Getting in touch with one’s inner turnstile
By Austin Staunch
I am patiently waiting in line and getting antsy. I eavesdrop on the conversations of others while I wait my turn to pass through the metal turnstile so I can go about my day. I finally approach the ugly, cold, steel doorway, get a green light and am allowed to pass. The bar swings down, hits my knees and now I have trouble proceeding through the narrow opening from a full stop. Why would that be? No, I am not boarding the BART train in San Francisco. It’s because I am locked into my skis in a lift line at Alpine Meadows.
When did turnstiles, these horrible contraptions, come onto the skiing scene? I know they have been around Europe for decades, but that is no excuse, as Euro toilets are just as weird and we have not adopted them. Lift lines are supposed to be friendly, take-a-breath pauses to make up for the fact that you are in a line that is longer than airport security at LAX, even after spending $75 for a lift ticket.
There is also the gorgeous outdoors of the Sierra to admire. It’s as though I am in a third world bus station entering a bathroom, after just having paid 50 centavos and getting my two squares of flimsy toilet paper. I would think the resorts would at least give them the appearance of a ski area. Maybe surround them with wood and stone like the grand fireplace in the lobby of every resort hotel. But no, these are authentic, mechanized turnstiles, planted right in the snow. What is next, conveyor belts such as those in the kid’s area to take us right to where the chair will scoop us up?
What happened to a real human interaction with a lift operator? Mammoth Mountain Ski Area’s lifties are friendly. They smile, sing songs, ask you how your day’s going and make you feel like their new best friend. It is a real exchange between human beings. The operator sitting by the turnstiles here at Alpine Meadows is busy counting numbers while looking down at a screen, as if studying for a final exam. It’s another sad example of people being replaced by machines, which in this economy, is unconscionable. I wonder how many times the acronym “FTE” came up in the business proposal. “Think of how many Full Time Employees we can cut with one machine.”
Scanners make the line move just as fast on the weekends, and who cares if someone makes it past them on an empty Wednesday and poaches a few lines? As far as recording the most visited areas of a mountain, automated turnstiles are not a necessity to accomplish the goal.
Let’s look at it from an environmental standpoint. How many plastic cards are generated and disposed of for this endeavor? Regardless of their potential to be used again by offering a code to submit online, thousands of them will end up in the landfill. It’s a plastic trash generator and utterly wasteful. Besides, isn’t the ski industry still trying to recover at least some of its karma from the wastefulness of the rear entry boot?
Let’s not take a step back.
I further would like to point out some possible worst-case scenarios resulting from caving to the corporate allure of the turnstile:
1.) A small child gets their glove caught in the rotating mechanism, breaking the wrist, even snapping it off completely!
2.) A snowboarder slides up to the turnstiles sideways and sits down, blocking three. The other two people approaching trip over his board and fall head first into the metal doorways, sustaining massive head injuries.
3.) The whole thing falls over, killing 10 people and an endangered bird.
4.) Someone skis into it. Many ski into it.
5.) The perpetual knocks to the knees from the turning bar injures many and creates a new condition that baffles the medical field.
6.) Twenty years from now we find out we have been exposed to massive amounts of radiation and have cancer.
7.) A very overweight guest cannot pass through and sues the mountain for discrimination. All the passing zones must be re-fabricated and replaced, costing millions.
8.) A youth on a double dog dare sticks his tongue to the frozen bar. Ouch.
As you can see, these turnstiles are ugly, immoral, wasteful and ultimately dangerous. To those ski areas that have not succumbed, hold out. Do not install the turnstile. Keep friendly first-year employees, stoners and foreigners on J1 visas employed. Keep the area safe. Keep it beautiful.
If not, then I suppose you can also obtain some corporate sponsorship for each turnstile, with logos such as Colgate, Marlboro and Tampax emblazoned upon them.
