Offbeat sports and local traditions that call St. Louis home

2006
Spring	Wrestling Heston	A trip to the shooting range turns into one hell of a trigger
Summer	Pool Party at the City's Place!	Bring sunscreen and a tough skin if you're headed to one of the free city pools...but leave the flotation devices at home
Fall	Into the Wild Country	Takin' a turn on that dance floor that Saturday night TV made famous
2005
Jan	Wild Cards	Texas Hold'em catches on in the Lou
Mar	Wanna Swing?	Put aside any bad middle-school memories you have, and give this singles' square dance club a whirl
May	Scoreless in St. Louis	Down but not out, our intrepid hockey fan has found plenty of action to quench her thirst for the ice
Sep	Bringing Yesand to the Heartland	This year's St. Louis Fringe Festival provides a focal point for improv and other artists
Dec	Come Out of Your Shell	Slow and sunny wins the race at quirky Turtle Playground
2004
Feb	Chicken Wire, Tissue Paper and Beer	How to build a Mardi Gras float in ten easy steps
May	Swingers Do It with Friends	Lace up your dancing shoes and move what your mama gave you with the Lindy Hop Swing Society of Greater St. Louis
Jun	It's the Ultimate, Really	Fun, competitive ... and no referees. Could this be the Perfect Sport?
Nov	Hiding in Plain View	How Geocaching will get you off of the couch and rooting around at your neighborhood parks and other mysterious places
Dec	Total Hack	Long associated with only bad kids and burnouts, hacky sack's followed me well into "responsible" adulthood
2003
Jan	B-3, B-3...I-18	Bingo night at the South Broadway Athletic Club offers up a little slice of St. Louis life, with a side of ice-cold Busch
Feb	Ski the Valley	Ah, that fresh Missouri powder...almost good enough to get you ready for the real thing
Mar	Duende in South City	Stomp those feet and show your soul in flamenco, the traditional dance associated with Spain...and St. Louis
Apr	World, Meet BallzOn!	The lawn game that by any other name wouldn't be as fun
May	The Golden Bandit	(or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Golden Tee Golf)
Jun	Come and Go	Minutes to learn, a lifetime to master — the deceptive simplicity of Go
Jul	Scrappin' and Stampin'	A chance encounter with scrapbooking led to full-blown paper arts fever, for which more classes and devices are the only known cure
Aug	Strength and Style	Breakdancing has found a home at The Commonspace
Sep	Are You Ready to Get Grizzly?	Fun in Sauget with everyone's clothes on — who knew?
Oct	Tubalo and the Playground Pecking Order	You could tell a lot about a kid at St. Roch's by how he conducted himself during rounds of the schoolyard-invented game
Nov	The Rewards of Low-Stakes Gambling	Going for Mr. Frog's big slot payout, one penny pull at a time
Dec	The Sting of the Jump Rope, the Roar of the Crowd	Our intrepid investigator checks out a Double Dutch class to, quite literally, learn the ropes
2002
Jan	Twister!	Although storm chasers warn against practicing their hobby in urban environments, big changes in the weather take Chris Krummenacher right back to his first encounter with The Big One
Feb	Sweat, Hard Work and a Lot of Spandex	The promise of America is fulfilled, in a strange way, when good and evil slug it out with metal chairs at the South Broadway Athletic Club
Mar	Quest for Glory	A new volleyball team steps into the void of professional women's sports in St. Louis
Apr	Get Fuzzy	Anyone with access to a tennis ball and a schoolyard could be the next Yogi Berra of fuzzball, the king of St. Louis street games
May	Trivial Pursuits	The Suburban Journals' trivia expert runs down the 101 on why St. Louis is at the center of our nation's trivial heart
Jun	Hands Four	Hit the floor for a contra dance, the amusement park ride dancers make for themselves
Jul	The Football Café	For one glorious month, the World Cup was broadcast in a corner coffeehouse in U. City. We were there.
Aug	Hurling Hits St. Louis	We're talkin' field sports here, not the other kind of hurling, and our St. Louis team aims to generate excitement akin to Blues/Cardinals fever
Sep	Beer Float	Ah, that most Midwestern of pastimes, an annual, river-bound appreciation of "Ozarkian" charm
Oct	The St. Louis Sport	The pro teams notwithstanding, there's nothing like a little college soccer action to satisfy your sports fix
Nov	Rolling through the Hill	Where, how and why to get your bocce on
Dec	Football Fever	Sure, you may keep Sunday afternoons open, invite some friends over, or even hold season tickets...but no one's more serious than the Ultimate Rams Fan
2001
Jan	Boards Master	Thunder Bill Hill's in the Hall of Fame
Feb	Bunco Bonding	A sense of community grows with each roll of the dice
Mar	A Diamond In the Ruffians	Our town's most mysterious wrestler opens up! Kinda!
Apr	What Happens to a Dream Relocated?	With baseball's Opening Day upon us, scenes from another stadium long gone
May	Wanna Play Footy?	Not to be confused with the flirtatious, under-the-table footsy, Aussie Rules football is in a league of its own
Jun	Softball Makes Hard Sense	Dave Difani hits a home run with the Black Thorn League
Jul	Kickin' It, W-League Style	SLU sophomore goalkeeper Meghann Burke takes her show on the road to play semi-pro soccer with the Memphis Mercury
Aug	Give It Juice	Feel the rumble, get seared by the heat and meet the fine, down-home folks at the I-55 Raceway in Pevely
Sep	I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Kickball	Everyone's favorite grade-school game makes a grown-up comeback
Oct	Getting to the Punch	Human drama, the trials and triumphs of man, the meaning of it all — in a backyard boxing ring
Nov	More Than Running	The Spirit of St. Louis Marathon brings out the best in people
Dec	A Course in Lure Coursing	There's a joy in watching dogs be dogs, even when their quarry is a shredded trash bag and they sometimes forget basic obedience

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