The Santa Claus Infection

Tags

Cacophony

Santa M2 hits bottom. (photo by John Curly)

There were 33 Santa clones at the original event in 1994. We started the evening by crashing a high-society party in a fancy San Francisco hotel. Streaming in thru a service entrance, we grabbed bottles of champagne off the tables, clambered onto the stage and did a chorus-line dance while the band (assuming we were a paid act), played ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’. It was a short time before security arrived to herd us out. After that, Santa went to a strip club. We continued the evening by mobbing several other downtown businesses.

“In the beginning, it was not a bar crawl, It was culture jamming in its purest form.” -M2

Consumption

1995 —–

When the event was repeated in 1995, we began to push the envelope as the number of Santas climbed up to 100. The evening started with a Santa vs kids snowball fight at an outdoor skating rink. Then Santa went up to the top floor of the Emporium department store, where the store had setup a children’s playland, complete with a small ferris wheel to draw shoppers in. We filled the tiny ferris wheel with rowdy Santas until security showed up. Then, streaming into nearby Macys department store, a hundred Santas packed the escalators chanting “Charge it!” The Santas moved quickly thru downtown until the police finally arrived when a mob of Santas stopped to hang Santa from a Market Street lamppost.

(photo by Scott Beal)

The evening ended when Santa crashed the San Francisco Chronicle Christmas party held at the Legion of Honor. The toll that night was 3 Santas arrested.

Santa down!

1996 —–

In 1996, we took SantaCon to Portland. The local authorities had already been alerted and Santa had a police escort everywhere he went. When Santa arrived at the shopping mall, it was very surreal to see a line of riot squad police in full gear blocking the entrance.

The 1996 SantaCon event is chronicled in this 40-minute documentary video by Scott Beale: “You’d Better Watch Out”

It was also in 1996 that I created the first Twisted Toy Workshop, an idea that spread with the early SantaCon events. We would cut up scores of thrift-store toys and re-assemble them in weird forms with hot melt glue. Then we put them in boxes and gift-wraped them with pages from old Playboy magazines. These gifts were handed out to adults that Santa encountered along the SantaCon route. I always kept a few unwrapped unmodified toys in my bag, in case I encountered any actual kids during our rampage. One time, I was surrounded by three policemen as they carefully watched while I pulled the ‘safe’ toys out of my bag and handed them to several excited children.

1997 —

In 1997, SantaCon grew significantly when more than 300 Cacophony Society members from San Francisco, Portland and Seattle converged on Los Angeles. This monumental event was documented by Bikini Magazine: Social Distortion

Santa M2 & Santa Blazenhoff shopping for stocking stuffers.

1998 —

By 1998, SantaCons were held in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and New York City. The next year, Seattle was added to the list. After that, SantaCon spread rapidly across the US and to other countries. It was beyond our control, but the event continued to erode the moral character that America knew as good ol’ Saint Nick.

WTF?

Santa’s little helpers.

But as SantaCon spread, it began to take on new significance as a celebratory social gathering.

SantaCon in LA 2002 was truly magical. It combined anarchy, making people smile, patriotism. Starting in the morning, with elves vs Santa snowball fights, smiling and waving at people all day, visiting the Scientology headquarters and filling it with Santas, where Santas changed the white board signs. Those were festive all-day events.

Three buses full of Santas made numerous stops in the city of angels, including Scientology’s Winter Wonderland, were Santa Nonymous climbed on top of a bus with a bullhorn and held this sermon:  “We have a dream! Our dream is to take Santa back. You shouldn’t just accept the Santa you were given. He is a figure invented to control and scare you. There is no one Santa flying around the North Pole… we are ALL Santa!” -Santa Nonymous

In 2004, SantaCon was observed at McMurdo Station in Antarctica: Santa Sandwich in Antarctica. Santa Sandwich in Antarctica.

Santa Sandwich in Antarctica.

In 2008, I pushed SantaCon into the virtual world of Second Life. There were a dozen Santas hitting the populated hangouts. Santa was running a drunken avatar script with snow effects.

Santa M2 in the virtual world SantaCon, 2008.

By the year 2014, the Red Tide had claimed more than 350 cities and 49 countries. It has grown and morphed and devolved and evolved way beyond it’s original roots and intentions.

Grand Central Station

Santa has gone from pretending to be drunk to being drunk. We have succeeded in destroying the old image of Santa even while SantaCon itself has been commercialized.

A scene from the 2012 Reno Santa Crawl in downtown Reno, NV on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. (Photo by Kevin Clifford)

But there is a greater cultural phenomena evolving here. SantaCon has become a mainstream event with its own unique meaning. It’s one of the best examples of the Optimal Distinctive​ness Theory: the struggle for social distinction. Within the cohesive oneness of the Red Tide, there are great displays of individuality.

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. (photo by Pixietart)

(photo by John Curly)

I’ll just put these here.

And yet, we are all Santa!

Candy cane?

“I love meeting new people and drinking in the middle of the day, it gets crazy in the best way. I’m just hoping to survive the day with all of my Santa compatriots. That’s the spirit of SantaCon.”

Santa wedding crash. (photo by Lane Hartwell)

In my closet, I have a costume box labeled ‘Bad Santa’ but I haven’t done SantaCon for many years.

This year I decided to do SantaCon again, but with a new outfit. This year I returned as Krampus.

Krampus will get to you.

On December 25th, 2015, Pope Francis denounced consumerism and extravagance. What demon have we unleashed here? I believe that SantaCon is an indicator of the shift from a consumption economy to an experience economy. I believe in Santa.

“Don’t fuck with Santa, he has crazy old man Strength.” –Simon Gold

Rider on a Black Horse

Tags

cowboy, Gerlach, horse

 

 

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a horse in the town of Gerlach. Not more than half a dozen in the past 10 years and those were on the outskirts of town, along 34.

The Deep Hole Ranch was owned by Louis Gerlach

There used to be a lot more cattle ranching in the Black Rock basin surrounding the town of Gerlach, that was before the giant water-hungry farming operations came in and, over the last four decades, managed to drop the water table 50 feet.

 

A few years ago, I got to view one of the locals old 8mm home-movies of the Gerlach rodeos that used to take place during the early 1950s.

Gerlach in the 1950s

You can still find the remains of the rodeo corral on the south side of the railroad tracks, across from where the water tower is. Back then, there were two water towers and Main street was just a gravel road, which continued to be gravel all the way to Wadsworth. Main Street was finally paved in 1963.

During the era of big cattle ranches, there were lots of horses and lots of cowboys and even more bars in the town of Gerlach. In 1950, you could still find hitching posts in front of the bars and it was not unusual for a drunken cowboy to ride his horse into the bar and demand another drink, with exception of maybe the Longhorn Saloon, where Bruno worked as a bartender and didn’t put up with such foolishness. That was a few years before he bought the bar and changed the name to Brunos.

Nowadays, you might occasionally find a few cowboys who drop into Gerlach for a drink, but they arrive in pickup trucks, so you can imagine my amazement one late afternoon a couple weeks after the 2014 burn, when I’m walking down Main Street and I see this black horse tied to a utility pole down by the railroad tracks near the old train station. What’s more, a few paces from the horse, I could see a western saddle with a bedroll slung over the handrail by the station.

On rare occasions, someone might ride a horse thru Gerlach, but nobody ‘parks’ a horse in Gerlach anymore. My curiosity peaked, I walked down the embankment and strolled over towards this black horse. I know a little bit about horses, having grown up in Texas and now have fond memories as a teenager out at my grandfathers farm during the summer, where I would go out to the pasture, grab the mane of one of the horses, launch myself onto its back and then have it lurch forward at full gallop… no saddle, no reins, no shoes, no shirt. I remember the oneness that we were in that moment and the soft jolt of each hoof and the wind and the smell of horse.

As I closed the gap between me and this dark creature, it was apparent that this magnificent beast was one of the finest examples of horseflesh that I had ever seen. It was a young stud, about 8 years old with a long, silky mane, a small white dot on the forehead and eyes as black as coal. As I walked slowly towards him, his ears perked forward, and with a look of fearless curiosity, he took a step towards me, as much as his tether would allow.

It was then I noticed the small, open bag of oats that had been carefully placed out of his reach by his now absentee rider. I scooped up a small handful and thrust out my hand, palm up, under his nose and he nibbled away delightfully. I did a 360 looking around for the owner, realizing I had probably done the equivalent of leaning on a strangers pickup truck without first asking.

I really wanted to know the story behind this apparent anachronism, so I set out to find the cowboy who rode this black horse into town. In all the years of coming to Gerlach, the one thing I’ve learned is what everyone does when they first hit town: stop at Brunos. So I made a beeline over there.

I opened the door of Brunos, stepped inside the bar and scanned around for anything that seemed out of place. I looked over a line of patrons at the bar to my right and at the mostly empty tables to my left. Finally I noticed an odd and solitary figure sitting in a chair, alone at the very back wall. My brain immediately registered: Amish!

As I walked directly towards him, I noted the key Amish indicators; straw hat with a flat brim, wide suspenders and boots with laces. He seemed to be about 30 years in age. When the distance closed, I noted some irregularities; his jet-black hair spilling past his collar was a little too long for Amish, his red suspenders were attached to his pants, not with buttons, but the suspender loops were tied to the belt loops of his jeans with strips of rawhide. I stopped at a polite distance as he tilted his head back and our eyes met. His eyes were Asian!

I realized that I had stumbled across some kind of hybrid western buckaroo. Now there is quite a bit of difference between a southwestern cowboy and a buckaroo. A buckaroo is derived from the Spanish vaquero horsemen and are indigenous to the Great Basin and Central California region. Buckaroos are what you call real cowboys in Nevada.

I introduced myself and told him that I assumed that the black horse was his and that I wanted to know what his story was. He said that his name was Steve Ikeda. His father was Japanese and his mother was French. His great grandparents were interred at Manzanar during WWII and almost lost their family farm, but an American neighbor worked their farm growing fruit and vegetables to pay the mortgage until they got out after the war. Steve grew up near Sacramento and worked cows and horses for a living. The black horse was part of a small herd that ran wild on a neglected 75-acre ranch. The horse was given to him by the ranch owner, but he had to rope it and break it, which he did just a few months ago. Recently, he had been offered a job on a ranch near Winnemucca, so he was now riding his horse from Sacramento to Winnemucca, a distance of about 300 miles. He was making a brief stop in Gerlach and then riding on to Frog Pond, where he was going to spend the night. I’m thinking just wow, this guy is the real thing.

I wished him well on his journey and walked out of the bar. The next morning, I noticed hoof prints in the yard next to the Gerlach Burning Man office. Apparently he rode into the yard, got water from the faucet and left for Frog Pond. I did some research a couple weeks later and discovered that the Ikeda family grew and prospered after the war. In 1970 they opened a fruit stand near Sacramento. In the 1980s they begin making pies from the fruit that grew in their orchards. Now I like to stop at Ikeda’s Country Market just off I-80 in Auburn, CA. Probably the best pies I’ve ever tasted.

And this was on the playa that year:

“Rustang Sally” by Mutoid Waste Company, BurningMan 2014