WFO Speedracer
A lifetime ban is like a lifetime warranty !
- Location
- Alabama
I was talking to a good friend and customer the other day who used to race Jet skis and we got on the topic of what the sports costs now, I saw great similarities to the freestyle side of it as well , guys spending $20,000 on one off fuel injection systems for their race skis, $30,000 and $40,000 freestyle skis are the norm nowadays , then this morning I read this , I copied and pasted this and cut it to the interesting parts because I think it fits our situation in this sport to a T.
I see all of this as “hobby inflation,” and it has affected quite literally every single recreational activity and I’m not uniquely unlucky with my choice of pursuits. Hobby inflation can be seen in golf, skiing, indoor climbing, mountain biking, photography, knitting, tabletop games, and theatergoing. Articles and forum posts with titles such as “Why Is [Insert Hobby] ( Jet skis ) So Expensive Now?” have become a genre of writing unto themselves.
This growing exclusivity of leisure pursuits has ramifications that aren’t just economic. Gary Alan Fine, a Northwestern University sociologist who has studied a variety of recreational activities, wrote in his book Players and Pawns: How Chess Builds Community and Culture that hobbies create “social worlds” that have “an ideology of openness, and a supportive infrastructure.” In other words, hobbies can produce communities where, because the hobby itself takes top priority, the participants’ social or cultural differences become less important.
Surveying my phone’s contact list recently, I realized that most of my friends and acquaintances who are not like me—who are much older or much younger, who are richer or poorer, who toil in other lines of work, or who cast their ballots for other kinds of candidates—are people I know from hobbies. Hobby inflation, understood in this light, is about much more than price hikes: It’s about the shrinking and possible disappearance of opportunities for people from different backgrounds , parts of the country or different countries to get to know one another.
Personally I took my hobby and turned it into a business which basically destroyed my hobby , I now try to separate the two as I rarely work on Stand up skis in my normal day to day job , by changing course again this year and getting more into ski flipping I hope to separate the two even further and hopefully get my hobby back on track .
I look forward to meeting some of you guys at freerides this year.
I see all of this as “hobby inflation,” and it has affected quite literally every single recreational activity and I’m not uniquely unlucky with my choice of pursuits. Hobby inflation can be seen in golf, skiing, indoor climbing, mountain biking, photography, knitting, tabletop games, and theatergoing. Articles and forum posts with titles such as “Why Is [Insert Hobby] ( Jet skis ) So Expensive Now?” have become a genre of writing unto themselves.
This growing exclusivity of leisure pursuits has ramifications that aren’t just economic. Gary Alan Fine, a Northwestern University sociologist who has studied a variety of recreational activities, wrote in his book Players and Pawns: How Chess Builds Community and Culture that hobbies create “social worlds” that have “an ideology of openness, and a supportive infrastructure.” In other words, hobbies can produce communities where, because the hobby itself takes top priority, the participants’ social or cultural differences become less important.
Surveying my phone’s contact list recently, I realized that most of my friends and acquaintances who are not like me—who are much older or much younger, who are richer or poorer, who toil in other lines of work, or who cast their ballots for other kinds of candidates—are people I know from hobbies. Hobby inflation, understood in this light, is about much more than price hikes: It’s about the shrinking and possible disappearance of opportunities for people from different backgrounds , parts of the country or different countries to get to know one another.
Personally I took my hobby and turned it into a business which basically destroyed my hobby , I now try to separate the two as I rarely work on Stand up skis in my normal day to day job , by changing course again this year and getting more into ski flipping I hope to separate the two even further and hopefully get my hobby back on track .
I look forward to meeting some of you guys at freerides this year.
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