Park City Allows Snowboarding: So What!
by Lee Crane

Excuse me while I wallow in bitterness for a few moments, but I don't understand getting all worked up about the opening when we snowboarders knew all along that the policies used by the resort were idiotic and the people responsible for snowboarding being banned were and probably still are pretty ignorant when it comes to America's youth. In all honesty, I'm not interested in celebrating the fact that a prejudiced mountain was finally forced into doing the right thing. They're only doing what they should have done years ago.

I realize that in the grand scheme of things the 18 years that the resort adjacent to the town of Park City, Utah has banned snowboarding will be a tiny boil on the hairy butt of snowboard history. But right now that doesn't matter. What matters is that for the last 18 years, they've barred us. They called us losers. They said we looked funny, we smelled bad, and that we'd never amount to much. Well, surprise. We're here. We're college educated. We're online. We are the movers of tomorrow. And it will be a while before we go dropping any coin on the operators of a mountain that has kept us out for so long.

My friend Kathleen, who calls the resort adjacent to the town of Park City, Utah home is so excited about the development that she can barely speak. When I told her how I felt she said I was being a little too bitter about this whole thing. "Do you know how great this is for the all the locals?" she asked me. "We're finally united on something. Now I can go out with my friends who ski and we can ride together. It's great."

Okay, fine. But I'm not a local and I don't think I would be excited if I was. Over the past five years the resort adjacent to the town of Park City, Utah has become much than a good mountain with some high-speed quads. To most in the snowboard world the resort was the symbol of everything that is bad about the ski industry. It was a monument to small, closed, elitist minds who were afraid of tomorrow. It was a shrine built in honor of stagnation. And now that they've finally conceded defeat in the face of overwhelming snowboard sentiment it will take a while for those thoughts to fade.

So when someone tells me that the resort adjacent to the town of Park City, Utah is opening to snowboarding I have two words: So what.