A funny thing happened on the way to the Encounter

[Jaygo Lightfoot]

I have a group of 1st level PCs and I want to give them one or flavourful mini-encounters on the way to their next Quest objective. They will be travelling through a harbour town that has plenty of rundown buildings and unkept streets for them to run into something dangerous as they make there way to a location. Things along the lines of rats or other urban pests, footpads maybe?

its a big group though, seven of them, so that might put off casual thieves. Group is: drunken master, paladin, brawler, druid (with wolf), wizard, cleric, and a shaman.

[Shoga]

any large town/city should have some form of sewer system, ideal for side quests. Dire rats, smugglers, and even some of the more difficult critters that can make their home in sewers. You could start em on the side quest with some deaths due to unusual mauling's and/or teeth marks that would show something was killing and eating the citizens.

[The Steel Refrain]

A reasonably well-organized group of footpads charging a "toll" for going through their territory might be fun.

The idea is that it *could* turn to combat (again a prepared group, probably with crossbow snipers and other tricks to make life difficult on the PCs), but the PCs can also avoid it, either by paying the toll, or going around the territory (or perhaps 'under' it... which could maybe tie into the sewer-related ideas Shoga suggested).

[Dwarftr]

"As you travel along this ramshackle street, a womens scream pierces the air! You notice two thugs dragging a struggling women into a nearby rundown warehouse. She sees you and yells for help just as one of the "Men" clubs her before slamming the door of the delapitated shack....."

Let your imagination run wild. There could be a whole gang holed up in that building.... The "Men" could anything.... Human, Orc, Some fishy sea creature...
The building could just be an entrance to a secret lair/sewers/etc..

Let the PC's decide if they will rescue the captive.... or captives, or if they will just walk on by and continue on with their quest.

[GypsyMischief]

Allow me to consult my d100 port town occurences chart...

-The PCs see a group of folk gathered around a cauldron of butter, cracking 4ft wide crab shells open with maces and sledgehammers, laughing and gorging themselves.

-A dock worker shouts in warning as cargo being removed from a nearby ship breaks it's restraints and tumbles violently to the ground (Reflex to dodge or be cast through the dock into the shark infested waters below?)

Not exactly combat, but certainly favorful

[The Skeptical Gnome]

Some urban pests like, well, rats, or maybe a swarm of crows reskinned as angry seagulls would probably seem like a safe bet. Another possibility is an attack by a force of bandits while the PCs are in town, maybe some goblins, or some kobolds. You know, the usual cannon fodder. Gypsy already mentioned this above, but maybe something knocks one or more PCs into the water, or they see someone being attacked by a a group of large fish or sharks in the water, leading to some underwater combat.

[Jaygo Lightfoot]

Thank you all for the suggestions, the players did what players do best ; the unexpected. But i did use a Giant crab on the docks :)