Evidence
You receive a handwritten yellow sticky note. Thrillhouse Records. A date and time. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
You show up at Thrillhouse, flowers in your hair, and mingle with the other friends who are there for the hunt. At 1:11 pm, the cashier hands you an envelope with a question mark cut out of the back. Inside are a sheet of paper with song lyrics, a map of San Francisco with a star shaped sticker over Thrillhouse, and a set of 8 more stickers. The game is on!
TOP SECRET
Tap the envelopes to see what's inside.
(By the way, while reading this page, you may want to open this playlist in Spotify and listen along.)
TOP SECRET
You quickly figure out that this clue is pointing you towards Lovejoy's Tea Room, right on the J Church light rail. You go there and ask the host if she has anything for you. She does. It's more song lyrics.
TOP SECRET
You recognize the blue house from a KQED special, and head there. Once you're there, you look around for grass, but there is none. The closest thing is a long planter over 8 feet in the air. A tall member of the group reaches up and rummages around, eventually finding the next clue. (You marvel at how I, a relatively short person, got it up there.)
TOP SECRET
At the corner of Hayes and Buchanan you find two Little Free Libraries (neither of which shows up on a map anymore later the same month, by the way). You split up and trawl through each of the libraries and the books inside. You come up empty. It turns out someone stole the clue from inside the library in the park! I end up texting you a copy.
TOP SECRET
You get to Saint Dominic's Catholic Church in Lower Pacific Heights and look around outside for an orange box to sit on. As you're approaching some vaguely orange-looking benches in the parking lot, a stranger wearing orange comes up from the benches and gives you a clue. He says someone delivered the clue to him in the darkness of night. "How mysterious," you think, and head to the Top of the Mark on Nob Hill.
TOP SECRET
At the Top of the Mark, you are approached by a different stranger who also gives you a clue. He does not have a mysterious backstory, but he does join you for the rest of the hunt. Stranger in tow, you proceed to the hungry i.
TOP SECRET
You get to the hungry i and find two more strangers with yet another clue. They let you know that 'Marconi' does not refer to the Marconi Hotel two doors down from the hungry i, then they leave. At this point, like the i, you're starting to get hungry, so you split off into groups to eat. One group goes to the Marconi Memorial (a secluded but gorgeous location in North Beach with a stunning view of the Bay Bridge) and looks for the clue while everyone else is eating.
TOP SECRET
The group that split off finds the next clue taped to the back of the memorial, and reports back via text that everyone's next location should be the Hyde Street Pier. The group taking the bus runs into another friend who just made it across town from a protest.
TOP SECRET
You find me at the entrance to the pier holding a hot dog from Pier 39ish (the closest place to the Hyde Street Pier to get a hot dog these days). The hot dog is mostly eaten because I got impatient... Now that we have the whole group together, I show you the final clue.
This clue is somewhat of a formality because I'm really the one who leads you to the next place, and the clue just alludes to the ensuing activity. I tell you to follow me, and we go to a bar in the Marina where we find the first, third and fourth strangers from the hunt, as well as some other friends. Once at the bar, I explain the map, the star stickers, and the question mark cutout on the envelope from the first clue.
It turns out the stickers fell out of the envelope at some point, so you haven't been able to stick them on the map to track your progress. Thankfully I have a pen with me. You draw stars on all the locations of the clues (from memory!), and then put the map back in the envelope so it's visible through the cutout. The stars fit perfectly in the question mark shape.
I hand out party favors to those who are interested, little booklets that I hand-bound that contain all of the clues from the hunt as well as the star map. When I'm distracted, you go around gathering sweet little messages from partygoers on one booklet, and return it to me and make me so so happy :)