On Saturday, NYC Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani announced that his campaign would hold a scavenger hunt across the city the next day. The themed event would be entirely accessible by public transit (one of his campaign issues), and there would be a surprise at the end. The number of people who showed up, and some of the design of the hunt itself, made for some wobbles, but it was a clever way to explore the city and hang out with friends, and the latest manifestation of Mamdani’s “what if it were nice to live in New York?” platform.
Mamdani announced the first clue in a social media video at 11am on Sunday. It referenced New York City’s youngest mayor and told participants to go to “the Gilded Age hall where that mayor spent a lot of his time.” It wasn’t too hard to figure out this one meant Tammany Hall off Union Square, though I’m committed enough to pedantry to note that Tammany Hall would have had a different headquarters nearby during Hugh J. Grant’s time as mayor. But given that the official landmark for Tammany Hall is its last HQ, and that Union Square is the de facto meeting point for numerous political gatherings in NYC, that’s where I headed.
After a morning filled with personal shame wherein I tried to adjust my bike brakes, hopelessly fucked it up somehow, and had to go to my local bikeshop to get them fixed, I arrived at Union Square just before the 2pm start time. I was shocked to find multiple lines for the scavenger hunt’s sticker card consuming the square, one continuing down 17th St and another following Union Square West to end at 15th. While I waited, I overheard multiple curious onlookers ask what the line was for. Many participants explained that they’d seen Mamdani’s announcement on Instagram and TikTok; I’d seen it on Bluesky, and these different platforms coupled with a huge turnout, with people lining up well before the event even started, felt like proof that Mamdani’s social media focus is continuing to reach people and bring them out to his events. Nevertheless, one passerby said “Who the hell is that?” when someone explained it was an event for Zohran Mamdani, though I’m not clear whether they were local or from out of town.
I was excited to discover that games journalist and Aftermath line-waiting pal Autumn Wright was in another line. We met up in time for the less-exciting discovery that the Mamdani campaign had already run out of the sticker cards, but we didn’t think much of it since we could still follow the clues.
I had worried that bringing my bike was a bad idea, presuming Mamdani’s emphasis on public transit would mean the hunt would take place across the boroughs and I’d end up either biking to Queens or dragging my bike on trains all day. My fears seemed confirmed when we got the second clue, held up on a poster by a campaign volunteer: “‘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.” At first, we thought the clue was leading us to a traffic circle in the Bronx, but a nudge from another participant and Autumn looking up the quote pointed us instead to a running track named after Mayor John V. Lindsay in East River Park, a far less onerous trek.
Of course, every other person in the park was headed to the same place. There was a rush for the nearby CitiBike dock and for a bus stop on 14th St, and I was glad I’d decided to bring my bike. Autumn and their partner snagged CitiBikes, and we made our way through Alphabet City to the park. Getting to the track by public transit was apparently far less easy; my friend Jeanne Thornton, a narrative designer and author of the video-game themed novel A/S/L, told me there was a “bottleneck on the first clue [due to] heavy dependence on the M14 bus, which straight up refused to pick anyone up because too many Zohran people.” While many of the clues would ultimately be accessible by subway, several of the early-game ones were best done by bus, and it’s no surprise lower Manhattan’s bus system wasn’t prepared to deal with the number of people it seems like even the Mamdani campaign wasn’t expecting. (Update, 8/25/25, 11:40am-- The Mamdani campaign posted that over 4000 people took part.)
When we got to the track, there was another crush of people waiting for the pedestrian overpass, but things were pretty orderly despite the crowd. We got our next clue: “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.”
It was easy to figure out that this one was the Staten Island Ferry terminal near Whitehall Street, and I actually didn’t even register the “mayor” part of this clue until writing this article. (It’s a reference to Guiliani, who made the ferry free in 1997.) Our bike ride to the terminal was frustrating due to huge swathes of the East River Greenway being under construction, though this did inspire us to lead a gaggle of struggling CitiBikers in taking over the car lane on South Street. Once the greenway opened up, we got a great view of the water, and I was excited to cheer like a nerd as we passed the historic ships at the South Street Seaport.
At Whitehall, we got our next clue: “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.” I got this one totally wrong by presuming DSA was a recent development and instead looking up socialist mayors, which sent me down an informative dead end about Schenectady mayor George Lund. Autumn again came in clutch by just looking up DSA officeholders and revealing the very-new-to-me fact that David Dinkins was a member. (“Mr. Dinkins, would you please be my mayor?/You'll be doing us a really big favor” is a quote from an A Tribe Called Quest song.)
The next location, the David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building near City Hall, was back to the east side and not terribly far, but we were definitely starting to feel the wear of zigzagging across town with CitiBikes. Jeanne also highlighted the routing to me as a problem, telling me she felt there was “too much backtracking.” Luckily, the ferry terminal to City Hall is a pretty straightforward trip by train. A cyclist I’d met back in Union Square had told me he’d brought his bike because he was worried all the transit trips would get expensive, and by stop three I could definitely imagine them adding up.
Around this time we learned via rumblings that Mamdani had said on Bluesky that “only people with clue cards will be able to access the final stop.” That information, combined with the slog of CitiBikes, helped Autumn and their partner decide to take a break while they pondered whether to continue. I felt committed to seeing the whole thing through, so I biked up to the Dinkins building on my own. Without other people to keep me honest, I made my standard mistake of biking by vibes instead of actual directions, then got further lost at the Dinkins building by confusing it with places I’d done jail and court support. I got to the clue only a few minutes before Autumn and their partner showed up: “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 one was fun to dig into, and I quickly got the answer of mayor James J. Walker. Autumn and their partner decided to bail, and I had a lovely ride up a mostly empty Hudson Street to James J. Walker Park. (Thanks, congestion pricing!) I was utterly hopeless at the next clue: “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.)” I figured out the mayor, Ed Koch, and the subsequent bridge, the Queensboro, pretty quickly, but I had absolutely no idea what to do next. I asked some people nearby, and as we discussed the tram to Roosevelt Island I thought we were figuring the clue out together before I realized they were just walking me to the answer of Tramway Plaza. They were clearly disappointed in me, and my guilt over not putting in my best effort pursued me on the lengthy bike ride up to 2nd Ave and 59th St.
I took 8th Ave most of the way since it has a bike lane, and as my legs started to feel all the miles of riding I’d done, I thought about how much of the city I’d seen that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I’d passed by places I’d hung out in college and places I’d enjoyed running when I was training for the NYC marathon, revisiting memories that feel deeply tied to living in the city by being out in it. At an intersection, an older man complimented me on my vintage bike and told me his own was 40 years old, and we chatted about bikes as we waited for the light. (He also told me he would never ride on tires as skinny as my 20 inchers, a sentiment I definitely agree with.) It was one of those random, lovely encounters you’d only have by moving around, being out among the city’s people instead of holed up at home. As Republicans (and Democrats like Mamdani primary opponent Andrew Cuomo) scare-monger the dangers of the city and its transit, there was definitely power in telling a different story through getting participants outside, encouraging them to interact with each other and use the city’s streets, busses, and trains.
At Tramway Plaza, a campaign volunteer reminded me that only people with sticker cards could go to the final location, telling me the requirement was due to capacity issues, and declined to show me the last clue. People who didn’t have cards definitely seemed disappointed, though most still seemed in good spirits about it. Jeanne, who’d ended her participation at Walker Park, told me she was disappointed that “you are dead in the water if you didn’t have a card–two women we’re talking to at the park are saying there should be an alternate final clue for like, a runner up party… Basically there’s no credits roll for anyone other than the lucky 1000 who got cards.” Even though I’d enjoyed the ride to my final stop, it was a long way to go just to arrive at an anti-climactic ending, especially since the result had nothing to do with my actual performance during the scavenger hunt.
I spoke with some volunteers, who told me they hadn’t known much about the scavenger hunt beforehand and had just been in general campaign chats when it needed staffing. One had been canvassing for Mamdani just before their shift at the hunt, while for another it was their first time volunteering with the campaign. Some participants took pity on me and showed me a picture of the final clue on their phone: “One of my favorite cafes shares a nickname of my favorite mayor [cut off in photo] time. And don’t worry, they always remember to bloom their coffee. Travel to another borough to this cafe to end the hunt!”
The folks who shared the photo told me the answer– Little Flower Cafe in Astoria, a nickname for Fiorello La Guardia and a reference to an interview Mamdani did with The New York Times. It wouldn’t have been a bad bike ride over the Queensboro to do my journalistic duty of checking it out, but the dread of tacking more miles on to my commute home and discomfort with the idea of hanging out outside something that seemed to already be struggling with capacity dissuaded me, and I biked back to Brooklyn instead. People who had cards apparently, after waiting in another line, got a photo with Mamdani and a free drink.
Looking at all the clues and answers, the scavenger hunt’s theme seems to be mayoral corruption, something I already suspected given that Mamdani’s announcement video featured a bag of the brand of chips into which an Eric Adams advisor stuffed an envelope of cash and tried to pass it off to a The City reporter last week. Adams, by the way, is not impressed with the scavenger hunt, tweeting from his personal account that “This run around is exactly what he plans to do with your safety, your housing and your taxes. It’s all kid’s play for Mamdani” and that Mamdani wants to “turn our city into the Squid Games.” Cuomo, for his part, tweeted “defund the police but great scavenger hunts,” followed, bafflingly, by “no class free pizza for all seniors.”
I’m no political strategist, so I certainly can’t say if the scavenger hunt was successful as a campaign event. No one asked me for my contact information or said much about Mamdani’s policies, though it’s likely most people learned about the event from Mamdani’s social media and thus don’t need much education. I definitely learned more about NYC mayors and their scandals or combatting of scandals than I knew before. It’s not hard to draw a line from the theme to the scandals that plagued Adams and Cuomo’s administrations, and to read that in contrast to Mamdani subtly casting himself as a more honest alternative. And while I’m sure the whole thing wasn’t intended to piss off Cuomo and Adams, seeing them both act like babies about it made them look out-of-touch and no fun.
Being fun is no guarantee that you’ll make a good mayor, but Mamdani’s campaign has embraced what seems like a genuine joy and love of what the city has to offer. Several of his campaign events have involved stunts out on the streets, walking the length of Manhattan or racing a slow bus; these kinds of things get Mamdani’s name and face out there while also portraying him as someone who actually likes being here. While the final stop of the hunt might have been a closed event, the hunt itself and many of his other activities have felt like reminders that there are still things to do in the city that don’t require entrance fees and private property, with the scavenger hunt pushing participants to gather in the free public spaces of our parks and plazas.
As a game–if a scavenger hunt can be called a game–the need to Google some of the deeper-cut clues (Autumn overheard one participant in Union Square saying they’d used Chat-GPT to get the Tammany Hall answer) wasn’t always the most fun way to puzzle something out, though hardcore NYC history nerds might have been better at solving things on their own. Not being able to get to the end despite solving all the clues in time because I hadn’t arrived long before the event even started was also a bit of a bummer, and I can imagine feeling that letdown more strongly if I’d been spending money on travel fare or dealing with Sunday train schedules to take part. In that regard, the routing could have been more efficient; Jeanne drew me what she called an “angry map” of her experience on transit, which stood in contrast to my bike route:
But for me, it was a nice way to be outside and see friends, to learn some things about the city while reconnecting with the pleasures of just exploring it. A scavenger hunt doesn’t say much about how Mamdani would lead the city, but it did bring his supporters together to have a good time with each other and get his name out there to onlookers. That the turnout was so big for something with little warning, at a time when the city is traditionally empty, is another reminder of the popularity of his campaign. We’ll see how that momentum carries through to November’s mayoral election.
