I don’t love our HOA, but they are pretty inoffensive and don’t really bother me. They don’t want to deal with actual fines and whatnot, so they just keep kindly reminding folks to move their trashcans and their cars off the street. Our very low yearly fee is used to maintain common ground, pay for the lights on the street, and snow plowing for the subdivision streets. In general, I think I would still prefer not having one and having more freedom, but so far they haven’t been anything like the mini dictatorships you hear about all the time. Solid meh.
Walkabout Mini Golf is excellent. The environments are fantastic, and you can play by yourself or with others cross platform (oculus, index, etc). Great price point on it as well.