Out of Season
Charleston, South Carolina: A visit to Charleston in August seems rather out-of-season, at first glance, but it is actually quite pleasant. As long as you have a nice cocktail for the afternoon rain and don’t get too “caught up” on King Street.
Speaking of out of season, this week’s Clubland USA issue focuses on what’s squarely in season in Clubland.
What’s in? International travel that stimulates the mind, forges new connections and exposes one’s horizon. Anecdotally, I’ve been notified of club rats (and readers of this fine publication) venturing to the south of France, Italy, Ireland along with Argentina and Australia (where it’s currently winter).
What’s out? Pickleball.
Ishaan Jajodia makes a compelling pitch to readers as to why pickleball is not and should not be a club sport. And, he brings us along as the privileged passenger on his family’s safari trip, which was published in Clubland USA earlier this year.
Yours truly will bring this week’s Dispatches. Enjoy the warm weather while it lasts, friends. And remember, please encourage your friends to subscribe to Clubland USA for free below.—LR
Finding Happiness on Safari
There is a newfound purpose as the sun rises: it is the thrill of the chase, the chase of the Big Five. Every national park, every piece of wilderness, has five elusive creatures that make it their sole purpose in life to be hunted and sought out. Over the span of day-long safaris your only goal is to see those darned things. It doesn’t matter if you get smacked in the face by thorny branches as you rush through the underbrush to make it to them. There is a constant air of dullness, of nothing happening, and when you least expect it, you see something. Sometimes, you simply spend hours lying in wait, in silence, hoping for a mere glimpse, and occasionally hallucinating into existence some mythical creature that properly belongs to the domain of Herodotus’ flying snakes and not Aristotle’s creatures of Planet Earth.
My first safari came on the cusp of my adolescent years and has become an annual family tradition since then. It was shortly after coming across Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa and seated on the front seat of a solidly-built 70 series Landcruiser listening to John Barry’s monumental soundtrack to Sydney Pollack’s 1985 movie adaptation of Out of Africa, that I came to appreciate the pomp and circumstance of being on safari. —IJ
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Call Pickleball what you want
But it’s no club sport
Pickleball isn’t a club sport.
Throughout Clubland, they first came for the tennis courts, and I did not speak out (much)—because I was not a tennis player. Then they came for the squash courts, and here I am.
You might have noticed the absence of that ghastly abomination, pickleball, from our club sports roundup, Smaller the Ball, Better the Sport. Let’s start with simple facts: pickleball balls aren't balls to begin with, holes and all.
My ire was stoked by seeing a squash court at the Yale Club of New York City being converted “temporarily” to a pickleball court over the summer. Leaving that horrendous noise-pollution creating, migraine-inducing, cretinous sport in the dustbin of fads would have been the right and proper thing to do, but here we are, compelled to contend with the treacherous trespass on our beloved courts.
First, it isn’t British in origin—squash, lawn tennis, sailing, and golf all share origins in the British Isles. Second, it’s also the newest sport on the club roster, and if there’s one thing this curmudgeon despises, it’s cheap novelty.
Last, but not the least, pickleball isn’t a gateway sport: neither is SoHo House a gateway to a Gold-Standard Club, nor is pickleball a gateway to tennis or squash, or to some actual sport. One might as well play croquet on one’s club’s lawn and enjoy how their ball slides against the perfectly manicured lines.
Clubs all across the United States have been dedicating resources to pickleball facilities in attempts to engage younger members and tap into “pickleball mania”, but these attempts detract from investment into actual facilities.
In a few years, proper club sports, such as squash and tennis, will quietly disappear like billiards tables, club tables, and cigar-smoking rooms. This fad won’t be temporary, be forewarned. Maybe even that grand ballroom of yours or the library will get converted to indoor pickleball courts.
Don’t write Clubland USA telling us that we didn’t warn you.—IJ
Dispatches from Clubland
SoHo House One Step Closer to Gold Standard: It has been reported that SoHo House will be going private and no longer listed on the public exchange, per CNN. This is rather welcome news as it moves the chain of “clubs” closer to becoming gold standard complete with non SoHo House reciprocals, a proper dress code, and becoming a not-for-profit. Oh, and actor Ashton Kutcher is on the board.
No new members: Carolina Golf Club is embroiled in a dispute about a new plan to increase the club’s membership headcount, reports the Charlotte Business Journal.
Another DC “club”?: As if our Nation’s Capital needed another new status war, billionaire investor Peter Thiel is eyeing the city and surrounding areas as a spot for his new club, reports Semafor. This only brings to mind the story of the founding of the Metropolitan Club to come in a later Clubland USA issue involving a certain industry tycoon being denied from a club for being too “new money”. Is there a new “new money” war happening in Clubland, as we speak? Time will tell. —LR