Perhaps they’d feel differently about the game if, like fellow socialist Kim Jong-Il, they’d once carded a 34 (ahem) on a regulation-length golf course, which beats Tiger Woods’ lowest-ever score by 27 shots (ahem!). Instead, California Democrats are channeling late socialist Hugo Chavez, who would spitefully destroy golf courses in Venezuela, calling the game an “obnoxious bourgeois sport” whose privileged participants “should all be exterminated.”
Yes, some Golden State Democrats are leading an effort to plow municipal golf courses under, using the same pretext Chavez did: to make way for affordable housing. Except that their proposal is in one sense even worse than ol’ Hugo’s.
As in Third World countries generally, golf in Venezuela truly is a game for the champagne set. But the California bill targets public golf courses, which were created for the very purpose of giving the common man access to recreation that had previously been reserved for the rich.
What’s more, what underlies this issue goes far beyond golf.
The Santa Monica Observer reports on the story, writing that a “bill now pending in the California State legislature proposes to convert the state’s municipal and public golf courses into affordable housing. AB 672, authored by Christina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) also provides $50 million in state subsidies to developers to help redevelop the golf courses into affordable housing.” (You can bet someone would make out big on this proposal.)
“Locally, Penmar Golf Course in Venice and Rancho Park Golf Course in West Los Angeles are municipal golf courses,” the paper continues. “The Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades is privately owned, and so not affected by the proposal.”
Translation: The wealthy would still be able to golf. So much for the “party of the common man.”
The Observer continues:
GolfWeek.com reports the bill would
• Remove municipal golf courses from protections of the Public Park Preservation Act.
• Provide an exemption to the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA.
• Make it easier to rezone public open-space land for housing.
Assemblywoman Garcia’s AB 672 “Fact Sheet” states, “Golf courses proliferate in and around California’s urban centers. As golf declines, the state can craft a ‘grand bargain’ to encourage redevelopment of golf courses in a way that promotes equity and affordability, and fights climate change.”
Given the “climate change” comment, consider what Daniel Dunham, a designer at the Koning Eizenberg Architecture firm in Santa Monica, told Bloomberg about proposals such as Garcia’s last year.
“It’s just such a huge use of land that I find it’s pretty inexcusable in dense urban areas,” he complained (this is precisely what Hugo Chavez said!). “The site [Rancho Park Golf Course] is so huge, you could build a factory there, build the units on site, and crane them into place. If you can get something like 15,000 units in one place, then it opens up a lot of opportunities for innovation and efficiency.”
Of course, it’s hard to imagine how paving over green spaces to build housing, let along a factory, reduces CO2 emissions. But I’m not a scientist (or a builder with a conflict of interest).
Assemblywoman Garcia also griped via her AB672 “Fact Sheet” that only “those who know how to or can afford to play golf” can access public courses and that “[p]ay-to-play leisure activities do not serve low and moderate-income Californians.”
Yet as the California Globe notes, the politician would “diminish or totally do away with the value-priced golf courses… – golf courses that do serve low and moderate-income Californians.”
By the way, an aside about “pay-to-play”: When Van Cortlandt Park Golf Course in the Bronx, NYC — reputed by many to be the oldest extant public course in the nation — opened in 1895, people could play for free if they didn’t use a caddie. So how much of the cost of today’s municipal golf results from statist mismanagement?
As for Assemblywoman Garcia’s claim that golf is declining, the Globe cites reports that participation “is up 30% in 2021, and particularly at municipal courses open to the public.”
Another point: Perhaps reflecting other public golf courses’ genesis, the DeBell Golf Club in Burbank, Calif., was created partially on 100 acres of land donated by philanthropist Joseph A. DeBell specifically for golfing purposes. Should the city be allowed to keep this property if it violates the spirit of DeBell’s gift?
Furthermore and illustrating the earlier point that Garcia’s proposal would hurt the common man, the Globe points out that in Sacramento, “there are four municipal golf course facilities on city-owned land, operated by Morton Golf. The Morton Golf Management company has programs for the physically or mentally disabled and the blind, military veterans, stroke survivors, a Special Olympics program, junior golf, 30 different local high school boys and girls golf teams, 13 women’s golf groups, the First Tee golf program, the First Tee Year Round After School Program, Latino Junior Golf Program, an At-Risk Youth golf Program, a Girls Play league, and many more programs aimed at providing the public access to the sport of golf.”
In truth, leftist pseudo-elites often attack golf and so many other things as elitist — e.g., in response to requests to reopen locked-down NYC golf courses last year was a politician complaint that we shouldn’t give white people’s activities a special dispensation (reality: Big Apple golf attracts many non-whites). Yet this charge is pure projection.
Just consider that while the hoi polloi were locked down and Michelle Obama was poised to issue a public-service announcement about how everyone should stay home, her husband, Barack, was chauffeur-driven 40 miles so he could play golf (video below; relevant portion begins at 0:35).
And this is what’s so disgusting about all these “sacrifices” we’re supposed to make for the “common good.” Whether it’s golfing Obama or politicians unabashedly flouting COVID-19 regulations they self-righteously call moral imperatives, do you think the pseudo-elites will join the “commoners” in common living? They may want you to use less energy and stop eating steak, but they’ll still buzz around in their Gulfstream jets while dining on $700-a-pound Kobe beef because, well, they’re special. After all, these betters of ours are generally a bit like socialist ex-French president François Hollande, who talked a good game but in private reportedly mocked the poor as “the toothless ones.”
As for California’s housing crisis, the kicker is that it’s caused not by lack of land but by regulations and poor governance.
One mark of a successful civilization — as opposed to a Venezuela or North Korea — is that, as a natural market-forces byproduct, it narrows the lifestyle gap between wealthy and limited-means citizens as much as possible (ergo, public golf). In socialist nations, however, there is no “one percent.”
There’s a 1/1000th of one percent that runs everything — and everyone else gets their leavings.
