Drop-In Basketball at Memorial Park Gymnasium

Three dollars is the entire barrier. Not a membership, not a season fee, not a team you have to assemble out of people who will flake by week three - three dollars at a counter in Santa Monica and you are on a full-sized indoor court on a Saturday afternoon with whoever else turned up. There is a particular kind of nerve required to walk into a gym where you know nobody and put your name down for next game, and almost everybody who does it finds the room more forgiving than they feared. The regulars sort themselves out quickly; the standard varies wildly between noon and five. Bring your own ball if you have one, though you will not need it. This is the thing nobody searches for and everybody means to get around to, and it has been running quietly on Olympic Boulevard the whole time you have been meaning to.