Why all the hate, blue state?

Not all that long ago, I was shooting some golf with a guy that was fairly new to the area, from Louisville, KY. He was a nice guy, and being a native of the South myself, we got along pretty well. As we were playing through my course, I told him about the struggle we were facing with the restructuring of our course and all the tiptoeing we had to do due to environmental concerns. He chuckled and said “Oh yeah, I have to remember, I’m in a blue state now.” I tried to say that it wasn’t really the state, just the city and one or two vociferous citizens. He said that where he came from, the mentality was that parks were meant to be used. Fair point.

Just last week, in preparation for the upcoming tournament that I’m running, several of us were armed with weed eaters, taking care of some long grass on a couple of the fairways. A guy who had just moved from Texas approached us; he was trying to familiarize himself with the course before the tourney, but he dropped his bag and pitched in to help us. I told him how thankful I was to have his help, lamenting the difficulty of getting people to actually show up for work parties. He seemed happy to help, but pointed out that in Texas, the cities took care of all the maintenance of the courses, that the course upkeep isn’t something that tournament directors have to worry about there.

Again, I’d like to think that maybe its just the city our course is in that is so non-supportive of disc golf, but I’m afraid it’s bigger than that. Just this morning, I saw an article on the latest development for Robin Hill Park in Sequim, WA. The article states that 300 people have signed a petition to ban disc golf at the park. Compare this to the article I saw just a day earlier where in Blue Springs, MO, the Parks and Recreation department is set to receive a grant for nearly $50,000, which they would use to build a new disc golf course.

Now I know part of the resistance for courses, at least here on the west coast, is lack of available land. San Diego, for example, only has one disc golf course, due to a huge population and lack of space. But there’s more at play here than usable land. To look at the Robin Hill Park situation, there is plenty of land in what is reportedly and underused park. An underused multi use park. Residents seem to be all for the use of the park, as long as its the way they use it. Heaven forbid though, somebody else wants to try to bring something new and interesting to the park.

Being an adamant tree hugger myself (just ask Brian about all the grief I used to give him about recycling), I can understand why folks would be concerned about the destruction of nature. But people, disc golf is not about destroying the environment, it’s about utilizing it. If the opponents of the Sequim course took the two hour drive to NAD Park(the closest established course), they’d see that the course exists harmoniously within the park and is truly an asset to the area.

I just don’t get it. Here we are in a blue state, where liberals are stereotyped as peace loving hippies, yet in the red states, filled with “selfish and stodgy” conservatives, they seem to be far and away more open to sharing the land and giving back to the community. It seems to me we in the blue states could stand to learn a little something from our “right thinking” brethren.