You’re at home on a Saturday night and you’re feeling restless. Your wife is feeling restless as well, having sat in the house all day, but neither of you really know what to do. The movies don’t really appeal to you; there’s no music in town that you want to hear; you don’t have tickets to the theater or, say, the opera (which you really do attend on occasion).
So you do a little searching for events in town, and the obvious choice hits you in the face: MONSTER JAM.
And on a whim, you hop into the car, and 25 minutes later, you’re waiting at the box office at the Verizon Center with a few thousand other people. You heard that somebody got killed last week at one of these things when a piece came flying off a monster truck and brained some poor kid, but since the closest box-office ticket available is in a whole different zip code from the actual action, you’re not too worried about this fate happening to you.
And you take 14 escalators to the top floor of the Verizon Center, and climb some steps that are so steep that you feel like you need your own Sherpa, and you and your wife and your beers settle in for some serious truck-flying, car-crashing action. AND MONSTER JAM DELIVERS.
There’s GRAVE DIGGER, with its evil red headlights and serious crushing action, and SUPERMAN, which is a monster truck with its own cape (really), and a few other trucks there to take up some space. Between the truck events are ATV races between “Washington” and “New York” teams that are clearly staged in pro wrestling style (in the most awesome way), and in the middle, some off-road motorcycle riders come out and do crazy flips from ramps with their bikes.
The crowd is a fantastic mix of people — white, black and every shade of beige, overdressed people out for what looks like a date, serious West Virginia rednecks in garage coveralls, uptight local professionals and families, and probably your neighborhood dentist. (Don’t forget that Dr. Gregory House is a big monster truck fan.)
The bottom line is: You either like the sight of enormous trucks flipping through the air, tossing dirt and crushing cars into smooshed bits, or you don’t. You should act accordingly.
I have a friend who thinks I am abusing my son by not exposing him to Monster Jam. Maybe next year.
Monster trucks and kids: They go together like sugar and breakfast cereal, with pretty much the same results.
Honestly, I think that was the most diverse crowd I’ve ever seen at a sporting event (if you could call it that) in Washington, probably in no small part because it was somewhat affordable.
Would I go again? Dunno; it was pretty repetitive (the basketball arena leaves little room for the trucks to maneuver, and you sort of watch them crush cars again and again). But it was fun.