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7. Motor sports
America is littered with short tracks where drivers risk life and limb for a little money and the taste of red clay spun off of their competitors' tires. Naturally, the Midwest and South are thick with tracks. However, you New York City types who complain about no racing nearby can head up this weekend (Oct. 16-19) to suburban Middletown, where the Orange County Fair Speedway is hosting its 47th annual Eastern States Weekend. For $75, you get three days of wall-to-wall races, culminating in Sunday's 200-mile modified stock-car race for a $20,000 purse. Or you can buy single days for much less. This isn't like some of these NASCAR tracks that make you buy a bunch of races you don't want just to see the event you do.
The great thing about motor sports is the extremely creative ways people race machines of any kind. For example, potential Second Dude Todd Palin may rock on his snow machine, but could he race and skip his snowmobile across a pond without drowning at the annual Watercross in Grantsburg, Wis.? Or how about winning the snowmobile grass-drag races at Hay Days in Lino Lakes, Minn.? For $25 for a weekend admission pass, you can see whether snow machines can walk on water and plow through lawns.
8. Sports entertainment
I'm using the Vince McMahon/WWE hedge to describe sports that might be fake, or might be real, but are definitely on the edge of the sports world. The best thing about them might be that they provide senseless violence without guilt.
For example, plenty of local and low-level pro wrestling leagues have events where you can pay $5 or $10 to see your neighbor, rather than some muscled-up freak in spandex, get his head bonged with a folding chair. Mixed-martial arts has its own local shows, too. One of the fastest-growing “sports” is roller derby, which has scores of leagues across the nation, all offering you the chance to relive Raquel Welch in “Kansas City Bombers” for a single-digit admission price. If nothing else, you have to go for the skaters' punny names, such as Touretta Lynn, Jane Ire, Ivanna Destroya and Molotov Hot-Tail.
9. Horse racing
Watching the horsies run is about as inexpensive as sports gets. Even at grand tracks such as Santa Anita and Arlington Park, admission can run as low as $2 — and the kids get in free! Of course, the tracks hope to make their money back through your lousy betting. Also, through turning your children into lousy, degenerate gamblers.
10. Marathon
I ran cross country in high school and run some road races now, and I understand that watching a crowd of people run by hardly seems like grand entertainment, unless it's the opening of the Filene's Basement bridal sale. However, marathon spectators have a few things in their favor. First, admission is free. Second, you can set up along the route at funky neighborhood taverns or parties, places where you might not otherwise go. The biggest and best marathons have enormous street scenes that play out along the way. And third, watching these incredible athletes up close and realizing that usually all it takes to enter a marathon is paying the registration fee, you might decide that maybe getting in shape would be a great way to spend the time you used to devote to getting to the stadium to see your favorite, enormously expensive professional team.
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