So you can imagine that I was probably not the best person to hop on board the "scavenger hunt" organized by the art rock duo of Brother and Sister. I put scavenger hunt in quotes because it implies that you'd be running around town collecting a list of objects. Instead, we were running around town trying to decode clues of ever increasing obscurity.

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This is what you get! courtesy Ian Goodrich

We started at the Leftbank, divided up into ten war-painted teams. The first clue, located in the Leftbank gallery, required the slashing of a canvas to reveal a cubby-hole filled with CD's that contained our second clue: a snippet of the song "On Broadway." What part of the song? The bridge, of course. Ohhhh, so that's how it's gonna be.

Okay. At this point, a small portion of my team is in my car, the others are on bicycle. The bicycles are far more nimble in this game than those of us with four wheels. I have to hunt for parking spots more often than I hunt for clues. Still, those of us in the car are being a bit helpful—one clue on the Mercury's back page is a doozy until I discover, if you read it right it says, "union station."

Before long it is evident that the bikes have a huge advantage on us, but we persevere, showing up just in time to help. The clues are getting more and more strange: a letter in a post office box has a claim ticket for a locker in the greyhound station, which has a bag that contains an equation of some sort, that leads to a parking garage...

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The hurty little clue. courtesy Ian Goodrich

The hunt gets especially serious when we learn that one of the team members will need to get a (free) tattoo. We are not sure what the tattoo is, but apparently, it's our next clue and we cannot progress unless we see it. There is a brief moment when I have the opportunity to get into the chair. But I acquiesce to on of the teammates who arrived before I did and had never been inked before. Turns out that the tattoo is of a cute little donut and we're off to Voodoo.

Things started breaking down after one of our team-mates was required to have half of the Willy Week logo carved into their hair with a pair of clippers (though we didn't know that's what the design was at the time). Leave it to the WW to fuck everything up.

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Not as painful as a tatoo! courtesy Ian Goodrich

At that point we'd been going for just about three hours and everyone was getting frustrated. We wanted beer, food, and just to be done. I don't think anyone on our team found the ad, in the WW musicians wanted section, that directed people to contact the Village Voice in New York, which somehow lead to a fountain that eventually led to the final destination: a vacant lot on NE 2nd and Davis.

In the end I was reminded of how much I disliked the Bloodhound Gang. They took something magical and mysterious and reduced it to cold explainable facts. Here, the cold explainable fact was that the payoff was totally not worth it. Located in the lot, Brother and Sister wailed away. It was sloppy, loud and irritating. The people dressed as cavemen where just completely perplexing. Such was our prize.

But at least we had some fun and we got into the Works for free... to see more Brother and Sister... Shit.