The Ski Journal - Volume 16, Issue 3
MALL RATS: Has New Jersey Found Skiing’s Missing Link?
Words: Kade Krichko. Photos and Captions: OK McCausland 2022-11-25 12:04:37
Onlookers relax and watch skiers riding down the slope from the mall side of Big Snow American Dream. Observing the activity is polarizing for many—some expressed interest in trying it, others disapproved of how cold it looked inside the snow park.
Pass through the sliding doors at the end of the concrete parking garage. Ignore the construction signs for the Mrs. Fields cookie store and drop into the human current as it ebbs from one ghastly lit shop to the next. Avoid the fuzzy mechanical animals (and the line at Starbucks) and make your way across the cavernous pavilion. Just beyond the stage, take the escalator up to the second floor. There, somewhere between Zara and Sweet Factory you’ll find it: Big Snow—skiing’s missing link.
The first indoor ski center in North America, Big Snow is carved out from what New York-based photographer OK McCausland calls, “an American nightmare.” American Dream, in East Rutherford, NJ, is the second-largest mall in the United States. It’s less than 10 miles from Times Square. A testament to our bizarre obsession with entertainment and commerce, the complex also features a Nickelodeon-themed amusement park, an aquarium and a surf wave. But it’s the 180,000-square-foot snow refrigerator that provides something beyond the excess of consumerism, a rare and overdue opportunity in the snowsports realm: Big Snow has brought the mountains to the people.
Nearly 20 million people live in the New York City metro area, over 6 percent of the U.S. population. Yet even with ski area Mountain Creek, NJ, just an hour and a half from city limits, for many, limited transportation options, lack of equipment and high-priced entry fees have made skiing feel a world away. When Big Snow opened its doors in December of 2019, that changed. In addition to being a 30-minute bus ride from Manhattan’s Port Authority, the ski center offered full-service equipment rental—from skis and boots to jackets, pants and helmets—and affordable lift tickets (as cheap as $69 for full rentals and two hours on the hill). In its first year alone (cut short because of the pandemic), the center saw over 90,000 first-time snowsports participants, nearly 1 percent of all new skiers and snowboarders during that period. For the first time, New York City had a ski hill to call its own.
“[Big Snow] is actively bringing people to the sport,” says McCausland after a September visit to the center. A Seattleite now based in Brooklyn, she grew up near the Cascades and had her own ideas of what a ski hill should look like, “At first glance, you’re like ‘For real? A ski resort in a mall?’” she says. “But people are stoked that this exists. I don’t think the irony is lost on anyone, but no one gives a shit because they’re having a great time.”
A pair of skiers in shiny Devo-esque one-pieces, a New Jersey octogenarian picking up skiing again after decades, a Utah park rat traveling the country and living out of his van—all coexisting in one temperature-regulated icebox. Set to 28 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, Big Snow gives skiers and snowboarders a chance to score turns almost 365 days a year. In addition to two beginner slopes and a pair of surface lifts, the facility also has an intermediate run and a terrain park jammed with jumps and rails. At only 160 feet of vertical drop and spread across just four acres, Big Snow is one of the smallest resorts in North America—and also probably the only ski hill where you can listen to Christmas music and order a peppermint mocha in tank tops and cutoff jeans, according to McCausland. But she also thinks the tight quarters have an unexpected upside in that they force patrons to interact and ultimately build community.
“On a [regular] slope there’s thousands of people and you maybe get a glimpse of a person once a day, maybe twice,” she explains. “At Big Snow, you get to see what people are all about, watch the process of learning or working on a trick. It makes you feel like a regular.”
For an increasing number of Tri-State residents, skiing isn’t just a vacation activity, it’s part of their day. Morning parent meetups while kids are in class, a few runs after the market closes, affinity groups for skiers in the most diverse cities on the planet—it’s all made skiing into a lifestyle sport without stripping patrons of their everyday lifestyles.
“Maybe you just come on Thursdays,” McCausland says.
McCausland thinks the low bar of entry and the ski hill’s unusual locale have had an effect on even the casual mall strollers, people who, she says, “had never thought to go skiing before, but while sipping a cup of coffee behind the glass window, thought it looked kind of fun.” One guy said he’d never actually seen skiing before, and that he’d be back with his kids.
“Yes, it is absurd, but maybe one needs the other,” McCausland says. “This mall and its inability to consider the absurd, they were crazy enough to think there was a market for this and it turns out there really is a market for an indoor ski center.”
According to Big Snow Chief Marketing Officer Hugh Reynolds, there are now plans for more urban ski centers North America, though exactly where hasn’t been made public. In a sport with 85 percent white participation in 2021, indoor parks could shift skiing’s demographic on an astronomical level, creating more skiers across more spaces than at any time in recent memory. With over 55 percent of New York City identifying as a racial or ethnic minority (compared to just 22 percent in rural communities like mountain towns) according to the 2020 U.S. Census, the opportunity for more diverse participation in snowsports is a not-so-distant possibility.
And true, maybe skiing in a mall isn’t the ultimate dream, but McCausland sees it as a lily pad stop on what could turn into a person’s lifelong ski journey. After all, learning in conditions that don’t change in a largely controlled scenario offers an easy avenue to improvement, and eventually to bringing those skis to a resort in New England or farther West.
For McCausland, the center is more than just a recreational outlet, however, it’s also a fitting locale for a population well-versed in weird.
“If you live near New York or L.A., nobody can be surprised or shocked by anything anymore,” she says. “People see [Big Snow] as an opportunity to learn to ski. We’ve resigned to the most bizarro things happening these days, so now we embrace that we can go skiing in a New Jersey mall. Might as well. It’s there.”
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.