Santacon Past

Santacon is known today as a day of drunken revelry. It is, essentially, a massive pub crawl. But when it began, back in 1994, it was Santarchy: "The Founder and Avatar of The Suicide Club, Gary Warne decided to organize a non-political, purely surreal Santa prank event after reading a Mother Jones article about a Danish political group dressing as Santas and mobbing a Copenhagen Dept. store just before Christmas."

The Danish group was known as Solvognen and they mobbed Copenhagen in 1974--Mother Jones wrote about them in 1977 (click for article). Their actions were a response to "greed and capitalism."


Santarchy Logo

The U.S. event was originally, says Wikipedia, "Influenced by the surrealist movement, Discordianism, and other subversive art currents, the Cacophonists celebrated the Yule season in a distinctly anti-commercial manner, by mixing guerrilla street theatre and pranksterism."

So, basically, Santacon used to be kind of punk. It sounds a lot like Reverend Billy's actions in the city's Starbucks. How then did it become the pub crawl it is today?


Santacon NYC Logo

While the Santacon NYC site says "It's not a bar crawl," they nevertheless give tips on how to survive the day that are almost all alcohol-related: "Pace yourself. Your friends don’t want to spend their Santacon cleaning the puke outta your beard." "Tip your bartenders well." "Don’t get arrested. Dressing like Santa does not exempt you from city, state and federal laws. This includes open container violations!" "Check in on your friends... Don’t send your wasted 22-year-old cousin on the train back to Ronkonkoma by herself!"

Maybe that's just the difference between 1974, 1994, and today, when "hordes of drunk Santas take over New York." Just as Christmas has been removed from its original meaning, so has Santacon. Of course, it took a couple thousand years for Christmas to lose its significance--and only a decade or so for Santacon. But things move so quickly nowadays from meaningful to meaningless, it's hard to keep up.

Sidewalk Sitters

Something I've noticed over the past 5-7 years, or thereabouts, since the hyper-gentrification of everything went into full swing, is the increasing habit of non-homeless people to park their backsides on the sidewalks and curbs of the city.

At first, it would startle me. I'd see them at a glance, assume "homeless," and then get up closer and have to do a double-take. She's not asking for change with that Starbucks cup.



And it's not just that these sidewalk sitters are non-homeless people. I'm not talking about a bunch of skateboard kids or punks "chillin'" on the dirty curb. The people I'm talking about are largely middle and upper-middle class "regular" folks. It's the tourists and Juicy Couture shoppers. It's moms from Ohio.



They sit to make phone calls and write text messages.

They relax on the curb to have deep, intimate talks.



They plop down with their soy mocha lattes.

They sprawl out with their shopping bags.



They read maps and drink Snapple.



They place plastic containers of snacks on the curb next to them and indulge in a little street munching.



They spread their legs, enjoy their iced coffee, and send their digital missives.



They collapse en masse, with a group of pals, and shoot the breeze while leaning against a lamp post or a mailbox, or with their sandaled feet in the gutter. As if nobody ever pisses or pukes there. As if nobody's dog ever took a shit in that exact spot, and no toxic liquids flow through that green stream.



And you know what it is. It's the assumption of sterility. All those shiny boxes, those condos and newsstands made of glass, all that Bloombergian glitter makes people think everything in New York is clean, so the sidewalks must be too. Clean enough to eat off?

It's a minor complaint, perhaps a petty one, but something about it just bugs me.