. Also don’t forget the fact that if the average Joe wants to hit the slopes, he will have to fly to a small airport in a mountain town and find a cozy little cabin or hotel somewhere. A good rule of thumb: if you have to fly somewhere to participate in a sport, it’s probably a rich-person sport.
Skiing has recently overtaken heart disease as the number one killer of rich people. That’s not true at all, but it certainly seems that way with perennial celebrity deaths occurring every winter. While most people would consider skiing more of a hobby than a sport, it certainly requires more physical exertion than golf, which is widely regarded as a sport, so it stays on the list. The best skiers in the world are definitely not rich people, but the majority of recreational skiers are, unless they have made the decision to live in a ski town. Ski’s are a grand. Boots are a grand. Lift tickets are approaching the century mark as well, so there’s not much to say that subverts the argument that skiing is a rich person’s sport. Also don’t forget the fact that if the average Joe wants to hit the slopes, he will have to fly to a small airport in a mountain town and find a cozy little cabin or hotel somewhere. A good rule of thumb: if you have to fly somewhere to participate in a sport, it’s probably a rich-person sport.
5. Riding
Here’s a little trick rich people use to tell if you’re one of them or not: If your dear friend Caitlin or Gordon turns to you and says, “I’m going riding,” and you reply back, “Riding what?” then you are NOT a rich person. “Riding” means riding horses. Why, how and where do you ride them? The answers are, respectively, “because I can,” “English style, you charlatan,” and “at the club.” If you are ever in doubt as to where a rich person does a rich-person activity, just guess “at the club” and you’ll probably be right. They have clubs for everything. Strangely enough, riding is just one in a long list of rich person sports that’s actually quite dangerous. It’s probably not as hairy as that other non-rich-person equine sport, rodeo, but the fact remains that you’re on a somewhat wild animal, and regardless of how much your boots cost, you can get tossed. Rich sports are generally pretty gender neutral, but if you’re a girl and you wanna get on a horse, you ride. If you’re a dude, you play polo. And you bang the girl. Both are wonderful sports.
Here’s a little trick rich people use to tell if you’re one of them or not: If your dear friend Caitlin or Gordon turns to you and says, “I’m going riding,” and you reply back, “Riding what?” then you are NOT a rich person. “Riding” means riding horses. Why, how and where do you ride them? The answers are, respectively, “because I can,” “English style, you charlatan,” and “at the club.” If you are ever in doubt as to where a rich person does a rich-person activity, just guess “at the club” and you’ll probably be right. They have clubs for everything. Strangely enough, riding is just one in a long list of rich person sports that’s actually quite dangerous. It’s probably not as hairy as that other non-rich-person equine sport, rodeo, but the fact remains that you’re on a somewhat wild animal, and regardless of how much your boots cost, you can get tossed. Rich sports are generally pretty gender neutral, but if you’re a girl and you wanna get on a horse, you ride. If you’re a dude, you play polo. And you bang the girl. Both are wonderful sports.
Comments
Post a Comment