IN THIS ISSUE
• Quote Unquote: City Folk
• August Scavenger Hunts
• Fast Facts: It’s the End of New York as We Know It
• My New York: The Stone Lighthouse
• Hunt News: New Photo Hunt; Go on a Hunt in the Berkshires and Save $25
• Jokes: Sports Inundated

• FAQ: Where’s My Culture Vulture?
• The Culture Vulture Archive
• The Best of Web Adventures
• Big Apple Bookshelf: Recommended Books on New York

If you’d like to receive the Culture Vulture in your own mailbox, sign up here—and on the next page you’ll see, be sure to check off which city’s edition you wish to receive. If you have a spam filter, please add “watsonadventures.com” to your safe list.



QUOTE UNQUOTE: CITY FOLK

I never understood why everybody wanted to move out to Woodstock. I liked the Village [Greenwich Village], and I still like it, and I would not like to live anywhere else. The country is a city for birds. —Dave Van Ronk, ’60s folk singer, ‘The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir’

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AUGUST SCAVENGER HUNTS

On all of our hunts, you’ll search for answers to tricky, humorous questions about the things and places you discover. No previous knowledge is required—all you need is a sharp mind and a good pair of shoes. You can bring your own team of two to six people, or you can join kindred spirits at the start. More than 90,000 hunters served!

See the at-a-glance Hunt Calendar

The Art Attack Family Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by the New York Times, GoCityKids.com and Time Out New York Kids
Saturday, August 9, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Here’s an adventure designed for kids and adults to do together—leaving you both exhilarated. You’ll travel through time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as you search for answers to tricky, humorous questions about mummies, knights in armor, palace rooms, hidden gardens, and much more. Kids must be accompanied by adults, and vice versa—teams with only adults or only kids are not permitted on this hunt. Price, which includes museum admission: Ages 7 and up $27.50 per person, adults $35.50 per person. Buy tickets now

The MoMA Mania Scavenger Hunt 
Recommended by the New York Times
Saturday, August 9, 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
See the best of the Museum of Modern Art on a scavenger hunt featuring Picasso’s poison, Pollock’s secret ingredients, Warhol’s soup, Dali’s wilting watches, and other oddities. The hunt includes startling paintings, provocative sculptures, futuristic household gadgets, a century of photographs, strange multimedia works, and the sculpture garden (weather permitting). It’s like taking a tour through the mind of a schizophrenic. Price, which includes museum admission: $40.50 per person. Space is limited! Buy tickets now

The Murder at the Met Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by the New York Times, Time Out New York, New York Magazine, New York Post, Newsday, AM New York and About.com
Saturday, August 9, 4:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Fans of murder mysteries and The Da Vinci Code will enjoy this scavenger hunt throughout the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A murdered curator has left behind a cryptic trail of clues connected with secrets in works of art. As your team gathers answers about the art, you begin to piece together a sordid tale about greed, lust, pride, revenge and treachery, all revolving around the museum’s planned multimillion-dollar purchase of a rare painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. The murder victim knew too much—and now it’s your turn to learn what he knew and discover what drove one of four suspects to commit murder. To find out, you’ll have to crack a secret code left in the victim’s appointment calendar. Can you figure out who dunnit? Be prepared for our most challenging hunt. The darkened and less crowded galleries in the evening make a setting perfect for...murder (cue sinister laugh). Price, which includes museum admission: $42.50 per person ($34.50 with valid college ID). Also available August 23 and August 30. Buy tickets now

The Secrets of Central Park Twilight Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by the New York Times and Time Out New York
Saturday, August 9, 5 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
See the best of the park at its most magic hours, just before sunset. This classic hunt has been updated for 2008, featuring more great stops in the park below 72nd Street and featuring more unusual and surprising park history and secrets. Highlights include a bird sanctuary (find out why birds won’t go near it), the Carousel (featured in Catcher in the Rye), the Dairy (kids could once get fresh milk there), Strawberry Fields (almost named for Bing Crosby!), Bethesda Fountain and the Lake (made from a swamp), the Sheep Meadow and the former nightspot for the sheep, now Tavern on the Green. Along the way, you’ll uncover hidden messages, secret symbols, writing in the sky, movie and TV locations, hidden history and Balto the wonder dog. Price: $24.50 per person. Also available August 15. Buy tickets now

The Murder at the Museum of Natural History Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by the New York Times, Newsday and Time Out New York
Sunday, August 10, 2:30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Someone, or something, has been bumping off museum staffers involved in acquiring a sacred Egyptian relic. Is it the dreaded Curse of Ahtchu? Or is a serial killer on the loose? Your team of sleuths will have to crack a hieroglyphic code and uncover the museum’s secrets to stop the killings. New start time: 2:30 p.m. Please be ready to hunt by that time. If you plan on checking a bag, arrive by 2:15—the lines are staggeringly slow. Price, which includes museum admission: $38 per person ($36 with valid college ID). Buy tickets now

The Secrets of Central Park Twilight Scavenger Hunt
Friday, August 15, 6 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
See August 9 for details. Buy tickets now

The Munch Around the Village Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by Time Out New York and the New York Times
Saturday, August 16, 1 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
At last, a hunt for people who literally hunger for adventure. Discover the gourmet delights of Greenwich Village while collecting treats and answers along the way. Starring some of the best pizza, kebab, cheese, cannolis, paratha, gelato and peanut butter you’ve ever had. Price: $26.50 per person hunt admission, plus bring $10 cash for food purchases. (We ask you to bring cash so that you can have a wide range of food options to suit your taste and diet. We’ll point you toward our favorites, but the ultimate choice is between you and your tummy.) Also available August 31. Buy tickets now

The Naked at the Met Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by the New York Times, Time Out New York, Daily Candy, Metromix and the Star-Ledger
Saturday, August 16, 4:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Search for nudity in art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You’ll scrutinize paintings, sculptures, period rooms, sultry sirens, a literally bronzed Adonis, a medieval codpiece, an incontinent Cupid and a randy reveler who’ll make you exclaim, “I never sausage behavior!” No previous experience with art, or n-dity, is required. If you’ve done our Murder at the Met Hunt, prepare yourself for something completely different—a lighthearted romp featuring new questions, new exhibits and lots of humor. Price, which includes museum admission: $40.50 per person ($32.50 with valid college ID). Buy tickets now

The Gangsters’ New York Twilight Scavenger Hunt
Saturday, August 16, 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Explore the bygone haunts and battlegrounds of gangs and gangsters in Little Italy and Chinatown. You’ll also discover cafes, bakeries, teahouses, stores, markets, historic buildings, TV and movie locations and more. Along the way, you’ll learn the answers to such questions as: What word got rubbed out where Joey Gallo ordered clams and got slugs? What place associated with Lucky Luciano and Jimmy Hoffa has traded mobsters for lobsters? What beasts stand guard where Don Corleone got shot? At the Bloody Angle, what can you do with a “fun goon”? Come for the hunt, stay for dinner at one of the many great restaurants. Price: $24.50 per person. Also available August 31. Buy tickets now

The Secrets of Central Park Family Scavenger Hunt
Saturday, August 23, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Kids and adults work together to explore the park below 72nd Street. To score points, you’ll have to find Stuart Little, find a rude animal, learn the motto of a hidden eagle, decipher a secret code by the pond seen in Home Alone 2, spot Cupid at the carousel, unscramble a message in the sky, and find a witch turned to stone. Kids must be accompanied by adults, and vice versa—teams with only adults or only kids are not permitted on this hunt. Price: Kids 7-12 $18, Ages 13 and up $22. Buy tickets now

The Murder at the Met Scavenger Hunt
Saturday, August 23, 4:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.
See August 9 for details. Also available August 30. Buy tickets now

The Skyline at Sunset Scavenger Hunt
Saturday, August 23, 5:30 p.m. – 8 p.m.
For the best views of Manhattan and the harbor, go to Brooklyn Heights. You’ll also see movie locations (including for Moonstruck and Prizzi’s Honor), famous writers' homes, baseball landmarks, Underground RR stops, a Revolutionary battleground—all in the city's most beautiful neighborhood. Starring Truman Capote, Cher, Thomas Wolfe, Henry Miller, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Norman Mailer, Jack Nicholson, Jackie Robinson, Washington Roebling, George Washington, Carson McCullers, W.H. Auden, Walt Whitman, and the man who invented the curveball. Price: $17.50 per person. Buy tickets now

The Grand Central Scramble Family Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by GoCityKids.com, New York magazine, the New York Times and Time Out New York
Saturday, August 30, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Kids and adults work together to uncover the secrets of this amazing train station. To win, you’ll have to go nuts in the Whispering Gallery, learn a secret about the stars, find TV celebs in the food court, stand on fish under an upside-down tree in the Grand Central Market, learn the arrival time of a “ghost” train and think like Willy Wonka in the Transit Museum Gallery. For ages 7 and up. Kids must be accompanied by an adult and vice versa. Price: Ages 7 to 12 $18 per person, 13 and up $22 per person. Buy tickets now

The Murder at the Met Scavenger Hunt
Saturday, August 30, 5:30 p.m.– 8 p.m.
See August 9 for details. Buy tickets now

The Ghosts of Greenwich Village Scavenger Hunt
Recommended by Time Out New York, New York Times, New York Post, Daily News
Saturday, August 30, 6 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Armed with a flashlight, you’ll visit ghost-plagued buildings and secret cemeteries while learning the stories of the restless souls you might disturb. Starring the spirits of Mark Twain, Aaron Burr, Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, Thomas Paine, artist John LaFarge, the Shadow, Clement Clarke Moore, Mayor Jimmy Walker, Lee Chumley, Patrolman Schwartz, a few skeletons and various other apparitions, sudden chills, rustlings and knockings. Price: $26.50 per person. Buy tickets now

The Munch Around the Village Scavenger Hunt
Sunday, August 31, 1 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
See August 16 for details. Buy tickets now

The Gangsters’ New York Scavenger Hunt
Sunday, August 31, 2 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
See August 16 for details. Buy tickets now

Road Trip! Summer Highlights in Other Cities
• Boston: The Haunted Salem Hunt, August 9
• Chicago: The N-ked at the Art Museum Hunt at the Art Institute of Chicago, August 16
• Los Angeles: The Museum of Natural Hysteria Family Hunt, August 16
• Philadelphia: The Secrets of Old Philadelphia Hunt, August 9
• Washington, D.C.: The N-ked at the Art Museum Hunt, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, August 9

September Highlights in New York
• The S-x and the Village Hunt, featuring S-x and the City locations, September 6
• The Secrets of the East Village Hunt, September 13
• The Wax Attacks Family Hunt at Madame Tussauds, September 20
• The Secrets of Greenwich Village Hunt, September 27
For the complete schedule, see the online calendar.

Ready to Buy Tickets?
Buy tickets online by clicking on a “Buy tickets now” link above or go to the Hunt Calendar. To buy tickets by phone, call 877-9-GO HUNT (877-946-4868), extension 22. Please note that there is a $1 surcharge on phone orders.

Questions?
Check out our Frequently Asked Questions page first. If you still can’t get no satisfaction, call the Hunt Hotline at 877-9-GO HUNT (877-946-4868), extension 12, or click here to e-mail us.


Private Hunts: Cost-Effective Fun for Freshmen Hitting the Campus
And Corporate Groups Boosting Morale
You pick the time, the place, the size of the group, and we’ll send you on a great adventure. Corporate groups go on our hunts to introduce the city to summer associates, to boost morale and the bottom line. Colleges such as NYU and Columbia use our hunts for freshman week orientation to help incoming students discovering their new campus and get acquainted. Birthday and anniversary and wedding and family reunion celebrants throw hunts to bring friends and relatives together for a celebration they’ll talk about for years. Parents take the pressure off themselves and wow their kids by hiring us for birthday parties and bar/bat mitzvahs. The uses of our hunts are as wide-ranging as your reasons to have fun. For more information, see the Private Hunts page or call our sales team at 877-9-GO HUNT (877-946-4868), extension 11, or e-mail us.

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FAST FACTS: IT’S THE END OF NEW YORK AS WE KNOW IT

Manhattan can seem fairly empty on a summer weekend—unless you head to where the tourists flock. But what is with the media’s recent infatuation with turning the city into a ghost town? Will Smith is the last man in Manhattan in I Am Legend, the recent best-seller The World Without Us and a Discovery Channel documentary have imagined the city deteriorating after humans have disappeared, and Wall-E scoops up trash in a post-apocalyptic city that calls Manhattan to mind.

There are plenty of other examples in the recent past—to cite just one, Tom Cruise walks through an empty Times Square in the 2001 disaster movie Vanilla Sky. (There isn't a disaster in the movie, it’s the movie itself that’s the disaster.) You get the bleak picture. Any New Yorker contemplating the scenes of vacated streets and buildings comes to a shocking realization: I bet the apartments are a LOT cheaper!

Here is how the city will fare without us, according to Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us:

• Today and every day, pumps in the subway system remove 13 millions gallons of water. After we’re gone, the subway will become an aquarium—that is, until the columns corrode and buckle and the streets above collapse.

• Freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw repeatedly coax ice to pry apart cracks in asphalt and concrete. In March alone, temperatures fluctuate as much as 40 times across the 32-degrees mark. Come spring, weeds and, later, prolific Chinese ailunthus trees colonize the cracks.

• Clogged sewers let soil and leaf litter back up. Seeds blow in on the wind, as they have on the abandoned High Line, where today onion grass, lamb’s ear, crocuses, irises, primorose, asters, goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace have taken root in the old railbed. Picture these filling the streets.

• Old Man Winter takes a whack at buildings, freezing water in pipes that then burst. Joints between walls and roofs file for divorce. Water, water everwhere attacks bolts. Facing pops off and insulation bursts out like the innards from a gutted teddy bear.

• Gas lines ignite, flames blow out windows, and it’s open house for rain and snow. Concrete floors and walls succumb, releasing lime that the blooming flora love.

• Here’s where it really gets fun: “Plugged sewers, deluged tunnels, and streets reverting to rivers...will conspire to undermine subbasements and destabilize their huge loads.” Along come hurricanes and down come the skycrapers. Which could crease the petals of the aforementioned Queen Anne’s lace at, say, Fifth and 34th.

• Lest you mourn the passing of everything you know, take heart: We’ll leave behind “a whole spectrum of man-made novelties, ranging from certain pesticides to plasticizers to insulators [that] will linger for many milleni until microbes evolve to process them.”

• More good news: Those rats and cockroaches you think will outlive us all? The rats will starve to death without our garbage to eat, and the cockroaches, a tropical import, won’t last throught he first winter without our heat. Take that!

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MY NEW YORK: THE STONE LIGHTHOUSE

“What I love most about Manhattan are the historical gems that have managed to escape gentrification: colonial houses, secret gardens, cobblestone streets. My favorite single spot would have to be the stone lighthouse on the northernmost tip of Roosevelt Island. It’s a coastal relic that feels out of place on this tiny stretch of land near midtown, and all the more enchanting because of its incongruity.” —Michelle Haimoff


Michele Haimoff is the author of the new guide book ‘Secret New York: Exloring the City’s Hidden Neighborhoods’ (Interlink Books). We’ve read a LOT of guide books, and this is one of the few that revealed entertaining information that we’d never encountered. Here are just a few nuggets that Haimoff has mined: Eleanor Roosevelt abruptly oved out of her Washington Square West apartment building some of her dinner guests, who happened to be black, were told to use the service entrance. In Andrew Carnegie’s mansion (now home to the Cooper-Hewitt Museum) “a three-story organ played wake-up tunes every morning at seven o’clock.” And architect Calvert Vaux intended Central Park’s Belvedere Castle to have no doors or windows so that over the years it would collapse and apepar more romantic. Cool!

Your New York: What Hunters Are Saying on Facebook
Hop on the Watson Adventures Facebook discussion board and add your thoughts to the thread: “What was the most interesting thing you discovered on a Watson Adventures Scavenger Hunt?” People who post the most interesting items will win free admission for a team of four to a public hunt! (Museum admission not included where applicable.) On Facebook you can also meet other hunters, upload hunt photos, start a topic on our discussion board and more. Click here to visit Watson Adventures on Facebook.



You can also check out what fellow hunters have to say, or post your hunt comments, on the Watson Adventures page on NYC Yelp. Yelp is “the ultimate city guide that taps into the community's voice and reveals honest and current insights on local businesses and services.”

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HUNT NEWS: NEW PHOTO FINISH HUNT; HUNT IN THE BERKSHIRES  

New! Hunt Anywhere on the Photo Finish Scavenger Hunt

If you are particularly photogenic, you’ll love our new Photo Finish Scavenger Hunt, an all-photo hunt that can be staged anywhere and can be completely customized for your group.

Armed with a digital camera, you’ll set out to take photos of the entire team as you tackle a variety of unusual challenges. The most creative, ingenious photos earn bonus points. The challenges may prompt you to dramatize a movie scene or an album cover, or find a new way to show respect to a colleague, or dramatize your team name, or come up with and demonstrate a remarkable new product, or interact with sculpture, or somehow double the number of people on the team, or....The teams get to show off their ingenuity at a post-hunt slide show, led by one of our always-entertaining MCs.

We can tailor questions to highlight your company, a theme, someone celebrating a birthday—you name it. Find out what we can create for you! Call 877-9-GO HUNT (988-946-4868) or e-mail us.


Go on a Hunt in the Berkshires and Save $25 on a Club Getaway Weekend

Need to get out of the city? You can literally head for the hills on a new Watson Adventures scavenger hunt in the Berkshires! During the weekend of August 15 to 17 Club Getaway will offer our new, camp-themed hunt during a Sports, Fun & Adventure Weekend. Located in the Berkshires of Kent, Connecticut, Club Getaway is the “summer camp for adults,” New England's premier sports resort offering all-inclusive weekend vacations.

You can receive a discount of $25 off the price of a Club Getaway weekend vacation this summer when you mention Watson Adventures. Just click here or call 877-777-6055 to book your getaway.


Read All About It: Watson Adventures in the Media

• The latest Lonely Planet guide to New York City recommends us: “Go beyond walking and talking with Watson, which turns each tour into a game by making you hunt for things—be it answers to interesting questions or quirky items – as you go about your journey.”

• AM New York featured the Murder at the Met Hunt in the July 22 issue: “As the day winds down at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the crowds begin to dissipate, don’t be surprised if you see a group of people huddled around a painting of the Last Supper with an intent look. In the shadows of the galleries, these junior sleuths are searching for clues to help them uncover the truth behind a murder—and the answers lie in the art. That’s the framework for Watson Adventures’ Murder at the Met Scavenger Hunt.” See the complete story by downloading the July 22 issue PDF. We’re featured on page 13.

• BizBash, the online resource for event planners, featured our new Gourmet on the Go Hunts, coproduced with City Food Tours, that combine scavenger hunts with food tastings in such neighborhoods as the Meatpacking District, Union Square and the Lower East Side. See the story.

• Philadelphia’s The Bulletin touted the Fright at the Museum Family Hunt in the article “A Summer Getaway in the Big Apple Offers Family Fun.”

• Megan’s Minute wrote of a recent experience on the Murder at the Met Hunt, “We got to scavenge from one corner of the Met to the other. From the Picasso gallery to the American Wing, from the Medieval gateway to the Temple of Dendur. Though we ultimately failed to deduce the name of the murderer, it didn't matter because we had a blast.” Read more at “Looking for Fun? Try a Scavenger Hunt.”

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JOKES: SPORTS INUNDATED  

In honor of the Olympics, we turn to sports. And incidentally, we now offer hunts for small groups at the new Sports Museum of America in lower Manhattan, near Bowling Green. Let the games begin!

There’s always one of my uncles who watches a boxing match with me and says, “Ten million dollars. For that kind of money, I’d fight him.” As if someone is going to pay $200 a ticket to see a 57-year-old carpet salesman get hit in the face once and cry. —Larry Miller

Some people play a horse to win, some to place. I should have bet this horse to live. —Henny Youngman

Women are now referees for the NBA, and they’re driving some guys crazy. They don’t just call a foul; they want to talk about why it happened. —Leslie Nesbitt

They now include trampoline in the Olympics, but trampoline isn’t a sport, it’s a backyard activity. If they’re going to include that, they also should have hide-and-seek. “We’re now going live to the hide-and-seek arena, where the Canadians have been missing for eight and a half hours.” —Kathleen Madigan

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too? —Unknown

The original Olympics here held in the n-de. That sure changed men’s hurdles. The white guys won a lot more races. —Tim Young

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FAQ: WHERE’S MY CULTURE VULTURE?

So you signed up to receive our newsletter in your e-mail box, or you paid for admission to a hunt, but you haven’t received any e-mails from us. What gives? You may be having problems with an overzealous spam filter. Find out what this means, and what you can do, by visiting the Frequently Asked Questions page in the Receiving E-Mails from Us section.

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GET THE CULTURE VULTURE IN YOUR MAILBOX

Just type in your e-mail address below to have our newsletter and the latest hunt schedule sent to you every month. On the next page you’ll see, be sure to check off the edition you’d like to receive. If you have a spam filter, please add “watsonadventures.com” to your safe list.

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That’s all, folks. See you at the hunt!

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