A couple years ago, after a friend told me about a photo scavenger hunt he went on, which required participants to take pictures in front of famous San Francisco landmarks, I knew I wanted to have a party just like this.  The only catch was, his party took ALL DAY!  I wasn't willing to make my guest sacrifice a whole day, so I came up with the idea of choosing a particular neighborhood and making a scavenger hunt in which the guests had to solve clues to figure out which bar they had to go to and then solve another clue to figure out what they had to do when they got there. 

When I told my boyfriend at the time what I was planning for my birthday, he thought I was crazy.  In the end, even he had to admit that it was a brillant idea after seeing how much fun people had.  And thus, my trademark event was born.  I have since done similar scavenger hunts for my birthdays,  friends' birthdays, friends' of friends' birthdays and, most recently, my friend's rehearsal dinner party.  I always try to make them have a central theme.  For one friend, I did a pirate-themed hunt, which ended at the San Francisco bar, The Buccaneer.  For another, since it was on a bus, I pretended the bus was a school bus and made each clue a homework assignment.  For my own wine tasting birthday party in Sonoma, I gave it a wine theme and made guests take photos of their finds.

Lindsay blogs about her movie location-themed event here.

As Lindsay says in her blog, this is a great way to get people who don't know one another to interact.  And people get a friendly competitiveness that makes people less shy about engaging strangers. 

Writing this post makes me want to go out and plan one right now!