While attending the University of California at Santa Barbara, I met a young, goofy man named Graham Talley. Graham had an infectious laugh and a “FUN†club, and I loaned him some ketchup one time, and you know, things progressed from there. Graham said his ultimate goal was to have his own scavenger/treasure hunting company, designing hunts for clients and their friends/enemies, and he and some other FUN club members organized dry runs throughout our four UCSB years.
The most elaborate hunt (to my limited knowledge) took place during our sophomore year, when Graham tricked my friends Chris and the aforementioned Ari, among several others, into following a several week-long hunt around the UCSB campus and the nearby slum of Isla Vista. The best part was that much of the hunt was caught on video by surreptitious FUN club operatives. The second best part was for some reason, the participants thought they’d win money, and were annoyed when they simply won being blindfolded, led into a huge party and publicly humiliated. If they sound a little thick, remember, this was UCSB.
Now nearly three years later, Graham is using his talent for manipulation and tomfoolery to – surprise! – win himself some money. He’s started Whim Hunts, a company which crafts scavenger/treasure hunts individually for each client. Whim was even featured in the Santa Barbara News-Press last week, in part to promote the public scavenger hunt Graham and his cohorts will be organizing to begin tomorrow, Friday, July 28.
I’ll admit, I was rather skeptical about Graham’s goals back in the day, but that just makes me even happier to see him successful now. Yay, Graham.
Incidentally, the same day Whim was featured in the News-Press, my friend Jason sent me an invitation to participate in Midnight Madness, the ten-year-old scavenger/puzzle hunt game taking place in Manhattan on August 5th. “It is exhausting and difficult and ridiculous and fun,†says Jason. The game was created in 1996 by two Columbia University undergrads; the name is inspired by the 1980 Michael J.Fox film. 
There are only two rules: no motorized vehicles, and no tampering with clues. And not that there was really a question, but I read this on an old message board circa 2004 re: the typical player:
The average profile of the late night walkers is pretty homogenous, and not surprising if you consider that we’re talking about a scavenger hunt involving electronic gadgets, a central messaging program and analytical puzzles. if your guess was ‘20-something geeky types’, you would have been pretty right on.
And even though it’s not Mandatory, east or west coast, you have no excuses – get outside, run around, solve some clues and, like, have some Fun. Or whatever.
It’s only been like, six days! And it was great! Lots of Mr. Brendan Burford’s Syncopated Three’s on hand for the buying and viewing pleasure of all. Depicted: the lovely and talented Ms. Caroline Dworin and myself. Caroline did a bang-up job copy-editing the book. You should really go buy one! Except that you can’t yet. But maybe you should write it on a post-it note and put it on the wall above your desk or something so you don’t forget by the time it’s available in stores. Which will be, like, really soon!
