Gavin Cleaver: All competitions should be run in a scavenger hunt format. True, it's a lot more work for everyone involved, but nothing good ever came from laziness, right? The FFFFest Scavenger Hunt, given that the prizes have an insanely high monetary value, is a perfect example of how you can use a day, and an area, to run a competition that is ultimately far more engaging and entertaining than any concert ticket giveaway.
Kiernan Maletsky: Engaging and entertaining for us, at least. Nothing like asking people to stand in the middle of Deep Ellum pantomiming the Human Centipede.
GC: Sure, some of the rules can be seen as mildly sadistic. Still, a day out in Deep Ellum, with friends, running headlong around to accomplish various tasks that are designed to confuse and disorient the general populace not in on the joke is the thing that memories are made of, if you'll excuse the cliche.
KM: I will not. But you're right, of course. When else will you have a vaguely credible excuse to walk up to a police officer with a couple doughnuts and ask if they'll join you in eating them (15 points)? Never, I'd venture.
GC: True. Every team involved now has the stories from that time they entered that weird competition in Dallas and ended up with a bowling ball (5 points), a shaved right leg (10 points) and an adopted fish (40 points).
KM: ... and still somehow lost to the team that shaved off an eyebrow (30 points) and found a way to scale the Prophet Bar (you get the idea).
GC: To the winners?
KM: To the winners.
Fun Fun Fun Fest Scavenger Hunt 2013 Winners
Fourth Place: The Ricardo Montalbans -- Each team member can attend 2 Granada shows free of charge
Third Place: Dirty Rotten Scavengers -- Each team member receives a single-day pass to Fun Fun Fun Fest
Second Place: Confronted by Goats -- Each team member receives a three-day pass to Fun Fun Fun Fest
First Place: Multiple Scorgasms -- Each team member receives Ultimate Smooth Passes to Fun Fun Fun Fest
*Note*: All photos above come from the team's Instagram accounts, with permission.
KM: We'll be in touch with all of you shortly. So, Gavin, what'd the winners do right?
GC: Of course, being better prepared leads to victory. And if you're not all the way in, you ain't going to win. The best teams showed a dedication to winning expensive festival tickets that was nothing short of admirable, perhaps even a little frightening. Never has such eye-on-the-prize dedication been demonstrated.
KM: First place finisher Multiple Scorgasms hit the right combination of quantity and quality. Other teams hit more items on the checklist, but in the end MS ran away with it by finding ruthless efficiency. They met new people. They destroyed some clothing. They did it all with smiles on their faces.
Confronted By Goats were worthy contenders, however. They (and The Ricardo Montalbans) managed more than 40 entered items on Instagram, which is a hell of a thing to do in two hours. Especially when you consider what went into those 40 photos.
GC: Not a single team half-assed this contest -- the costumes were varied and ridiculous, the Instagramming fast and furious, the sheer cojones on display deserved prizes all round. The poor 7-Eleven clerk, the recipient of many requests for a detailed outline of 7-Eleven's spaghetti policy, must have gone home wondering exactly what they were putting in the water in Deep Ellum on Sunday. Either that or he's asked corporate for a detailed outline of their spaghetti policy, given how many people in costume are specifically concerned about that.
KM: And somewhere there are some tourists who heard about how Deep Ellum is Dallas' funkiest neighborhood, and they're telling their relatives that it really is: People with Batman-logo mustaches kept wandering up to them, asking if they could draw their portraits. Delightful.
GC: From the first bell as teams dashed out into the street, to the final call where teams thumb-wrestled each other for a last-minute points boost, everything about the FFFFest scavenger hunt was glorious fun. Never again (hopefully) will I walk down Elm and Main streets to be confronted by a group of people miming a mural, a man forcing quarters into the hand of an unsuspecting pedestrian and a fellow in dungarees on a one-man mission to run up the largest bar tab in the history of Dallas (30 points).
KM: Excellent work, everyone. Congratulations to the winners -- let's do it again next year.
