On a Wednesday night in August, hundreds of people gathered in the lobby of Apple Cinemas in central San Francisco. To gain admission to the event, attendees had to say a secret code word to the crew working the door: three giggling children wearing oversize “SECURITY” caps.
The throng inside hunted for QR codes on the walls and admired a makeshift art gallery that showcased a collection of paintings, each referencing a famous historical work—Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, Munch’s The Scream—but with the visage of a cartoon stick figure (his name is Percy) standing in for the central subject. A secret film played in theater 4. Dozens more attendees bought Percy T-shirts and added themselves to the waiting list for the booth dispensing Percy tattoos—a very real and very permanent commitment to the event they came here to celebrate.
A player dressed as a shark considers the tattoo table at the Pursuit finale event. Photograph: Boone Ashworth
This was the grand finale of Pursuit, a citywide scavenger hunt that took place for several weeks throughout San Francisco. The goal: Find Percy, whose likeness had been plastered across posters, begging—and sometimes threatening—people to call a phone number to find him. Anyone who did so was led to complete 12 elaborate quests hidden across the city. Each task was revealed at a different time and lasted a few days, participants uncovering clues to lead them one step closer to Percy.
A month into the search, with more than 12,000 players enlisted, the crowd of more than 800 people gathered at this theater, because Percy was finally going to make an appearance. Word had spread that he was maybe even going to speak.
Game Face
This is the second citywide Pursuit game; the first was held in the summer of 2024, and 300 people showed up for the finale. The scavenger hunt is funded in part by FranciscoSan.org, a grant initiative started by an anonymous benefactor that has allotted $100,000 to fund local efforts to “make the city and county of San Francisco more whimsical through eventures [sic] and installations.” The rest of the funding came from the organizers, a group of 20 or so friends.
Percy is shown on posters for the Pursuit scavenger hunt. These were taped on a wall at Apple Cinemas in San Francisco, where the finale took place. Photograph: Boone Ashworth
Pursuit has no prize. There’s no glittering hidden treasure, no cash reward, no reveal that this had all been—as I had cynically feared—a marketing ploy to raise brand awareness for some new startup. The real prize, the organizers say, are the friends we’ve made along the way. Yeah, they know that’s cheesy. But they sure do mean it.
“Our friend group in general just really likes exploring,” says Athena Leong, a software engineer and one of Pursuit’s organizers.
Maybe you’re familiar with stories about San Francisco being a dying city—one that has seen its downtown eviscerated, its culture and soul hollowed out by gentrification and Silicon Valley solipsism. The Pursuit crew, largely a bunch of twentysomething tech workers, disagree.