Summary of instructions:

* Speak only jibberish for an hour and a half
* Call a specific long distance telephone number and deliver a very brief instruction.
* Draw dance patches on the sidewalk around town, and when you encounter a patch, dance in it for 15 seconds
* Hang at least 10 Lost Dog posters around town.
* Meet with a mysterious stranger on a bridge in Portsmouth Square, and deliver a poem or short story in a sealed envelope. Receive new instructions.
* Team rocket - ditch the rest of the players and try to form a water-balloon rebellion against the planner
* Hold a dance competition in dance patches at the four corners of an intersection near Union Square. Dance, dance in slow motion, and freeze in response to the stoplights.
* Winner of the dance competition (or tie-breaking game of rock-paper-scissors) becomes planner for half an hour, which lead to the following two instructions.
* Go into Macy's and try to obtain a free object to use as a marker in a giant game of hop-scotch.
* et al must forcibly steal a bag from Lowteck and run around the block with it.
* Hold a city-block-long hopscotch competition.
* Break into small groups, with different players trying to avoid and stay close to incompatible sets of people. In the face of several no-shows and some confusion, the planees rebelled and remained together as a group.
* Perform public caroling or public sidewalk chalk portraiture. We chose caroling.
* Make your way to 16th Street BART station (where an agent drawn dance patch was waiting for us at the top of the escalator) and disband.
* Engage in any of several optional activities. The only one we briefly attempted was to follow another player as they made their way home, doing a comically bad job of hiding every time they notice and try to confront their pursuers.

Ian, Sam, and Jackie:

So as not to risk being redundant, here's a list of our favorite stuff from our day:

* Realizing we were HELLUV LATE to get to our checkpoint, and hopping on the 9x bus even though we weren't totally sure it would take us there, and then the date/time/stop screen magically scrolled TOTAL GIBBERISH, but only once, and we couldn't catch it on camera (it was like wingdings!)

* Sam's problems at Disneyland

* The random breakdancer dude who jumped in our dance patch before we did and busted some awesome moves

* Trying to find free/not stolen hopscotch stones in Macy's (bread turtle!)

* The one passerby who actually offered to play hopscotch even though we were busy asking other people

* ESPECIALLY the two old ladies with shopping bags who did a little hopscotch on their own, half a block away from us

* Singing Green Day's "Basket Case" (Ian, Jackie, Jeremy)

TEAM ROCKET:





lost pet signs were installed by me:




lost pet signs were installed on me:
i look very um... "special" in this psicture

bjorn/lowteck:



The magic Cockroach:




Preparing for Battle:
our plans indicated that failure to follow rules would be punished.
we weren't about to go out without a fight.




International hopscotch league:




Dance patch:




The mysterious lady on the bridge:




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Bjorn Teuleuse: I too have refrained from showing too many pictures that might spoil the event for other cities...I had a great night with the other players...especially while hopscotch-hustling unsuspecting tourists in a China Town alley...here are some photos

Mysterious phone call prompting someone to locate and obtain a picnic basket



Random folks dancing in my dance patch



Amazing tourist doing the robot in my dance patch



Bread Turtle Handover




Hopscotch Item Roundup





I Dance Dance Dance, and I Dance Dance Dance





Stalked by Loki




et al:

TOO MANY WORDS!
.

YOU KNOW TOO MUCH ALREADY!

Loki:

This event, and the concept behind it, are both a lot of fun. In fact, the only part of the whole evening which wasn't a blast was speaking jibberish to homeless pan-handlers. (We'd been warned that agents would be moving among us, checking that we obeyed the rules, so I stayed in character.) I can't imagine why, but one guy took a few nonsense syllables and a schizopolis quote as an indication that I was Mormon. He started asking me questions about the faith, which I responded to by naming fruits and walking away quickly.

At the dance competition, I was astonished to discover the random group of people who began dancing in my dance patch *before* I had starting doing so weren't actually players. They were just random tourists who grocked dance patches and decided to jump in.

The Macy's rock-hunt was much more successful than I anticipated. Everyone came back with a suitable rock, although Bjorn's foot long sourdough turtle wins the prize for best object ever gifted to a giant game of hopscotch by a department store employee.

Giant street hopscotch was fantastic, despite the Axe-vendor who called the cops on us and an occasional car blocking the playing field. After we finished caroling and went our separate ways, I briefly stalked Bjorn, as our planner suggested.

Video:

We wish to thank the planner and the agents of the planner for providing us with video of this event.