Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/02/10/competitive-winter-picnicking.html
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Best thing about winter picnicking: No ants.
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Looks colder than a well diggers ass out there.
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Meh. Not long ago I left NYC for Minneapolis, and I can say with certainty: NYC gets cold, but not terribly cold. Not terrifyingly, stuff-of-nightmares cold. The winter picnic competition here is not dying (and skijoring on frozen urban lakes—look at those doggos!)
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Competitive picnicking - I like it!
Not a winter picnic, but I remember one time when a few of us met in a park for a workday picnic lunch across the street from one of our office buildings. We laid out a Persian rug and a heavy candelabra (unlit, cuz this was in Southern California), some good china and silverware and goblets and proceeded to have a short but luxurious picnic.
Since we’d been doing stuff in the SCA for years, we happened to have a cheap but beautiful Persian rug specifically for outdoor use, as well as all the fancy feast-gear ready to go in a big wicker basket. Got some smiles from passers-by that day!
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Thank you for saving me the time of looking up NYC winter temps. I had a feeling that they didn’t get “terribly cold.” Dude looking happy holding up his meal with no gloves or mittens is a pretty dead giveaway. So is the lack of frost on the real (and fake) facial hair. As a life-long Minnesotan I know that I just barely know what terribly cold is.
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Take it easy on the blogger who’s lived in the SF Bay Area for the better half of her life. Forty degrees seems terribly cold here.
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The northeast used to be pretty cold in winter, but the last few years. . . I dunno about that anymore. We seem to get a lot more rain than snow these days.
I used to visit my mom in Florida every Christmas, and when if it dropped to 50F people would be walking around in down parkas and you’d hear news reports of trailer homes catching fire from electric heaters, whereas I would be walking around in shorts and enjoying how warm it was.
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Once upon a time I joined a kickball league in McCarren Park, aka Williamsburg, aka hipster central (assuming anyone still uses that word). I joined thinking it would be a fun kids game I can play while drinking in public and maybe I’ll meet some new people in the process.
I was insanely wrong. The first game I got run into headfirst and broke my nose on someone’s forehead. We only played 2 teams: one filled with finance bros who lived in the newly constructed waterfront condo towers and the other made up entirely of stoners who were insanely good at kickball. These teams hated one another and my team of unathletic misfits hated both of them such that the league fell apart midway through the season.
Lesson: NYC’s hustle can make literally anything over-competitive and suck all the fun out of it. Thus why my eyelid twitched when I saw “Competitive Picnicking” in a headline.
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I should mention that I grew up on Cape Cod… about as northeast as it gets! But I’ve gone soft being in the Bay Area for so long… your body acclimates to the weather no matter where you are!
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I spent last week in Palm Springs. It was comical to see the locals wearing winter jackets in the lower 60s. Around here (Minneapolis) 40+ is shorts and tee shirt weather.
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Came for this. I’m near Philly, and it’s been so warm that we’re noticing a lot of confused flora and fauna. The other day, there were robins all around my yard. By March 1st we’ll probably have crocuses, forsythia, and daffodils in full bloom.
The insects will also be out in full force. 
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It was 50 in SE Michigan last weekend, and we had to open the windows because we were getting way overheated.
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This is why I know only one person who moved to MN. However, he did get used to freezing temperatures and tunnels after going to Syracuse for college. 
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Careful, the Canadians will send down a bunch of ringers and totally own their hipster assess.
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FYI the Bay Area (San Jose) actually got down to 37º multiple days last week with a “RealFeel” of like 34º when I got up and took the dogs outside (which to be fair was like a hour before sunrise).
Which having grown up in New England and later Maryland I wouldn’t count as terribly cold, but it is “legit cold, yes feel free to wear a jacket without my mockery, and flannel lined pants if you want” (I don’t own any flannel lined pants anymore, and I would have worn a real jacket if I still owned one, but I don’t, had to make do with 2 layers of shirts and a lightweight jacket…and I don’t own gloves anymore so I rode to the bus stop with bare hands that did indeed feel frozen at the end of my very short and mostly downhill ride).
At 40º though I have no sympathy. You have to get into the same 10º band that includes “actually freezing water” for me to admit it is cold not just “why do you wear a long sleeve shirt” 
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For those of you (like me) who still didn’t have a decent frame of reference for these temperatures, I looked them up anyway, and average February temperatures for NYC are in the range 3.5 to -2.8 degrees C.
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The key to surviving winter is finding awesome things to do that require it. Snowboarding, ice climbing, snow showing. All amazing and the reason I want snow ASAP after Labor Day. Climate change makes me sad.
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I too am from the Philly area and remember a similar occurrence a few years ago. An early spring with nice toasty weather caused all sorts of bugs to come out early.
Then WHAM, sub freezing highs for like a week straight killed off all of them, thus dropping the bird food supply to nothing which offed a bunch of them. I remember a significant lack of birds that summer due to the lack of bugs.
Or at least it seemed that way to me; maybe just a lack of squawking blue jays…
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One day, I’d like to try ice fishing - in one of those modern cabins with heat and other amenities. My favorite cold weather activity is sipping a hot drink (cocoa, toddy, mulled wine) while looking out the window at the snow (and other people playing in it). 
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