Golden Ticket Hunt Returns, S&T Sets 1st Of 2020 For Saturday

CHICAGO — The scavenger hunt that took the Mount Greenwood neighborhood by storm in 2019 will make its social distancing return this weekend. S&T Provisions Owner Brian Giaretta said the coveted "golden ticket" will once again be up for grabs come Saturday, July 11.

But not without some changes. Not only has the coronavirus pandemic caused some modifications, Giaretta said lessons have been learned from the three similar hunts held last year. The one held in November, which lasted for longer than a week, brought a bit of a fever pitch to the neighborhood and had hundreds of people along 111th Street day and night looking for the ticket.

This year, instead of releasing clues in piecemeal and at different physical locations in the 19th Ward, Giaretta said the entire list of clues will be published along with the rules in one Facebook post set to go public at 8 a.m. on Saturday.

"We learned a lot from last year... so this time we'd like to keep it a little more controlled," Giaretta said.

There will also be a time limit for this hunt, which Giaretta told Patch will last for no longer than a day. The exact time limit also won't be known until the Facebook post that publishes Saturday morning.

"There will be one list of clues… we haven't narrowed it down to a number yet and it will all be done in one shot," he said. "There will be an expiration time, and at that time I will either post a video of the winner (whoever finds the ticket) or go to the spot myself to show everyone where it was."

Last November's winner, Mount Greenwood resident Chelsea Svec, found the ticket just hours before Giaretta was going to call off the game and show everyone that it was hidden on the side of a mausoleum in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Svec won $2,000 as the ticket finder. This Saturday, if someone finds the same ticket they will win a free S&T pizza setup every week for a year.

It's a smaller way to get the community back out for fun after months of uncertainty amid the pandemic.

"We felt it was an appropriate time to roll the first one out and get everyone outside," Giaretta said, noting that as of Thursday afternoon more than 2,000 people on Facebook have shown interest in participating.

"I'm excited," he said. "I think there's going to be a lot of people to come out and it will be good to get everyone out there again after being cooped up for so long."