Since I was nine-years old I went to a sleep away camp in Bethel Woods called Chipinaw. I remained there for eight summers, gradually coming to the conclusion that I returned to be with my camp friends and not so much the camp. Things had changed significantly since my first summer in 2003; the theater was expanded, the original canteen was demolish and replaced with a massive arts and crafts complex, a new canteen was erected with a clubby aesthetic, and it seemed anti-raid rules were getting stricter and stricter. The population of campers seemed to be changing as well, although this is an arbitrary point. Nevertheless, the camp was going soft and the kids were getting brattier.
This fostered in me nostalgia for my early summers at camp – I was able to reflect on these years in my final summer as a waiter because we were given a lot of downtime between serving meals. Similar to Zukin’s agitation over gentrification, I found myself missing the old landmarks of Chipinaw and the kids who had long moved on from sleep away camp. I realized that these changes bothered me because I had placed a sentimental value, or a use value, on Camp Chipinaw.
The use value, as Molotch explains, were the benefits or things at camp that attracted me to its open forests and rolling hills in the first place. The focus was shifting from experiencing camp as the great outdoors to a hokey sing-a-long camp of cutesy arts and crafts and renovated bunks. I thought bunks were supposed to be nasty! Every summer the price of attendance would increase by a hundred dollars or so. The exchange value was beginning to exceed my use value for the camp and so it was not very long before I reasoned that Chipinaw wasn’t any longer the camp I attended eight summers ago.
