Tammany Hall is a Petco: Zohran's Summer Scavenger Hunt
"You can't serve a city, you can't fight for a city, if you don't love that city"
It’s Saturday. Zohran Mamdani posts a video to his social channels announcing a scavenger hunt through New York City, with a video and two words: “Game on”. Within minutes, about a dozen friends messaged the link to me. “You’re going, right?” Mamdani’s campaign reports that over 4,000 people answered the call for a fun afternoon engaging in the #ZcavengerHunt. And yes, I was one of them.
THE FIRST CLUE: Tammany Hall is a Petco Now
Mamdani announced that the first stop of “Zohran’s Summer Scavenger Hunt” would be announced Sunday morning, with an official start time of 2pm and promised that the whole city would be public transit accessible. I live out in Jersey City and work in the city, so I dropped by the office to catch up on a few emails before the first clue dropped in case the scavenger hunt was actually planning on crossing through all five boroughs.
Luckily, the clue that dropped was a convenient one:
”I wouldn’t be the youngest mayor. That distinction belongs to a guy who was…kind of a star of Notting Hill? He was a part of an old New York political machine. To begin the hunt, meet us in front of the Guilded Age hall where the mayor spent a lot of his time.”
This was a particularly interesting clue, as it spoke to my love of beloved actor Hugh Grant (not to be confused with 30 year old NYC mayor Hugh Grant), drawing attention to the fact that while Mamdani is a young candidate for mayor, he is far from the youngest to serve. The clue also served as a reminder of how local New York City politics can trend towards corruption if unchecked, by leading interested hunters to explore the first stop: Tammany Hall. What I didn’t expect to find, was that Tammany Hall is now a Petco store. If you take away anything from this article, I hope you remember that Tammany Hall is now a Petco.
So, after meeting up with a few friends in the escape room scene, we went inside and checked out some cute animals before the crowds arrived.
People were at first uncertain about where to line up - until about five minutes before 2pm, a large crowd was milling around the Tammany Hall entrance, before shifting to queue in a series of ~4 lines across the street in Union Square proper.
The Mamdani campaign was clearly not expecting these numbers - news reports claim the campaign only printed out 500 scavenger hunt cards when over 4,000 people showed up, but cards notwithstanding, the manual nature of the hunt was scalable enough that people could follow the trail even without a card: scan a QR code to register for the hunt, look for campaign volunteers at each location, and find one of them manually holding a sign up with a clue to the next location.
Even more impressively, the clues seemed to be fair: each of them took a bit of thinking to figure out, but resolved to a relatively unambiguous answer that spoke to the history of New York mayors. I got there early enough that I was lucky enough to receive one of the scavenger hunt cards, so every stop would also result in collecting a sticker to confirm my progress.
While I was there, my “This Is Not a Puzzle” hat and effervescent personality lured two additional puzzlers into our group, from the Def Con scene. This was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, but I’ve heard multiple stories of impromptu groups forming along the way.
THE SECOND CLUE: “He was fresh and everyone else was tired”
From Tammany Hall, teams were given the following clue: “He was fresh and everyone else was tired” - whether from running against him or running on this track named after him, who’s to say. The quote led to coverage of Mayor John V Lindsay by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Murray Kempton, and the John V Lindsay East River Park Track.
This stop also served as its own bit of stealth messaging for Mamdani’s campaign. An M14 bus could take puzzlers directly to the next location, but with over 4,000 people participating, our group opted to get some steps in and take the subway and then walk to the next location - about a mile walk even after hopping on the L for a stop. A sizeable crowd was forming, with a pedestrian bridge offering a relatively scenic view of the procession.
While there was a decent crowd at the location by the time we got there, the volunteers were moving people along at a fairly quick clip - get a sticker, snap a photo of the clue for the next location. This would only get easier as the crowds spread out even further at subsequent stops.
THE THIRD CLUE: A Love Letter to Free Public Transit
The next clue was relatively straightforward: We disagree with this former mayor on most things, but we’re happy to be in the same boat with him on free public transit. Meet us outside this Manhattan terminal where you’ll find the City’s shining example of free transit.
One of the most fascinating elements of “Zohran’s Summer Scavenger Hunt” for me is that the miniature history lessons served to put some of Mamdani’s more controversial policies in historical context, blunting some of the more common claims that he’s radical - and this clue referencing Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s decision to make the Staten Island Ferry free in 1997 is one of the more poignant examples of this. Mamdani has previously questioned why buses can’t be free, and the Staten Island Ferry is his prime example of why that idea might not be so outlandish as it sounds.
So, we make our way to the Staten Island Ferry - again, opting to take the subway (the J, this time) means we have a mile to walk even with public transit. This was one of the riskier stops, from a design perspective: I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one group boarded the ferry, expecting to find the clue on the boat itself. Luckily, the Mamdani volunteers (and crowd) made where to go fairly obvious for us.
Sadly, this stop also quashed a pet theory of mine: when I noticed the first sticker was a “Z” and there were six spots, I was convinced we’d be spelling out ZOHRAN over the course of the event - unique letters at each station would make it easier to confirm people visited every location, and spelling out Mamdani’s name would be a fun way to track progress. Alas, it was Z’s all the way down.
THE FOURTH CLUE: This Won’t Be NYC’s Only (Democratic) Socialist
”Oh, he’s a socialist” is probably one of the more common complaints levied at Mamdani - and yes, he is a Democratic Socialist. But as the next clue reminded us, that isn’t as outlandish for the city as it might sound: I am a member of NYC-DSA, but I would not be the first member to be elected mayor. Find your next clue at the building named after the man who was. You’ll be doing us a really big favor.
That directed participants to learning more about David Dinkins, who also was New York City’s first African American mayor. This time, it’s only half a mile walk to the J, before arriving at the David Dinkins Municipal Building - an impressive structure.
We hit the halfway point, on to the next stop!
THE FIFTH CLUE: The Other “Night Life Mayor”
The next clue is a more overt attack on the current mayor, noting: Eric Adams isn’t the first scandal-ridden guy to fancy himself a “night life mayor.” Find your next clue in the park named for the mayor who led this city as it was roaring, before it all came crashing down.
This led us up the 1 to Houston (correctly pronouncing that street is one of the key “are you a New Yorker” tests), where the James J Walker Park is located. It’s a really cozy park, but this was the first stop that felt like it was focused on the message over location. Luckily, the stop was late enough in the hunt that it wasn’t particularly crowded. This would also be home to what was arguably the hardest clue of the set.
THE SIXTH CLUE: How Good Are You at Anagrams?
That’s right, the penultimate stop tasked puzzlers with solving an anagram: I often quote this former mayor who said “if you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me.” If you rearrange 12 out of 12 letters of this location adjacent to a bridge named for him, you get A RAP MAY WALTZ (and yes, see a psychiatrist)."
The bridge is the easy part: that’s referring to Mayor Ed Koch, making the bridge in question the Queensboro bridge. Rather than anagram separately, we zoomed in on the map and noticed that Tramway Plaza gave that all important “Z” to make the anagram work, giving the next destination.
I was half hoping that meant our final stop would be on Roosevelt Island, as I’ve never found the excuse to visit the island before, and the tramway looks so impressive. That would have to be saved for a later day, because there’s one more stop to go…
…or at least, our group still had a final stop. The volunteers here insisted that only people with scavenger hunt cards could proceed to the sixth and final location, and congratulated digital-only players on making it to the end. Given the nature of the final step I understand the caution, but do suspect if Mamdani’s team knew how many people this would lure out, he would have chosen a bigger (if less personal) venue.
THE FINAL CLUE: Mamdani’s Cafe of Choice
For those who received the final clue, it led puzzlers to one of Mamdani’s favorite cafes in Astoria called Little Flower Cafe - La Guardia’s nickname, because how could you have a mayoral scavenger hunt without La Guardia finding his way into things. It was at this corner cafe that Mamdani would deliver a brief speech right around when we arrived at 5:30pm, before spending the next few hours holding a meet-and-greet with the teams who reached the end of the trail (along with a celebratory strawberry chai, with whole milk or oat milk options available).
While waiting in line, we also received the first and only overt push to activism: a campaign volunteer walking the line with a QR code, for those interested in canvassing. This scavenger hunt was a campaign event, but it wasn’t designed with volunteer recruitment as its primary goal.
So, What Was the Point of It All?
During Mamdani’s speech at the Little Flower Cafe, he made a claim that’s stuck with me as a central thesis of the scavenger hunt: “You can't serve a city, you can't fight for a city, if you don't love that city”. One of the main reasons I keep returning to Great Gotham Challenge’s more puzzle-laden scavenger hunts every year is because the hunts are a love letter to the city - reintroducing you to a city you thought you knew. And Zohran’s Summer Scavenger Hunt was a love letter to the city, and its history.
Yes, Mamdani created the scavenger hunt to serve as a barbed attack at his fellow candidates - the first person to finish was gifted a bag of Herr’s sour cream and onion potato chips. But for the 4,000+ who participated in the hunt, it was a reassurance that Mamdani’s candidacy isn’t the unprecedented threat that his opponents are trying to position him as. Yes, he’s a young mayoral candidate - but we’ve had younger. Yes, he’s a Democratic Socialist. But we’ve elected one before. And yes, he’d like to see a more accessible public transit system. So he sent thousands of people to experience that system firsthand, and reminded us that even a certain mayor who went on to work for the Trump administration thought that public transit could be free.
Mamdani’s opponents have all weighed in on the scavenger hunt. Cuomo’s response was the borderline incomprehensible tweets, “Defund the police but great scavenger hunts. No class free pizza for all seniors.” Eric Adams also took to Twitter, with a more coherent argument “I’m sure a scavenger hunt was fun for the people with nothing better to do. Ask our working families trying to do whatever they can to survive if they participated. Ask the people worried about making rent if they thought it was worth it. Mamdani is trying to turn our city into the Squid Games.” Sliwa’s campaign went for a more fear-mongering route, arguing on Instagram that “while Mamdani plays scavenger hunt, New Yorkers are scavenging for safety on their own streets and subways.”
And yes. There’s a lot of work to be done to make New York City a better place. But I find it fascinating that the Mamdani campaign was able to trick their counterparts into admitting that they are opposed to going out and enjoying yourself, especially when New York City’s culture is so deeply rooted in community.
Hey, thanks for sharing this. As a volunteer of a political party in Australia with the same policies as Zohran, I am constantly looking to his campaign for inspiration. This is great to gain the first-hand experience from a New Yorker.
I was fascinated - I couldn’t go, but watched TikTok incessantly.