Where the Buffalo Roam

Eight weeks. Bars, pubs, cafes, and restaurants across Buffalo and WNY, each one hosting a happy hour that raises money for the ELRECS non-profit animal welfare network.

Get a partner, pick your nights, and go find out which corners of this city you've been ignoring.

Free to enter. No purchase necessary. You score by showing up, not by spending. Buy something anyway. That's how the venues stay in this.

Buffalo's Wild Things Happy Hour raises money for the ELRECS network of twenty-one animal welfare non-profits. Running for Rescues is our partner 501(c)(3) non-profit that all donations are processed through. You don't donate to play, and playing doesn't donate. ELRECS is licensed in New York State as a Professional Fundraiser, identification number 51-51-51.

A team is exactly two people.

• Free to register.
• Both of you register, verify your email, and accept these rules. Until both of you have, your team isn't active and it can't score.
• Rosters lock once your team is active. No swaps, no adds, no drops.
• If one of you leaves, the team dissolves and its points go with it. You can't bring in somebody else and carry on. The one who stayed can start a new team, from zero, and that's the only way forward.
• Both of you are 21 or older. We check that against the date of birth on your account.
• One active team per person. You can't run two rosters at once.
• Pick a team name when you register. Section 9 covers what a name can lose you.

Two means two. Every task in this game needs both of you there. If your partner can't make it, you're not scoring that night. Pick someone whose calendar looks like yours.

Registration opens August 24, 2026 at noon and closes Sunday, November 1, 2026 at 11:59pm.

The game runs Monday, September 14 through Friday, November 6, 2026. Eight weeks.

A game week runs Monday through Friday and closes Friday at midnight. Each venue picks one weekday for its happy hour, and its window is 4 to 7pm on that day.

Weekends are not part of this game. Nothing scores on a Saturday or a Sunday.

Week	Runs
1	September 14 to 18
2	September 21 to 25
3	September 28 to October 2
4	October 5 to 9
5	October 12 to 16
6	October 19 to 23
7	October 26 to 30
8	November 2 to 6

Monday, October 12 is a holiday, in week 5. Some Monday venues may not run their happy hour. Check the board.

You can join late. Register any time up to November 1 and play the weeks that are left. You'll be scored on what you play, so a late team can take a weekly prize.

All times on this page are Eastern.

Check in at a participating venue, both of you, inside a game week.

• 2 points for a check-in at any participating venue. Once per venue per day.
• 4 points for a check-in at a venue during its own happy hour, 4 to 7pm on the weekday that venue picked. Once per venue per week.
• 10 points is the most any one venue can pay your team in a week, however often you go.

Every venue is worth the same. There's no venue worth farming and no venue worth skipping.

Both of you, every time. Two people, both there, both checked in. Nobody carries their partner's phone in a jacket.

Roaming is the whole game. Go to your usual place every day of the week and you'll bank 10 points. Go to four different places on their happy hour days and you'll bank 16 for the same four evenings.

At least six stops a week, published Sunday for the week ahead. Some weeks have more, some weeks have less.

A trail stop can be a mural, a monument, a park, a corner with a story. Find it, get there, check in with your partner.

• 2 points a stop.
• 10 points for clearing the whole trail in the same week.

The trail doesn't carry over. Sunday's trail replaces last week's, finished or not.

A trail is built to take about six hours, spread across two or three evenings. It's the biggest single score in the week and it doesn't need a free calendar, so if you can only play a couple of nights, this is your game.

Trail stops are public places, and getting to one is your call. We publish stops that are public and reachable. We don't publish private property, and if we get one wrong, tell us. If a stop turns out to be damaged, gone, or unreachable and we void it, that week's trail is one stop shorter for everybody and the completion bonus still pays.

Standings update as you play.

A week closes Friday at midnight. Saturday we check it.

Sunday you get an email, and the same thing is on your dashboard: the week's prize winners, the standings, the new trail, and anything that changed in these rules.

Sunday is when a week is final.

Season standings are the sum of all eight weeks. That's what the cash pays on.

Cash

Grand prize, $500. Top of the season standings. Paid $250 to each member.

Two runners-up, $250 each. Second and third in the season standings. Paid $125 to each member.

Weekly

At least one prize a week, and up to three, made of things the participating venues donated. Awarded on that week's standings, from the top down.

What's in them is published on the game dashboard, not here. Venues are still confirming, so the dashboard carries the current list and what each one is worth. That list is part of these rules. This page won't try to keep up with it.

One prize per team per week. If you're already taking one that week, the next goes to the next team. A prize is one item, so you and your partner split it however you like.

Week 8 awards its weekly prizes and the cash.

And more than that

Additional awards may be announced during the season. They'll be scored on the full eight weeks, back to week 1, not from the day they're announced. So keep your options open.

Getting paid

Weekly winners are named in Sunday's email. The grand prize and the runners-up are named in the last one, Sunday, November 8, 2026, and told directly the same day.

Claim within 14 days of being notified or the prize goes to the next team.

Prizes are income and they're yours to report. We collect a W-9 from each winner at claim, and we file a 1099 for anyone we pay $600 or more in a calendar year.

Broken in this order:

1. Highest single week
2. Most distinct venues visited across the season
3. Earliest to reach your final total

The third one always settles it, so there are no split prizes and no coin tosses.

Your best week shows on your dashboard all season, so you always know where you stand on the first tie break.

Plain section. No jokes here.

These will cost you a week:

• Checking in somewhere you didn't travel to. Passing a code around, photographing it, sharing it, or posting it.
• Checking in for your partner, or on your partner's phone.
• Playing on more than one team, or on somebody else's roster.
• Faking proof of anything.
• Being under 21, or putting a date of birth on your account that isn't yours.
• Being asked to leave a venue by that venue's staff.
• A team name a reasonable person would call slurring, harassing, or obscene. We'll tell you before we remove it, once.

Strikes. A confirmed violation voids the whole week it happened in, including your prize chance that week, and it counts as a strike. Three strikes across the season and your team is out.

It lands on the team, not on one of you. If one of you breaks a rule, the week goes for both of you. Every task in this game takes two people, so there's no way to void half a team. Pick your partner accordingly.

Strikes follow you. If your team dissolves and you start another one, you take your strikes with you. A new roster isn't a clean slate.

ELRECS decides. We'll tell you when it happens and why, and you have 48 hours to answer. After that the decision stands.

A failed check-in is not a strike. If your location doesn't check out, the check-in doesn't count and nothing else happens. Strikes are for the list above, not for a bad signal in a basement bar.

A corrected board says it's corrected. If a void changes standings that were already posted, the board carries a note saying so. We don't redraw a leaderboard quietly.

What's been handed out stays handed out. A week is final when Sunday's email goes out. If we find something after that, the points go and the standings change, but a basket somebody already collected is theirs.

Drink responsibly or don't drink. Nothing in this contest rewards speed and nothing rewards volume. There's no points advantage to a fourth round. Get a ride.

Venue staff decide who they serve. Their call is final and it isn't appealable to us.

Happy hour deals, specials, and prices are set by each venue. Those are theirs, not ours.

Missed check-in, bad code, venue closed when it shouldn't have been, trail stop that isn't there: email support@thehotspot.guide within 48 hours of the week closing.

After Sunday the week is final and we can't reopen it.

We'll fix what we can verify. We can't fix what we can't see.

Sponsor. ELRECS LLC, 349 Parkdale Ave, Buffalo, NY 14213, United States. New York State Professional Fundraiser Identification Number 51-51-51. ELRECS runs this game and pays the cash prizes.

Free to enter. No purchase, payment, or donation is necessary to enter or to win, and buying something won't improve your chances. Nothing you spend scores you a point.

Who can play. Residents of the United States who are 21 or older at registration. Employees of ELRECS LLC, and their immediate families and households, can't win. Void where prohibited.

When. Registration opens August 24, 2026 at noon and closes November 1, 2026 at 11:59pm Eastern. The game runs September 14 through November 6, 2026. All times are Eastern.

Prizes. The cash prizes are in section 7 and don't change. The weekly prize list is published on the game dashboard at play.thehotspot.guide and forms part of these rules. Adding to it isn't a change to these rules under the paragraph on changes below.

How winners are decided. By score, on the published criteria in sections 4, 5, and 8, applied by ELRECS. ELRECS's determination of scores, standings, and winners is final and binding.

Your name and likeness. By accepting these rules you agree that ELRECS may use your name, your team name, your hometown, your likeness, and what you say about this game in advertising and promotion, in any medium, without payment and without further notice. The public winners list carries team names only. If you win, we'll ask you to sign a short release along with your W-9.

Taxes. See section 7. Prizes are income and reporting them is yours to do.

Playing is voluntary and you play at your own risk. This game asks you to travel to bars, restaurants, and public places, sometimes after dark. By entering, you release ELRECS LLC, the participating venues, and their owners, staff, and agents from any claim arising out of playing, traveling, being at a venue or a trail stop, or accepting or using a prize. To the fullest extent the law allows, ELRECS's total liability to you is limited to the value of the prize you were eligible to win. Nothing here waives anything the law says can't be waived.

What we're not responsible for. A check-in that doesn't register, an outage, a lost or delayed email, a damaged or missing trail stop, a venue that closes or changes its hours, or a phone that can't get a location fix.

Venues are hosts, not sponsors. Participating venues don't run this game and aren't liable for it.

Your data. Playing means sharing your location when you check in. What we collect and what we do with it is in the privacy policy at thehotspot.guide.

Changes. We can correct an error, void a compromised trail stop, or fix a broken venue at any time. Published point values for an open week don't change. Anything else takes effect the following Monday, never retroactively. A change to points, prizes, eligibility, dates, conduct, or tie breaks needs both members of your team to accept the new version before you can score again, and we'll show you what changed. Everything else goes out in Sunday's email with a note.

Cancelling. We can modify, suspend, or cancel this game for any reason. If we do, prize baskets that haven't been awarded go back to the venues that donated them, and no cash prize is paid.

Winners list. Team names go up at play.thehotspot.guide and stay for at least a year.

Law. New York law governs these rules, and any dispute goes to the state or federal courts sitting in Erie County, New York.

These rules. Version 1.1, effective August 25, 2026. The version you accepted governs your entry until you accept a newer one. Superseded versions stay published at their own addresses.