The annual, abominable snowman of a pub crawl known as Santacon returns Saturday, and here’s how you better watch out for the damned thing, or else Santa yourself up and ride the tide of Yule.

Red Alert! Consider yourself warned that Santacon returns with bells on this Saturday, December 9, bringing drunken fools in Santa costumes getting black-out drunk during the daytime all over the streets of San Francisco with their unpermitted, unsanctioned meetup and pub crawl. It’s SF’s 28th annual iteration of the Christmas cosplay bacchanal that dates back to 1994 — the era of its early Cacophony Society days when it was also colloquially known as Santarchy — and it has since spread to dozens of other cities worldwide.

You will either think that Santacon used to be cool but jumped the shark more than a decade ago and turned into a drunken disgrace, or that it is still absolutely the most glorious pub crawl on the whole calendar. Your feelings on this probably depend on your age.

Santacon SF 2023 starts at Union Square at 12 noon Saturday, and then goes awry to various SF neighborhoods that have lots of bars.

HOW TO AVOID SANTACON

The best way to avoid Santacon is to just stay home! But if you must go out, you’ll want to avoid Union Square for sure, and you’ll likely also be seeing red in Polk Gulch, the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, and North Beach. The Marina may also be highly infested with Santas reeking of Axe body spray.

Santacon’s horrible reputation is richly deserved. The deplorable Santas have become known for leaving a stream of broken bottles, vomit, and urine behind them, and many bars have banned Santacon revelers. The nadir of Santacon may have come in the early 2010s, when Eater SF published their handy “NO SANTAS: Go back to the North Pole” signage for establishments to post in 2012. The original organizers also declared Santacon dead in 2014. That came on the heels of one frustrated New York resident penning the angry 2013 New York Times op-ed begging city officials to “Bring Drunken Santas Under Control.”

Yet, still, a new generation of elves has grown into the outfit and taken over the informal organizing of the apparently unkillable Santacon. And since San Francisco is still a town that loves to day-drink like no other, especially when costumes are involved, this thing has taken on a life of its own well beyond those more modest early years.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN SANTACON

Mamacita… Dónde Esta Santacon?

As mentioned above, Santacon starts at 12 noon at Union Square. Participants are asked to bring an unwrapped toy to donate to Santacon’s toy drive. After the Union Square meetup, the flash mob of Santas will rooty-toot-toot and rummy-tum-tum all over town in ways impossible to predict, but likely migrating towards neighborhoods with plenty of bars.

NOTE: Do not buy tickets to Santacon! It’s a free event! For the third year in a row, some shysters are trying to market Santacon as something you have to pay for, and their execrable marketing is seen above. This year they’re charging between $29.99-$49.99 for something you do not have to pay to participate in (oh, but they’re also offering a “FREE Exclusive NFT”!). Nothing but a lump of coal and maybe an NFT for them!

Santacon SF 2023 is Saturday, December 9, starting at 12 noon Union Square, and then debauching about the city.

Related: Rival ‘Sexy’ SantaCon Angers Traditional SantaCon with $20 Wristband Fee, Cheesecake Advertising [SFist]

Image via Facebook

If you want to mark yourself “Safe From SantaCon,” you’ll want to avoid the bars on Saturday, and once again, some hucksters are out pushing $30 tickets to this event that is actually free and completely unorganized.  

The naughty list will surely grow by magnitudes on Saturday, as the “bearded Bay To Breakers” SantaCon is Saturday, December 10, starting at 12 noon at Union Square, and then spawning soggy, shitfaced Santas in every direction all over town until the last one is thrown out of whatever bar they settle into. Consider yourself warned!

SFist broke the story last year that a rival “Sexy” SantaCon was charging $20 to attend this event, which we should clarify is free to attend and always has been. Did those shysters learn their lesson? Heck no! In fact, they’ve upped it to $30.

A website called SanFranciscoSantaCon.com is billing “Nationwide Sexiest Santas” (????) and has a ticket page, where tickets are $29.99. While there are more affordable ticket tiers, these are currently all listed as “Sold Out!” Did people actually fall for this? Or are these hucksters just creating the illusion that there was tremendous demand for this scammy deal?

And I hate to rain on your parade of horribles, but it’s looking like rain on SantaCon Saturday, according to SFGate. “Between Friday evening and 10 a.m. Saturday, the city is predicted to receive a quarter inch of rain,” per SFGate. “Another 0.75 inch of rain is forecast to dump between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., the height of the SantaCon party,”

If you do decide to brave this thing, remember that it’s not just a puke-and-cry pub crawl, it’s also a charitable toy drive. On the official event page, organizer Tom DiBell says “Please bring a new, unwrapped toy for the San Francisco Fire Department Toy Drive!!!”

The abominable snowman known as SantaCon did regrettably originate here in San Francisco. It dates back to 1994, first  organized by the anarchist-prankster collective called the Cacophony Society. It grew in size, and to cities across the world. The original organizers grew dissatisfied with the increasingly large crowds’ loutish behaviors, and even declared SantaCon dead in 2014. But the new organizers have taken up the Santa mantle, and I suppose this event will appeal to some of you.

But people, do not pay $30! This a free event, for Baby Jesus’s sakes.

Related: Bars To Avoid Like The Plague During Santacon On Saturday Because It's The Actual Plague [SFist]

Image: (Getty Images) Annual SantaCon (Santa Claus Convention) in San Francisco. SantaCon is a spontaneous mass gathering of people dressed in Santa Claus costumes parading publicly on streets and in bars in cities around the world. The focus is on spontaneity and creativity, while having a good time and spreading cheer and goodwill. The tradition was started in 1994 in San Francisco by the Suicide Club (at the time it was called 'Santarchy'). It was later adopted by the Cacophony Society as SantaCon. Other keywords: flash mob, event, costumes, street performance, red, Christmas spirit, crowd, group, many people.

The underground competitive drinking contest known as the Beer Mile had a milestone event on Treasure Island Saturday, with the Beer Mile World Classic bringing the drinking game's world record holders together for their first-ever head-to-head competition on the same track. SFist was on the scene, and even competed (poorly) in this mile-long race in which runners must chug an entire 12-ounce beer each quarter mile. “This is the Beer Mile of the century,” race co-producer Nick MacFalls told SFist before the race. “We have seven of the top ten fastest [Beer Milers] ever. We have the last four world record holders. We have three of the four guys to break five minutes.”

Even with all of the elite runners flown in from around the world, more than 300 regular boozebags like me also ran in the Beer Mile amateur heats. Saturday’s racers left it all on the track, often including the content of our stomachs.

Beer Milers refer to vomiting as a “reversal of fortune”, and cookie-tossers are forced to run a penalty lap. The first retch of the day was committed by Bushbaby (above left) who did indeed run the race in a penguin pajama onesie. “I was basically just glad that I could open the field for everyone else to puke afterwards and feel comfortable about doing that,” Bushbaby told SFist.

Drinking four beers while sprinting a mile proved far more difficult than many of the runners had anticipated. “I’m a runner, so why not have four beers while I run?” competitor Jessica “Squibber” Otero told SFist after her race. When I asked Squibber her time, her friend informed us that it took her twenty minutes. “Bullshit! Twenty minutes?”, she protested.

“It was pretty bad, baby,” her friend said.

Image: Joe Kukura

My Beer Mile effort was pretty bad, too — it took me 10:34 and I lost to a guy who was juggling rubber balls the entire mile. But I held my puke until after I crossed the finish line, so I was not assessed the penalty lap. “Go feed the fish, Fat Elvis!” race announcer Josh Muxon taunted me as I staggered to relieve my stomach into the bay.

But the elite men’s and women’s fields offered outstanding Beer Mile performances, and the videos below show how the pros do it. “We’ve got the best Beer Milers in the world puking it out,” said elite men’s racer James Nielsen (USA), the first runner ever to do a Beer Mile in under five minutes. “Everyone is in peak running shape and peak drinking shape.”

A Beer Mile is the most hilariously slow-starting race you’ve ever seen. Runners must pound the contents of the whole 12-ounce beer before beginning their run. Here we see the opening gun of Saturday’s elite men’s race, with the runners’ short-shorts reflecting their nations of origin.

With each quarter-mile lap, racers must fight the urge to puke and chug yet another beer. Just look at the form of Lewis Kent (CAN), who finishes his third lap/beer and still shows flawless chugging technique. Not so for former world record holder Josh Harris (AUS), who loses his lunch and the race along with it with a reversal of fortune at the :31 mark.

The boozy Canadian Kent did not break his world record time of 4:55, but he still won the inaugural Beer Mile World Classic with a 5:07. “A lot of guys can set world records, but they can’t win at world champs,” Kent said after the race. “I didn’t want that to my name. So I proved I’m the best in the world right now.”

The women’s elite heat, featuring Bay Area track stars Lyndsay Harper (Berkeley) and Tori Tyler (Los Altos), was won by Caitlin Judd (Charleston, S.C.) with a 6:48 time.

But the real prize should have been awarded to Fred Carter, who spent his afternoon tending to the vomit buckets situated by the track’s beer chugging station. “It sucks. Don’t stand behind the bucket,” Carter told me, just before the men’s elite race. “So far we’ve had about ten [vomiters] which is not bad. More men than women.”

“It’s usually just foam,” MacFalls insisted.

MacFalls and the other Beer Mile organizers should be proud of an event well done, considering the challenges of getting the city to OK a drunken puke race. “The permitting process was very difficult,” MacFalls told SFist. “We had a lot of rejections.”

The same could be said for the runners’ stomachs at Saturday’s race.

"It should be called Outside Craziness," beams Stanley Roberts, jewel in the KRON 4 News crown, reporting on the festivities and tomfoolery happening outside Outside Lands.

Roberts found drunks, jaywalkers, angry festival goers screaming into their phones. Nothing horrific, really; infractions we come across regularly on any given gameday in SOMA. But still, a fun watch.

Check it:

[via SFW]

As part of their ongoing efforts to save us the trouble of stepping over drunks on the sidewalk, San Francisco Police plan to implement a new policy that will lock up the city's most pickled residents while they have a chance to dry out.

Under the new Serial Inebriate Program (or "SIP," get it?) anyone cited for drunk in public five times in a month will receive a misdemeanor charge — a heftier charge than the infraction and court summons than drunks currently get and routinely piss away. The misdemeanor charge means drunkards will go to lockup until they can either post bail or get a jury trial, which can take up to thirty days. They will also have the option to enter a residential treatment facility.

As C. W. Nevius, the Chronicle's resident Sixth Street watchdog, reports Chief Greg Suhr expects the SIP program to be up and running by May 1st of this year. Meanwhile, Mayor Lee and Homeless Czar Director of HOPE Bevan Dufty are both excited by the idea — Lee because he's trying to clean up the city and Dufty because he's still looking for an excuse to try out those wet houses where homeless drunks can partake in peace.

Likewise, District Attorney Gascón is also on board, but he expressed some reservations about clogging up the courts with too many jury trials. Down in San Diego, where they've been running a program like this since 2000, a police spokesman said it actually led to fewer cases going to a jury once offenders figured out the police weren't messing around.

[Chron]

A pregnant woman who was arrested in Santa Cruz for being publicly intoxicated was about to be released from jail Monday when she went into labor. And she ended up having the baby right there in the jail lobby.

The 29-year-old Clearlake woman was arrested Sunday and police initially refused to book her, sending her to the hospital for evaluation first. She returned to the jail, sobered up, and was being released Monday when she gave birth to a baby girl who was two to three months premature. The infant had to be resuscitated by jail staff before an ambulance arrived.

Mother and daughter were taken to the hospital for observation, and Child Protective Services was informed of the situation.

[CBS]

Back in 2010 we first heard about the push to open a 'wet house' in San Francisco, modeled on a similar one in Seattle, in which homeless, chronic drunks can live in peace and drink without the obligation of seeking treatment, and while being monitored by staff. Dufty first took a trip to Seattle's 1811 Eastlake two years ago with then mayor Gavin Newsom, where the program has successfully saved taxpayers millions by keeping these alcoholics off the streets and preventing them from being a drain on ambulance services and the like.

As the Chron point out in a piece about Dufty's latest, third trip to Seattle — on which he took a contingent of S.F. folk including people from the Hotel Council, the SFPD, and the Coalition on Homelessness — our city already allows drinking and drug use in residents' rooms in certain supportive housing facilities, but those residents' drinking isn't monitored by staff. A so-called 'wet house' would permit drinking in common areas, and even allow staff to go on booze runs, but only using the residents' own money. Advocates for such programs say that these alcoholics are more likely to seek treatment once they've been off the streets for a while, and that in any event, existing social services don't seem to be helping most of these people.

It was said that in 2009, 225 of San Francisco's street drunks accounted for 2,000 of that year's ambulance calls, for which taxpayers footed the bill. And these drunks account for some $13 million annually in enforcement of alcohol-related crime, care, and recovery services.

A proposal for a 'wet house' in S.F. is not likely to see the light of day until 2013, and where it would be located is still anyone's guess.

[Chron]

Previously: S.F. Considers a 'Wet House' Where Homeless Alcoholics Can Live and Drink In Peace

A soon-to-be appointed San Francisco Archbishop risked the lives of others when he decided to take to the road while blotto. Dreamy-eyed Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone was arrested on Saturday at 12:26 a.m. after being stopped by police. He was booked on a misdemeanor charge and posted bail.

Cordileone, as CBS 5 reports, was a vocal supporter of the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage. In addition to anti-civil rights initiatives, Cordileone, 56, is also an illogical outspoken opponent of both abortion and birth control. However, he's also all about breaking down stereotypes too. "I've always believed that when people get to know each other, that breaks down stereotypes, prejudices, prejudgments, when people get to know each other on a human level," he explained to KCBS.

He was set to be initiated as Archbishop on Oct. 4, the feast day for St. Francis of Assisi. Cordileone was ordained as a bishop in 2002, after the late Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of San Diego.

No word yet on how he will atone for driving under the influence.

We should also point out that some have associated the Most Holy Redeemer brouhaha— i.e., the Castro Catholic church at the center of the the drag queen controversy—with Cordileone coming to San Francisco. However, the Archdiocese claims the boozy anti-gay man of God has had nothing to do with it since he has yet to take office.

Happy Earth Day, everybody! Just when we thought our faith in the drunkards had been restored, we spotted this disaster area left behind after throngs of Marina District revelers took their overconsumption outdoors yesterday afternoon. After a brief stop at the Marina Dateway, where the neighborhood grocery store was experiencing a run on domestic beer and ladies were overheard discussing the caloric content of various vodkas, we found this scene on the grass at Fort Mason around 7 p.m. Saturday evening.

What looked something like this during the afternoon, by sunset looked like a good place to catch Hepatitis. That's also when the seagulls started swooping in, probably looking for beer can rings to choke themselves to death with. (Because of how disappointed in humanity they were.)

Not to get all hippie-preachy or anything, but this is kind of an offensive amount of trash, right? Do normal and reasonable human beings not look at that mess and say, "...maybe we ought to like, I don't know? Take some of this trash with us? To a trash can?" or "Maybe we should bring that coffee table back home?" We've seen our share of litter-y days in Dolores Park and some embarrassing trash pileups in Golden Gate Park, but leaving actual pieces of living room furniture is a whole new level of prickish park use.

"Those trash picker guys are going to be stoked about this!" was one justification we heard for the mess. We tried to get someone from the neighborhood recycling center on the phone to settle that bet, but they are unfortunately not open on Sundays, so we'll have to follow up on that later.

Anyhow, much of the mess was still around this morning, even after the recyclers had picked it over. Which is disheartening in that "this is why we can't have nice things" sort of way. Enjoying scenic vistas around every corner is one of the nicest parts about living in San Francisco. And Fort Mason has one hell of a Bridge view, so why would you just throw a piece of garbage in front of that, you know?

Anyhow, in the interest of fairness, if anyone took any similar photos in Dolores Park or any other public park this weekend, please do share. We'd love to find out which park has San Francisco's messiest crowd.

Note: Misson Local has a look at the state of Dolores Park this morning. The Mission looks like it had its own share of litterbugs this weekend, but considering the huge crowds we saw at Dolores Park yesterday afternoon, we're still calling this one for the Marina.

UPDATE (April 24): Fox Nation picked up the trashy item, using it to fabricate an entire story to blame green activists.

UPDATE II: Actual Earth Day activists partying on Earth Day in San Francisco.

Jardinière, Hayes Valley's white-hot spot for perfect food and all-around exquisiteness, is having another one of their local guest bartender series. Tonight they will feature Frommer’s Travel Guides editors. David Lytle (whose photos regularly appear on SFist) will be serving up the rye based The Rytle while newly relocated SF resident Stephen Bassman will mix the bourbon based Manhattan Transfer. Each Manhattans will sell for $9.00 with all proceeds going to Family Builders, a local organization that works to place foster children in permanent loving homes. (Proceeds going to a worthwhile cause? Hippies.)

Traci Des Jardins will also create a special pastrami slider to pair with the drinks, which will also sell for $9.00. Be there or be a meanie who doesn't like brown liquor.

The merriment run from 6 - 8 p.m. at Jardinière, 300 Grove (at Franklin), 415-861-5555.

When last we checked in at the with the problematic Jack in the Box in the Richmond, the twofer taco joint had lost it's 24-hour privileges after a drunken altercation at the restaurant ended in an intentional hit-run incident nearby. The neighbors protested, as they do, but the franchisee went right ahead and asked the Entertainment Commission to reinstate their permit to sling cheeseburgers after 2 a.m. Finally, after putting it to a vote at last night's meeting, the Entertainment Commission did just that.

The commission actually went against the neighbors on this one — the petition that was going around got some 1,500 signatures and even two bar owners in the area supported nixing after hours eats in the neighborhood. But as commissioner Audrey Joseph smartly put it: "It’s very important that we have food [available late at night]; it helps people not be as drunk."

There are a few conditions to the new permit, of course. As Richmond SF reports, the restaurant will have to close between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m., because, really, nothing good happens after 4 a.m.

[RichmondSF
[SFEx]

Critically acclaimed bon vivant Jay Barmann will be mixing drinks behind the bar at Jardiniere tomorrow, November 1 from 6-8pm. Join him, won't you? The Grub Street editor (and fellow SFister!) is just the latest local notable to take part in Traci Des Jardins' guest bartending series.

"Hey, Jay, just what in the hell can one expect tomorrow night at Jardiniere during your guest stint," we asked. "Details, brother. Details."

"One can expect a stiff gin cocktail and a witty quip. $1.50 surcharge for witty quip," Barmann explains.

He will also serve up a special one-off cocktail called Barmann's Choice, which, according to Grub is "a drink similar to a white negroni with gin, aperol, and lemon." Delightful. Special bacon and chicken liver sliders will accompany the liver-eroding merriment. Both treats will run you $9. A bargain.

All proceeds will benefit California Shakespeare Theater and their arts education programs.

Jardiniere, 300 Grove (at Franklin), 415-861-5555

Mission / Shooting: Police today increased efforts to learn more about the daylight killing of 18 year-old Kevin Hall, who was shot near the intersection of Alemany Boulevard and Crescent Avenue on August 25. [Examiner]

South of Market / Robbery: A woman complained to police that she was robbed while attempting to purchase drugs near 6th and Market Streets, proving that no one, not even your drug dealer, can be trusted these days.
[Examiner]

Panhandle / Assault: A North of Panhandle/Western Addition woman was beaten as she photographed two women who had been over-served. Seems the 50 year-old woman grew tired of people puking on her porch, and was looking for photographic retribution, but was attacked by friends of the women. As the SF Weekly quotes SFPD Captain Denis O'Leary , "It was an attempted robbery, but they were more trying to protect the honor of these two young ladies."
[SF Weekly]