Chris Tinkham can sit at his desk on the warmest of summer Friday afternoons and remain focused. But come Fridays in November, the ski hound can’t wait to race from his Flatiron District office to Vermont. On a good day, his 216-mile drive could take 3 ¹/₂ hours — or up to eight hours, with traffic.
“Leaving early in summer is nowhere near as important,” says the self-styled “winter boy,” who started skiing as a teen and is now a part-time instructor at Okemo Mountain Resort in Vermont.
“The level of commitment to this versus having a beach home is significantly different,” says Tinkham, a 58-year-old media director at an ad agency, referring to the maintenance and upkeep.
But for Tinkham, it’s worth it.
“The mountain is sort of our backyard,” he says. “The best part is hunkering in front of that fireplace with a cider and hot chocolate. And being a family.”
He’s not the only worker bee indulging in “Winter Fridays” — avoiding afternoon appointments and meetings to get a jump-start on a snowy weekend escape.
Aron Susman is a co-founder of the 3-year-old, Chelsea-based tech startup TheSquareFoot. When anyone on his small team requests a Friday to ski, he always approves it.
“I think in order to recruit the best talent, perks are changing,” says Susman, who says it’s just par for the course in the new office culture — where talent is in such demand, the workers can call the shots. “As long as [employees] are getting their work done, we have no problem with it.”
Susman has been known to take his company on “mandated ski trips” on odd Fridays this season.
Winter Fridays are also big at Etsy, whose 350-person NYC work force consists of active skiers and snowboarders, some of whom share a house in Okemo, Vt. The company even hosts an annual getaway called “EtSki” at resorts such as Windham in upstate New York. (Come summer, there’s no company trip to the beach — the slopes are the preferred venue.)
Some New Yorkers even filter their job searches based on the liberty to ski.
“Any company I’d work for would want to keep their employees happy by letting them take a Friday to shred some ‘pow,’ ” says 32-year-old Jason Bhatti, director of sales at Zemanta, a service for bloggers, in Chelsea.
But not all companies are amenable to winter’s growing leisure class. According to Neil Lucente, senior recruiter at Thomson Reuters, managers are more likely to approve personal time during the more lax summer months: “Summer tends to be slower in general on Fridays because other people are doing the same thing,” says Lucente. “But during winter, it doesn’t feel like that at all.”
Still, workers at more traditional companies are finding creative ways around this.
When colleagues in his banking group take their Summer Fridays to head to their predictable summer spots out east, Alex Gorman covers for them. And when the Hoboken resident takes Winter Fridays to go north — either to Vermont or Gore Mountain in upstate New York — during ski season, they return the favor. Gorman, 33, started taking Winter Fridays more religiously last year and continued this year — in the downtown office by 8 a.m. and out by noon, car ready to go.
“I’d rather breathe the fresh, clean mountain air than the pipe exhaust on the LIE [Long Island Expressway] in summer,” he says. “Nothing against the Hamptons.”
Lower East Side mom Victoria Reichelt, 37, sold her East Hampton home three years ago in favor of focusing on her Stowe, Vt., abode — a 2,600-square-foot farmhouse with two fireplaces, an old barn and three ponds — which she has owned for almost a decade.
“Even the six-hour drive to Vermont was better than the LIE! Getting away was never really getting away,” she says. “I don’t miss it at all.”
Vermont real estate agents have noted a recent uptick among New Yorkers buying ski homes: “We’ve seen a 15 percent increase in New Yorkers looking to purchase since the 2012 market,” says Joni Gaines, president of the Board of Realtors in Vermont. Bobby Roberts, chief office manager of Mountain Associates Realtors in Stowe, says that in the last two or three years, 50 percent of his sales have been from the New York area.
Cost is a major consideration that tilts the balance in favor of a winter home over a summer spot.
Just about every Thursday evening, nonprofit director Andy Bernstein, 42, and his longtime girlfriend, Jane Goodman, a 39-year old freelance advertising strategist, leave their 600-square-foot Hell’s Kitchen apartment for a slopeside condo in New Jersey’s Mountain Creek ski resort, with ski-in-ski-out perks.
The price of this little piece of winter heaven? $172,500.
“We couldn’t buy a storage unit in NYC for that money,” Bernstein says of the condo, which boasts three bedrooms. Then there’s the rec room, complete with a 64-inch TV, foosball table and a home laser light show with fog machine — a crowd-pleaser the couple installed for friends who inevitably show up every weekend.
Another plus?
“There’s no ego — it’s the opposite of the Hamptons. No one’s showing off here. They’re not socialites. You have fun-loving people who have discovered something they can enjoy. There’s no status to it.”
Brooklyn-based clinical psychologist Daphne Moked and her boyfriend, Daniel Friedman, co-owner of the bespoke clothing company Bindle & Keep, are also congratulating themselves constantly on their life choice.
“We get a two-story home with washer and dryer and mountains in our backyard,” says Moked, who notes the best part of her Mount Snow, Vt., rental is the price: $1,000 a month — a steal compared to other summer spots.
“Now that we have this, it feels like luxury,” says Moked, who enjoys getting cozy by the fire with Friedman on weekends.
“Even just to know that we have it helps you get through the week. There’s nothing to enjoy about winter in New York, but we have some money and want to put it towards getting the hell out of here. I forgot how beautiful and fun winter can be.”
Longing for a Vermont home of your own? Check out these listings for available properties.