Arriba! Ski and Snowboard Club History

The story of Arriba!, a ski club for gay men and lesbians based in Southern California, began soon after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, a milestone in the gay rights movement.

In 1970 two men, Jim Chandler and Bill Gant, placed an advertisement in a Los Angeles-area gay newspaper seeking members for a ski club. In response, about 20 men met at Chandler's and Gant's apartment in West Hollywood. The new members voted to call their club the Ski Closet.

It was an era, said Brad B., an original club member, when gays were still in hiding. Brad, now a retired surveyor, recalled marching in a gay parade in Orange County in the 1960s wearing a grocery bag over his head, with holes cut out for his eyes. The slogan: "Let me take my bag off."

The club's early T-shirts showed a exuberant man wearing ski goggles and skiing out of a closet. The first ski trips were to California's Mammoth Mountain and Aspen, Colo.

Several years after that 1970 meeting, Chandler and Gant moved to Colorado, but the club continued. Members pitched in to buy four condominiums at Mammoth, where skiers could stay for as little as $10 per person per night.

In 1975 some club members became dissatisfied with the club's name, saying it sounded too closeted and might be mistaken for a store.
Rejecting alternatives such as "The Sundowners," they chose Arriba!, a Spanili4licksh exclamation of elation that is also sometimes translated as "up" or "above."

Skiing hasn't been Arriba's only activity. Especially in the early days, "there was an awful lot of bed-hopping," said member Jack G. There was also, at first, resistance by some members to accepting women.

"You know this is a gentlemen's club," Jack recalls one man telling women who wanted to join. "You shouldn't be here."

But women participated in Arriba! as early as the 1970s and have been part of the club ever since. Waverly F., who joined the club with her partner Jane S. around 1976, recalls receiving a warm welcome. Like many women, she served on the board.

Over the decades, the club grew and expanded its activities. Starting with fewer than 100 members in the 1970s, it boasted about 150 by the late 1980s. During the 1990s, membership declined and key members sold their Mammoth condos. Today the club has more than 100 paid members, about 70% of them men and 30% women.

Branching out from its original Mammoth base, Arriba! organized trips to other resorts in the U.S. and abroad.

Among its more flamboyant forays was sponsoring ski races at Aspen, with the winner awarded the "flaming faggot," a $2,000 glass dome that housed fake flames licking at logs and driven by an electric fan.

In the 1990s, the club added bus trips to Mammoth. Today Arriba! maintains a busy year-round schedule, offering nearly a dozen ski trips plus cruises, wine-tastings, bicycling, theater and other activities in the off-season.

SOURCES: Arriba! is indebted to longtime members Brad B., Joe. D., Jack .G. and Waverly F. for help in compiling this history in May 2007, in Los Angeles. It was written by member Jane E.

Membership is $40 per year. Non-Members are welcome at meetings and social events.