How to search activity location without % being added?
Under admin - customize data and screens - search preferences, there's an option for automatic wildcard.
It seems to still wildcard the end of the search string, but not the beginning.
That admin page explains it:

If enabled, wildcards are automatically added to the beginning AND end of the search term when users search for contacts by Name. EXAMPLE: Searching for 'ada' will return any contact whose name includes those letters - e.g. 'Adams, Janet', 'Nadal, Jorge', etc. If disabled, a wildcard is added to the end of the search term only. EXAMPLE: Searching for 'ada' will return any contact whose last name begins with those letters - e.g. 'Adams, Janet' but NOT 'Nadal, Jorge'. Disabling this feature will speed up search significantly for larger databases, but users must manually enter wildcards ('%' or '_') to the beginning of the search term if they want to find all records which contain those letters. EXAMPLE: '%ada' will return 'Nadal, Jorge'.