Tropic Hunt Up North

Back in my days at the Miami Herald, I loved the guys at Tropic magazine. They drank heavily, played ping-pong in the office, and cracked all kinds of jokes -- dirty and otherwise. In short, they were (I say, completely lacking in humility) the New Times of their day.

Tom Shroder, Joel Achenbach, Bill Rose, Gene Weingarten, and Dave Barry were a brain trust that made the magazine and the accompanying newspaper one of the very best -- and wackiest -- in the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Their best idea -- or at least their most popular -- was the Tropic Hunt, which morphed into the Herald Hunt and last year drew more than 5000 people dressed in drag and worse to a kind of city-wide scavenger hunt. (They call it an "urban safari." They aren't humble, either.) These days my neighbors do it, as do lots of people who couldn't even name a Herald headline of the past year. It's a Magic City phenomenon.

Now Shroder and company are planning to start a new version of the hunt in Washington, DC, where he and Weringarten work for the Post....

Boys, I salute you -- and beg you to send of your wackiness back our way -- cuz the Herald has never been the same since you left.

Chuck Strouse