A couple more: Parkour and Speed Stacking

A couple more interesting and obscure hobbies: Parkour and
Speed Stacking. You can see a great deal of each on YouTube: Parkour videos and speed stacking videos.

(Read my posts from a few years ago for some context)

Letterboxing

I saw a listing for a class about another interesting hobby called href=http://www.letterboxing.org/index.php>Letterboxing. It
sounds a lot like GeoCaching, but without a GPS. Using a "clue",
which may be straightforward directions, obscure directions or an
involved puzzle, one locates a "letterbox". Neat.

More obscure hobbies

My original Obscure-Hobbies post got some good replies and I've thought of a few new ones:

• Geocaching - I can't believe I forgot this one. It's gaining in popularity, but for now it's sufficiently obscure.
  
• LEGO building - This is sort of borderline. I guess most people don't realize there are adults who have this as a serious hobby, so that qualifies it as obscure.
  
• Underwater Hockey - This is a great one. I'd never heard of it or even imagined it. Rather neat.
  
• Power Kites - Jeph Stahl mentioned this. I actually had the opportunity to try this out, years ago, in grad school, and it had quite an impact, literally. These are kites that are shaped like airfoils which mean they produce a huge amount of lift. My one experience with this, it dragged me across the beach and actually knocked me out. It also caused temporary amnesia of the preceding 6 hours. The kites are pretty cool, and for that matter, temporary memory loss is a sort of cool, if a bit disturbing experience to have. Once.
  
• Chess Boxing - I saw a link to this, which was the actual inspirating for me posting this additional list. I like the idea of alternating rounds of boxing and chess, but it's a slight shame there is no interaction in the two events, other than the fact that I assume it's harder to concentrate on chess after being hit in the head repeatedly.
  
• Contradancing - Again, I'm not quite sure if this qualifies. There are a wide range of forms of obscure dance. Most people are aware of square dancing or folk dancing in general, but Contradancing (while very similar to square dancing) seems to qualify to me. Plus, I have many fond memories of contradancing in the late 80s.
  

So, the total list is now up to 11: German Board Games, Disc Golf, Fly Ball, Change Ringing, Puzzle hunting, Geocaching, LEGO building, Underwater Hockey, Power Kites, Chess Boxing and Contradancing. What else?

Obscure Hobbies

I've always found obscure hobbies interesting. I like the notion that
we live in a sufficiently large and rich world that there can be a
great many hobbies people participate in that can each have a
substantial following, but that the vast majority of people are
completely unaware. For some time, I've been meaning to catalog a
list of interesting "obscure hobbies", and this seems as good a place
as any to do it.

I'd be very interested in hearing from other people about items to potentially add to the list. Here's the definition I'm using for obscure hobby:

• It must have a substantial following. At least hundreds, but ideally thousands of people worldwide.
  
• It must be an "open" hobby, that anyone who decided to become involved in, could.
  
• It must be something the majority of people have not heard of and don't know exists.
  
• It must involve doing something other than collecting. While I'm sure there are lots of obscure things people collect, this doesn't quite count.
  
• It must not simply be "competetive X" where X is a well known activity that is not usually done competetively.
  

Of course, there's a lot of borderline cases and I'll probably be inconsistent in my inclusion or exclusion of particular things, but I'm ok with that.

Some examples of things that don't quite make the cut for "obscure"
(but are still interesting): Scrapbooking, Curling, Model Railroading,
Competetive Scrabble, Wheel Throwing (pottery), LARPing, Knitting and Linux Development.

Over the past few years though I've identified several that do make
the list. I'll try and write more detailed entries regarding some of
these at some point.

German Board Games

This almost doesn't count, but I am including it. People are aware of board games, but people are largely unaware of the entire genre of adult strategy games, "designer games" or whatever you want to call them. They are substantially less obscure now than they were 10 years ago, but still they're pretty obscure.

Disc Golf

If you haven't heard of this, it's a game with rules essentially like golf, but played with specialized frisbees where the "holes" are in fact metal baskets. It is played more casually than competetively, and the discs aren't quite the same as frisbees. This one is also rising out of obscurity, but it counts.

Fly Ball

A team sport for dogs which is essentially a relay race with hurdles and tennis balls.

Change ringing

You know those huge arrays of bells in churches, particularly in England and New England? The process of ringing them in subtly controlled sequences by adjusting the way people pull on the ropes attached to the bells to produce precisely scheduled peals is called change ringing.

Puzzle hunting

This one almost doesn't count since there is a fairly high degree of awareness of these. These are "hunts" not unlike a scavenger hunt which are solved by finding solutions to many puzzles with interlocking answers, often producing additional layers of puzzles. The MIT Mystery Hunt was my introduction to this kind of activity, but many others exist.

So, what should I add to the list?