With Foursquare, life is a virtual game

Dennis Crowley was jogging across a New York bridge when he spotted something exciting: a cartoon mushroom, spray-painted on the sidewalk.

It looked like something out of Nintendo’s “Super Mario Bros.,” which Crowley grew up playing. He stomped on the mushroom as he ran by and had a sort of nerdy realization.

“I was like, s—-!” he recalled. ” ‘I should get a power-up for that!’ “