“What ground-up herb does Tim love?” my teammates asked me as we stood outside the York St. station in DUMBO. We looked for a sign that would answer our question, we spoke with the guy in the MTA booth (are you Tim?), we even asked a cop standing nearby if he knew. Finally when we were ready to walk away, I saw the answer. “Thyme! Tim loves Thyme!” It had been written in the cement, in plain view of the doorway, but you could walk over it everyday and never notice it. At least, not unless you were taking place in Metro Metro’s annual scavenger hunt.

Started by three guys, Bo, Brady and Will, in 2002, Metro Metro has hosted trivia nights, spy games and fake office parties, but what they are best known for is their ability to encourage a bunch of well mannered New Yorkers to don matching t-shirts/masks/wigs and run around the city making fools of themselves. On Saturday, I was one such fool.

Your hosts

For seven hours, 51 teams (204 people) raced around lower Manhattan and DUMBO. I thought it would be a leisurely day — get an answer, have a beer, repeat — but we soon learned that time was not on our side. We would be lucky if we got to half of the 80 questions. Some of them involved getting to a location and writing down what you saw (like the one above), some involved taking pictures with strangers (like getting a noogie from a mailman), and some you had to collect something(like a losing ticket from an OTB).

Our mailman was waaay too eager to help

For $25 this is a great way to spend a day. You get to see the city in a way you’ve never looked at it before. The only complaint I would have is that a lot of the other teams seemed to take it VERY seriously, and were not super friendly, but I guess that’s what happens when a trophy’s involved. There was an awards party later that night with free food and drinks, but I am uncool and got sunstroke, so I missed it. In my mind though, I’m going to assume that all those people turned out to be very nice. I will definitely be doing this again next year.