Michele Michele got the idea for this annual gathering at a San Francisco thrift store in 1999. “I saw a rack of used wedding dresses and realized how often the dream of an ideal marriage had failed and how so much of this dream has been fabricated in order to fuel the ever-increasing consumption of new products. I thought it would be funny to take the primary symbol of this sacred institution and twist it around, much like what the Cacophony Society did with the Santa Rampage. This is classic Situationist ‘Detournament’, the hijacking of a message.”
Brides of March 2020
Grab a wedding dress and join the Brides as we parade through the heart of San Francisco, strolling through Union Square, shopping at fancy stores and drinking in local bars. All you need for this event is a white wedding dress, the more elaborate, the better. Check your local thrift store for suitable attire.
2:30 pm meeting place: Bar Fluxus, 18 Harlan Place, San Francisco.
WEAR A DRESS! Please. Its the Brides of March, not the Grooms of March. If you are a photographer, WEAR A DRESS. Please. We’re tired of you stealing our Juju without participating. The best PARKING is the nearby Sutter-Stockton Garage, with entrances on the 400 block of Stockton northbound and on the 500 block of Bush eastbound.
We’ll have a few rounds of drinks at the bars and wait for late arrivals. By 3:30 PM we’ll be suitably liquored up for a stroll around town, with stops at our favorite Formal Wear store, and diamond importer. From there, we’ll continue on Grant and turn onto Maiden Lane, Stopping for a photo op at the gates of Maiden Lane. Then we’ll race across the street to Union Square and gather around our edifice of desire, the monolith of John Dong Long. From there, we’ll proceed across the street to an exclusive department store for a fresh application of lipstick and makeup from the counter samples.
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 Distinctiveness 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
“Don’t fuck with Santa, he has crazy old man Strength.” –