I LOVE Musikfest. It is the best 10 days to live in Bethlehem despite the inconveniences the traffic changes and street closures cause me. I am only a quarter mile walk down a hill to the main area and 4 stages. That said, a person like me can hardly ignore the comedic potential of the “festers.” After never attending before, I have three years under my belt That experience is yearning to be developed into a scavenger hunt-like game for young and old
The game is relatively simple and descends from my experiences looking for the various animals while driving around game parks in Africa. There is a concept there of the “Big Five,” the five most difficult/dangerous animals to hunt and/or find. This includes, in no particular order, Elephants, Lions, Leopards, Rhinos, and Water Buffalo. I saw all of them many times while living in Africa, and I was thrilled every time (I was charged and chased by elephants many times, charged by a female lion - on foot, menaced by rhinos - running from a black rhino mom and baby, growled at by a leopard, and snorted at when I was too close to a buffalo herd. It is not as exciting to see any of the things I list below at Musikfest, but the list might make it more interesting. The old school spotters may want to print out the sheet so they can mark it with a pencil, but the youth will likely be able to come up with something different.
Scoring: Keep a tally of the times you see any of these trophies, and add up the total for a day, or any other suitable interval. Each one has a different point total based on its relative frequency and significance culturally. The score for each is in parentheses following. Any combination should be added up in full – see examples after.
Musikfest Game
1. Man with gray ponytail (15)
2. Concert t-shirt (10), 5 point bonus if you’ve never heard of the group and if it is a tank top or sleeveless.
3. Man in Tank top/sleeveless T-shirt (5)
4. Gray chest hair or back hair sticking out of the shirt (10)
5. Knee brace in shorts (5)
6. Visible tattoos on the torso (5)
7. Proper head covering (bucket hat, sun hat) (10)
8. Someone walking through a noisy concert area talking on a cell phone (10)
9. Young children with parents near any performance with no hearing protection (10)
10. Carrying food items in both hands (beverages do not count) (5)
TOTAL SCORE:
For example, an elderly man with a gray ponytail in a Billy Joel concert tank top with some gray hair sticking out the top of his back would be worth 40 points. A woman in a Goose tank top carrying an unprotected baby would be worth 25 (unless you have heard of Goose), but it would go up to 30 once you saw her knee brace.
I hope this helps you enjoy Musikfest even more, and it can help kill the time between shows while the musicians obsessively tune instruments they presumably brought fully tuned.