We've been stepping our game up at FindSportsNow. The new year came with a variety of new and exciting changes to FindSportsNow! We recently unleashed our sleek new site design (we hope that you find it more appealing and easier on the eyes). We updated parts of the site navigation to make it easier to find the activities you love! Most importantly, we've seen that the community is really joining in on the action and adding sports and recreational activities to FindSportsNow!

A friend of our's got back from Morocco the other day and told us about sandboarding. He was like, "Yo. Sandboarding is crazy. It's like, the best thing I've ever done, and I've driven a DeLorean." Intrigued, we went to this little, low-fi video-sharing site called YouTube and checked out a few clips. It looked fun. We wanted to try it. But, where? It might as well have been mystery-awesome-candyboarding, with the number of sand dunes close by. Frustrated, yet slightly intrigued by the idea of a hill made of candy, we went for a walk. A few blocks and half a chicken shwarma later, we were still kinda depressed. FindSportsNow, the Dwyane Wade of online recreational sports databases, unable to partake in a new and exciting sport. It was pathetic. Ready to pack things up and go back to working at the Apple Store, we saw the sweetest image a sandboarding-obsessed website could see. Sitting in the abandoned lot between the CVS and the Jamba Juice was a massive pile of dirt, just waiting to be ridden.


Unable to contain our excitement, we ran into the lot and hugged the mound. In a perfect world, our first sandboarding experience would have occurred on a pristine dune somewhere in the Sahara, and not on a pile of dirt filled with nails and Jamba Juice cups, but sometimes you take what you can get. After several minutes of searching for a proper board (we settled on the three open pizza boxes, bound together with duct tape), we were ready to go. We climbed to the top of our dirt mountain and looked down. Passersby seemed so small from atop our lofty perch (Note: passersby did not seem small). After a moment of quiet reflection and haiku writing, we climbed aboard our pizza-board and plunged.

We still can't remember the ride, but the details in the police report make it sound pretty awesome.

Still interested? Click here to find proper sandboarding near you.

A few months ago, someone sent us a DVD of a bunch of guys in Paris doing parkour. After finally getting around to watching it last night (being an online recreational sports database is more time consuming than you'd think), we were like, "Damn. Parkour is awesome. It doesn't matter who you are. Doing parkour will make you look cooler."

This is a story about how we were very very wrong....

Still Inspired by last night's entertainment, we decided to parkour to the office instead of drive. We took a deep breath, chugged a 24 oz. Vitamin Water (don't chug a 24 oz. Vitamin Water) and ran down the driveway. Knowing we had to take the most direct rout possible, we headed across the street, towards the neighbor's house. We approached their fence and took a big jump. If the DVD from last night taught us anything, we would easily clear the fence and land in mid-stride on the other side. Perhaps we weren't watching correctly, because our jump took us about 1/24th of the way up. We slithered up the remaining 23rd of the fence and crumbled to the ground. We caught our breath for a good 10 minutes then popped up onto our feet, ready for the next obstacle. Kiddie pool, some loungers and another fence. (Expletive deleted). After spraining possibly both our ankles on the kiddie pool, we cheated and went through the gate. It's OK though, because we looked around first and made sure there weren't any French people watching. Now outside the yard of ligament death and in the alley, we looked towards our next challenge. Dumpster, parked car, two dogs fighting over what we hoped was a bird carcass and an ice cream truck. It was all coming together in our head, Beautiful Mind-style. (Note - It was not coming together at all. In fact, it couldn't possibly be further from together.) We focused, praised Jesus/Buddha/Sean Penn and took off. The dumpster was up first. Nailed it. Feeling good. Most likely, looking cool as hell. Next came the car. Jumped, flew, landed. That's right, landed. But not on the top of the car. Oh no, definitely not the top. After an extended period of thinking we were dead, we looked around and saw where we were. It was bad. Like, Australia bad. We had managed to parkour ourselves right through the car's windshield. Was the driver mad? Yes. Very, very yes. We did manage to tell him that we were simply practicing the beautiful art of maximizing the body's efficiency while in motion, which we think that calmed him down a bit. So much so, that when he called the police, he went along with our story that we were pushed.

We spent the rest of the day in the hospital. Something about massive blood-loss. We're probably not going to parkour again for a while. But, that doesn't mean you shouldn't. Search here for a group near you.

In recent years, kickball - a game historically played by children - went mainstream. It's now a highly organized recreational sport, synonymous with binge drinking and suggestive team names. Anticipating the inevitable backlash, FindSportsNow has started the search for the next kid game to be played by drunken 20-somethings. We'll be analyzing games based on the following criteria....

a. must be co-ed
b. must have teams
c. must accommodate most levels of health and fitness
d. must contain a logical window for drinking
e. must be entertaining

Today we'll take a look at:

1. Freeze Tag

For those who didn't have childhoods, tag is the game of running around and touching people of the opposing team, all in order to remove the slow and less-than-stealth from the game. But wait! This is FREEZE tag. This version takes it up a notch. Perhaps even multiple notches. Three at least. In freeze tag, there's no sitting on the jungle gym when tagged. You gotta stay planted, forever (not forever) memorialized in the last position you were in prior to being tagged. You become a veritable living statue, commemorating the good ol' days when you were, well....not frozen. Sound simple? Yes, but kinda no. What if you get tagged while falling? How's that gonna work out? Have to pee? Crazy. We don't know what happens. Man up? We don't know. On paper, it certainly seems like freeze tag could make the leap, though we'd have to figure out some sort of drinking rule. Drink if frozen? Drink first, then play? Have to carry a beer at all times? Also, what about potential running speed disparities? Do men run faster than women? We'd like to think so. Though, we did see a really, really fast girl running after the bus yesterday. It was insane. She caught it.

Co-ed YES
Teams YES
Accommodating Kinda
Drinking Maybe
Entertaining YES


2. Red Rover

When we originally thought of red rover, we were like, "Cool. The human chain thing. That could work. It's kinda simple, but who knows?" So, we did some research and we were like, "Damn. That's a pretty violent game. We're not so sure anymore. Should kids even play this?" For those who played normal, non-bone-breaking games growing up, in red rover two teams form two separate lines by joining their arms together. One team then beckons a particular member of the opposition to run towards them and attempt to break the chain. If said opposition member fails to break the chain, he/she is absorbed, indoctrinated and initiated into the receiving team. BUT, should the chain be broken, the triumphant opposition-er can claim either end of the now-broken link for his/her respective team. This continues until one team has appropriated every member of the opposition. Now, our concern with red rover lies in a few areas. First, safety. During that split second when impact occurs between a running player and a chain of arms, what happens? Fractures? Dislocations? Clotheslinings? All awesome, but dangerously likely. Second, all the team-changing that occurs throughout the game kinda kills team-unity and the "let's make team t-shirts" thing. Third, When do you drink? On paper, we can foresee a lot of spilling. Maybe everyone wears beer helmets? Cups with lids? And what about lawsuits? Damn.

Co-ed YES
Teams Kinda
Accommodating Kinda
Drinking Maybe
Entertaining YES


3. Hide and Seek

One team hides, the other seeks. When finished, reverse and repeat. Hmm. Not much going on here, is there? Seems like this breaks down to a bunch of people in a park, crouching behind some bushes. Hide and seek kinda sucks. And it's kinda lonely. Maybe you can hide with a partner? Seek in groups? Drink while hiding? Drink a lot before seeking? This one's gonna take a lot of work.

Co-ed YES
Teams YES
Accomodating YES
Drinking YES
Entertaining NO


Today's winner? None really. Freeze tag seems the most viable....and the most awesome. Alas, the search continues.....

At FSN we're exposed to some pretty bizarre stuff (see: mattress jousting). As a result, there isn't much that can catch us by surprise. At least, that was the case until a few days ago.

A friend (yes, websites have friends) asked if we wanted to go kite tubing. We're like, "Cool. What's that? Whatever." When we got to the lake, some guy with lots of bruises was like, "Is this your first time?" We're like, "No. Stupid. We do this every day." We thought, "Damn. That's a lot of bruises. He must own an ostrich." A few minutes later, we're in the middle of the lake and the guy with the bruises asks if we'd like to go first. We're like, "Naa. You can go. We just had a taco. Gonna let that guy settle for a few." So our new bruised friend climbs aboard a giant tube and says, "My phone is in the front. Call my mom if anything happens." We're like, "Sure. Freak."

We grabbed a seat as the boat started moving. Bruisey held on tight as we started picking up speed. We noticed the tube kept rising in the air. We're like, "Ohhhh. KITE tubing. We get it." For a few minutes, things looked fun and we were excited for our turn. But as the tube kept getting higher, we started to get a little freaked out. Then, it started to act a little weird. It was shifting wildly from side to side and then..... BOOOM/SPLASH/KAPOW. The tube plunged towards the water at like 20000 mph. We started thinking about the phone call we'd have to make to Bruisey's mom....

"Hello. You don't know us, but we're a major sport and recreation website. Yes. Like YouTube (mom's don't know a lot about the internet). Anyways, we just watched your son explode into several different pieces while riding a giant tube. Where is he now? We're assuming the bottom of the lake. Maybe a little bit on the tube as well."

As we were about to make the call (having already checked Facebook Mobile) we saw a set of arms flailing around near Bruisey's impact crater. He survived. Or at least his arms did. We drove over, and there he was, smiling, a little confused and likely covered with new bruises. He climbed in the boat and said, "you're turn."

We slapped him in the face.

Kite tubing is the craziest thing we've ever seen. It should be illegal. If there is nothing else on Earth that you can do instead, use FSN to find kite tubing near you.