When SF’s organizers disavowed SantaCon in 2014 due to the chaos it brought the city every Christmas, one of the event’s organizers in NYC leaned into the chaos by forming a charity — at first to appease officials and then later to allegedly collect and divert funds for personal use.

As SFist mentioned back in December, allegations had been circulating about Stefan Pildes, one of the original organizers of New York City’s SantaCon, who was suspected of funneling money that was meant for charitable causes into his own bank account while only donating a small fraction. Ticket sales and commissions paid by bars and restaurants reportedly brought SantaCon about $2.7 million in proceeds from 2019 through 2024 — all meant for charity, and federal prosecutors suspect Plides pocketed about half of it, according to the Chronicle.

Plides was arrested in Manhattan Wednesday and charged with federal wire fraud. Prosecutors say he used more than $1 million in donations meant for SantaCon to pay for expenses such as renovations to a lakefront New Jersey property, the lease on a Manhattan apartment, and an investment at a Costa Rica resort.

Gothamist has a rundown of the origins of SantaCon and how it spread from SF and Nevada to other cities. In 1990, the Cacophony Society’s John Law organized a Christmas-themed camp at one of the first Burning Man events in Nevada, prompting annual flash mobs in SF — then called Santarchy — in 1994. Plides and others brought it to NYC a few years later.

SantaCon’s turning point came in 2014, when SF organizers disavowed the event over mounting chaos — going so far as to stage a mock funeral — while NYC organizers, under Pildes, moved to contain it by forming the nonprofit Participatory Safety, Inc. at the NYPD’s urging.

Newer organizers Tom DiBell and Judi Henderson later reshaped the SF SantaCon into a more structured, charity-focused event, emphasizing toy drives and coordinated programming that gradually won back local bars after years of bans, per SFist.

In New York, as Gothamist reports, Participatory Safety positioned SantaCon as a charitable operation, bringing in money through $15 “Santa Badges,” bar commissions, and partnerships, with proceeds advertised as supporting local charities. But filings show a large share of revenue going to expenses tied to producing the event — staffing, permits, venues, and overhead — despite the nonprofit reporting little to no fundraising costs, a practice experts say can make its charitable output appear inflated.

The group also reported losses on cryptocurrency investments and directed both grant funding and operational spending toward Burning Man-related art projects.

“He took advantage of New Yorkers’ generous holiday spirit to finance his lifestyle through personal expenses, big and small,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in a statement. “No matter how you dress it up, fraud is fraud.  We are committed to protecting New Yorkers from those who exploit their enthusiasm and generosity.”

Ultimately, less than a fifth of the money raised through NYC’s SantaCon went to registered nonprofits between late 2014 and 2022.

Image: Bo Zaunders/Getty Images

A drunken tirade and ensuing scuffle involving a San Francisco woman and her boyfriend and what appears to be the entire staff of Hayes Valley restaurant-bar Hazie's, on Santacon Saturday, has now made it to TMZ.

We saw this story going around Monday of a woman being very drunkenly obnoxious to staff members and fellow patrons at Hazie's, apparently after she had been asked to leave. The whole thing turns ugly, with what appears to be one staff member pulling a judo move on the woman before she exits the bar, and then a half dozen people getting involved — including long-haired bartender Miguel Marchese, whose hair ends up getting involved in the melee.

As the woman is dragged out of the bar by several staff members and patrons, with the woman's drunk boyfriend also either trying to calm things down or making it all worse, she continues pulling Marchese's hair as someone yells at her repeatedly to "Let go!"

She only let go after Marchese tossed her cellphone down the street, she runs after it, and then Marchese sweeps her legs and she lands on her face. At this point she's crying and screaming at the boyfriend to "be a man," after which he starts shoving people again.

It's all dumb and ridiculous, but has enough of a dramatic arc to have landed on TikTok, and then Reddit, then the UK Daily Mail, and then SFGate, and now on TMZ.

SFist reached out to Marchese, who is the first staff member seen interacting with the woman on the video, and the person who posted the first video to TikTok, for details about how the whole conflict began, and he just said, "It's a long ass story."

But Marchese was probably tired of telling it after being contacted by so many outlets. As he told SFGate Monday, the couple had started out at a table in the restaurant around 9:30 pm Saturday, likely after a day of heavy drinking. "They were verbally abrasive with one of the servers, very harsh with her," Marchese says. "You know, just being difficult people."

When staff cut them off from ordering more booze, the woman apparently began throwing a fit, running into the kitchen and behind the bar to yell at staff.

The video begins after the woman claims the manager, or Marchese, had laid a hand on her — but Marchese says he had nearly lost his voice at that point in the evening, and was using his hands in a gesture of "calm down." The woman then attacks a staff member who was taking video of the whole thing.

Marchese identifies the first person who took the woman down as a coworker who was off the clock and sitting at the bar, and used a self-defense technique. But this only set the scuffle into high gear, and as Marchese helped to remove her from the establishment, he says she, "She’s kicking me all over and then she ends up wrapping my hair around her hand. She weaves it around her hand quite tightly, and she pulls on it for dear life. So that was quite a predicament to be stuck in."

It's also notable how the entire restaurant erupts in cheers after she gets removed.

Marchese told SFGate he didn't plan to press charges, and the SFPD wasn't aware of any police report being filed.

Update: The SFPD actually did show up on the scene, and the woman, later identified as Shireen Afkari, was arrested for public intoxication. It's unclear if the boyfriend was as well.

"This is the life of being a bartender," Marchese tells the site. "I’ve been a bartender for over eight years. I’ve been slapped, I’ve been degraded, I’ve been given homophobic slurs, I’ve been sexualized … when you work in service for a long time, it fortifies you into a really resilient person."

TMZ calls out the boyfriend's behavior as well, as toxic. And this viral video should do nothing but reinforce the general public's hatred of Santacon for fueling amateur hour drunken idiocy like this.

TMZ goes with the lede, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fight!"

Also, the memes are pretty great.

You better watch out, as Santacon is back on Saturday. But many SF bars are actually rolling out the red carpet to welcome the Santas, a pretty remarkable culture shift for this jolly old event that had gotten too blitzened.

The naughty list will surely grow larger on Saturday, as the “fat, bearded Bay To Breakers” known as SantaCon will draw an expected 12,000 red-nosed revelers. The flash mob of Santas will begin congregating in Union Square at 12 noon, and then rooty-toot-toot and rummy-tum-tum all over town in ways that are impossible to predict, but the red menace will likely migrate towards neighborhoods with plenty of bars.

Santacon’s horrible reputation has been richly deserved. Deplorable Santas have become known for leaving a stream of broken bottles, vomit, and urine behind them, and many bars have banned Santacon revelers. As the event spread nationwide, a frustrated New York resident penned an angry 2013 New York Times op-ed begging city officials to “Bring Drunken Santas Under Control.” But the nadir of Santacon may have have arrived in SF in 2012, when Eater SF published their handy “NO SANTAS: Go back to the North Pole” signage for establishments.

“There are still some bars that have that sign,” laughs current SF SantaCon organizer “Santa Tom” DiBell, a retired Marine who’d previously been a mall Santa for 20 years. Santa Tom took over organizing the SF SantaCon more than 10 years ago when he saw how it became defined by drunken and boorish behavior.

“Bars saw it as the bane of their existence. They hated Santas. They hated SantaCon and everything going along with it. And they wanted absolutely nothing to do with it,” Santa Tom told SFist this week. “Those voices from ten years ago are still haunting me. These are people who have told the city they would like us to go away.”

But San Francisco is still a town that loves to day-drink, especially when costumes are involved. And over those ten-plus years, Santa Tom has shepherded SantaCon from blood-alcohol poisoning life support to a most wonderful time of the year where bars are actually welcoming the Santas, and the Santas are coming to town hard for one of SF most worthy charitable causes.

Hark, how the heck did he do this?

“I had some experience with crowd control, I spent some time working for Bill Graham Presents,” Santa Tom explains to us. “Bill Graham was always big on how crowds should be handled. One of the ways, to quote him, was ‘Give them a center of attention, and the crowd will be much more manageable.’”

One of the ways Santa Tom changed the culture of SantaCon was to make Union Square a more focal gathering point, encouraging the Santas to delight (and not terrorize) families and children. But he also made Union Square the physical centerpiece of SantaCon’s partnership with the SF Firefighters Toy Program, for which SantaCon SF alone now brings in nearly 10,000 toys per year for Bay Area kids in need.

But the most remarkable change has been how the previously reviled SantaCon hoi polloi are now being specifically welcomed to nearly 100 bars and restaurants in town.

“It’s a huge amount of money that comes into the city one day every year,” Sata Tom says. “Some bars have told me unequivocally that SantaCon is the best day of the year for them. Bigger than New Year's Eve, bigger than Halloween. There’s no other event in the city that has people going out to bars and restaurants like SantaCon does.”

There is now an official SF SantaCon map that lists nearly 80 bars and restaurants that are very specifically rolling out the red carpet for the SantaCon riffraff. Obviously, these last ten years have seen the advent of the holiday-themed pop-up bars, which did not exist before, and are likelier to welcome people in garish Christmas attire. But the bottom line is money, and the unwashed Santas are now bringing in more revenue than trouble — unlike the rudderless SantaCons of Christmas past.

“No one really understands that like the bars that are welcoming the Santas,” according to Santa Tom. “The bars are welcoming the Santas in. And that’s a big change from what it was ten years ago when I first started on this thing.”

And what’s this? The Handlery Union Square Hotel is now a SantaCon sponsor? Yes they are, and they even call themselves “The official SantaCon Headquarters.”

“The Handlery has actually been working with the Fire Department and the Toy Drive for a number of years,” Santa Tom explains. “The Fire Department used to run [the toy drive] out of Lefty O’Doul’s.” (Lefty O’Doul’s, of course, is no longer available as a venue.)

Now SF SantaCon has numerous bars and venues as sponsors, but none of them give money, as SantaCon is a free event. The sponsors generally provide prizes and venue space for the day’s various SantaCon contests, like costume contests and photo contests.

But the biggest gift under the tree is now SantaCon SF’s contribution to the SF Firefighters Toy Program annual toy drive. In his his first year organizing SantaCon SF, Santa Tom managed to scare up 900 toys donated, without much real planning

“Here it is 11 years later, and last year we collected over 8,000, approaching 9,000 toys,” according to Santa Tom. “And the San Francisco Firefighters Toy Program run by the union local is absolutely ecstatic with SantaCon and the participants that are bringing toys to the event. We were told three years ago that we were the single largest donator of toys to the program. And that is a big deal.”

The abominable snowman known as SantaCon 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 behavior, and even declared SantaCon dead in 2014.

Yes, there are still some scattered flurries of bad behavior at SF SantaCon. And worse yet, there are still hucksters charging money to attend SantaCon, so will remind you that SantaCon SF is a free event and does not requeire paid admission or a wristband. Though still, some SEO-scamming bottom-feeders like SantaConSF.com, SanFranciscoSantaCon.com, and PubCrawls.com San Francisco SantaCon are trying to hawk $20-$35 wristbands to this event that is free. And those con artists are all in on the cheesecake advertising, like the above AI-generated image of Kimberly Guilfoyle in a hat five sizes too large.

It could be worse. In New York City, the official SantaCon NYC suggests a $17 donation for a wristband, claiming the money goes to charity. But a 2023 Gothamist investigation showed they were spending most of that money on Burning Man camps and failed crypto investments.  

Meanwhile, the original SF SantaCon is still free, and still going strong 31 years after its virgin birth. The event is making its peace in earth with the bars it used to trash, and is a top contributor to one of the holiday season’s greatest charitable causes in the SF Firefighters’ toy drive.

"That has become my focus over the last five years or so,” Santa Tom tells SFist. “And if a bunch of  drunk Santas can be the center of that drive, then by god, I’m going to agree to that.”

SantaConSF is Saturday, December 13 beginning at 12 noon in Union Square, and continues at various venues across town all day.

Related: Hold On to Your Hats: Santacon Rears Its Bearded Head Again Saturday [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

A new documentary details how Santacon evolved from a clever SF culture prank to a widely despised black-out-and-vomit nuisance event, and that feature documentary is streaming this weekend for $15.

SFGate broke the news locally last week that there was a feature-length Santacon documentary coming out, exploring the event’s evolution from its mid-1990s roots as a beloved annual counterculture prank to the modern-day version that is a a puke-and-cry pub crawl that should be avoided like the plague. The documentary is from acclaimed director Seth Porges, the filmmaker behind Class Action Park and How to Rob a Bank.

But the Santacon documentary was only playing at the film festival DOC NYC, some 3,000 miles away in New York City. So we couldn’t watch it.

Wait, it turns out we can watch it! The film festival DOC NYC is making a 48-hour rental of the Sanatacon documentary available for $15, so you can watch the SF origins of Santacon documentary from your Bay Area home, an entire continent away from NYC’s Village East theater where the film is actually screening.

From the looks of the trailer above, this film goes back to the 1994 San Francisco creation of what used to be called “Santarchy,” and was never originally intended as a pub crawl. It was a culture-jamming prank from a local group of jokers known as the Cacophony Society, who created flash mobs long before they were called “flash mobs.” One of these Santacon inventors, John Law, went on to co-found Burning Man, and it turns out that Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk was also a Santacon co-founder.

The film captures the infamous time when John Law hung himself with a modified noose while dressed as Santa from a pole on Market Street, plus other iconic SF Santacon moments from its original 1990s days. And somehow left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore shows up in this Santacon documentary too.

John Law and the original Santacon organizers disavowed the event and declared it dead in 2014, even staging a funeral for Santacon that year.

The focus of the documentary seems to look (from the trailer, at least) like it then switches to other Santacon events in Portland, LA, and most notoriously, New York City. That NYC event has become known as “America’s Most Hated Christmas Party,” and has frequently been dogged in the national media, as John Oliver does in the excellent Santacon takedown segment below.

“Santacon came onto my radar the way it came on to so many New Yorkers’ radars. I made the mistake of going outside on that day.” the film’s director Seth Porges said on a recent episode of the Comedy History podcast. “Inevitably, that nightclub that was cool stops being cool when everybody goes there.”

Buying the Santacon documentary streamer may be a little confusing if you are not familiar with film festival websites. On the Santacon DOC NYC page. You have to scroll down to the blue button that says “Stream.”

They’ll make you register and create an account with their film festival, which is kind of a pain. But then you can rent the movie for $15, and you get it for a 48-hour period once you first hit the Play button.

The film does not become available for streaming until 12 am on Friday, November 14 — i.e. midnight tonight.

Our headline for this article describes a “rise and fall” of Santacon, and both the rise and the fall definitely did happen. But Santacon may be rising again, in San Francisco at least.

Recent years’ iterations of SF Santacon have gone much better under new organizers Tom DiBell and Judi Henderson, who’ve emphasized the toy drive component and a Union Square dance party that draws thousands of Santas over the course of the day. The new leadership has stressed good behavior to the point that bars are welcoming Santacon back, which is quite the 180-degree turn from bars banning Santacon participants several years ago.

Yes, there is still some hooliganism at SF Santacon, and scammers are still trying to sell $20 wristbands to the free event, with some shameless cheesecake advertising. (Actually this year the wristbands are more like $25 with the service charge.)

As a reminder, Santacon is a free public event, and paid admission is not required.

Will the Santacon documentary delve into the scammers selling tickets to this free event? Or the cleaned-up resurgence of SF Santacon? Or any of the alleged financial improprieties of the NYC Santacon organization?

We don’t know yet, because the Santacon documentary does not start streaming until Friday, November 14, at midnight. It remains available as a rental for the duration of the DOC NYC festival, which runs through November 30.

Santacon is playing at the DOC NYC festival, and is available for streaming for $15. You can rent it here.

Related: Brace Yourself: SantaCon Has Expanded to Three Consecutive Days This Weekend [SFist]

Image: DOC NYC

A battalion of Santas successfully cheated BART’s new evasion-proof fare gates during this weekend’s SantaCon festivities, and a TikTok video capturing their gate-hopping exploits is going viral.

When BART’s new evasion-proof fare gates went up at the West Oakland station in late 2023, SFGate sent a correspondent to see if you could actually get through them without paying. They proved quite a challenge for a fare evader to penetrate, though over the months since, some have discovered a “piggybacking” method by which one can sneak through briskly after someone else tapped their Clipper Card.

But at this past weekend’s SantaCon revelry, a flock of ne’er-do-well Santas discovered that more than “one” can sneak through the gates using this method.

@mario0o0o0o0o0o New BART hack 😂 This has to be a world record 😭🎅🏿 #bart #sanfrancisco #santa #grinch ♬ It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas - Michael Bublé

This TikTok post has gained more than 250,000 views in the three days since it was posted. “New BART hack 😂 This has to be a world record 😭,” the original poster mario0o0o0o0o0o said. Indeed, more than a dozen Santas are able to illegally piggyback through the Civic Center BART station gates after one individual in a Grinch outfit taps their Clipper Card, all of the Santas hooting, hollering, and barking like dogs.

And as many have noted, it’s ironic that the Grinch is the one who actually paid, and all of the Santa Clauses skipped on paying fare.

Yet the Santas may have left some digital trail here. We notice that the Grinch is wearing a black hoodie over his green Grinch suit. That same Grinch in a black hoodie appears in other videos shot that day by the same videographer, including this one of a big Santas vs. the Grinch fake brawl staged on a BART train. Several of the Santas in those videos also appear to be the same Santas who sneaked in through the BART gates, and it seems this crew used SantaCon as an opportunity to shoot engagement-bait TikTok videos.

It remains to be seen whether BART police will follow up on this with much seriousness. But in terms of SantaCon crime, this is nowhere near as bad as the time that two Santas violently trashed the Pakistani restaurant Shalimar in 2018, or when a guy in a Santa suit robbed a bank during SantaCon in 2014.

Related: Madrone Art Bar Apologizes After Crazed 'Critic Santa' Bounced From Bar [SFist]

Image: mario0o0o0o0o0o via TikTok

You better watch out, as Saturday’s SantaCon has fattened up with additional new Friday and Sunday events, making SantaCon a three-day, weekend-long affair as SF’s new holiday pop-up bars are hosting expanded SantaCon events.

Saturday’s SantaCon will actually be the 30th anniversary version of the annual gathering of drunk people in Santa Claus costumes and their accompanying cosplay slutty elves. (Though it’s only the 29th SF Santacon, as the event was canceled because of COVID in 2020.)

KQED has an excellent retrospective of the first SantaCon in 1994, which was then known as “Santarchy” or “Cheap Suit Santas.” It was a culture-jammer prank by the Cacophony Society promoting anti-commercialism, or what Burning Man co-founder John Law said was a protest of the “middle-class hypocrisy” of contemporary Christmas celebrations.

But Red Alert, everybody! SF SantaCon has now evolved into a three-day pub crawl, and Santa’s sack will cover Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This egg nog-soaked, less athletic Bay to Breakers is not just one day anymore, but now a three-day weekend, largely thanks to those new holiday cocktail pop-up bars that have opened up for December.

SantaCon has certainly evolved for both the better and the worse over these 30 years. But one way it’s evolved for the better is that organizers say SF SantaCon is now the largest donor of toys to the San Francisco Firefighters Toy Program. SantaCon participants are asked to bring an unwrapped toy to donate at the main Union Square meeting place, and those toys will go to underprivileged, impoverished, and hospitalized kids so they too can be on the Nice list for the holidays.

“I’m not asking for money. I’m not asking for anything but toys for the kids,” current SantaCon organizer Tom DiBell tells SFist.

The normal Santacon proceedings and holly jolly pub crawling are still on for Saturday (though realize that rain is in the forecast). The toy drive booth will be at Union Square from 12 pm-5 pm, and there will be performances by Burlesque Band of San Francisco at 1 pm and the 40-member TempTime Carolers at 2 pm. Santas will of course scatter off and deck the halls at bars all over town, but there is the somewhat structured Santa Stroll Down Lombard Street 3:45 pm, of course at the crooked part of Lombard Street.

But the most wonderful/stumbling drunk time of the year now extends to Friday, December 13, and Sunday, December 15. The two extra days come courtesy of the new holiday pop-up cocktail bar Mistletoe, which has three locations this year.

And look at some of these prizes available at Friday’s SantaCon Costume Contest at the 580 Sutter Street location of Mistletoe! The costume contest is from 8 to 9 pm Friday night, and you can also win commemorative SantaCon coins, SantaCon pins, and tree ornaments. Prizes will be awarded in the categories of Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, Naughty Santa, Santa’s Helpers, and “Not Santa but Still Christmas.”

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On Sunday, Mistletoe's Marina location at 2030 Lombard Street will host a special SantaCon Sunday Drag Brunch, with live performances, and seatings at 12 noon and 2 pm. Sunday is also the day when the winners will be selected in the SantaCon Photo Contest, where winners get a $40 Macy’s gift card and a $40 Mistletoe gift card.

“When you take photos at SantaCon be sure [to] take one photo with the Macy’s logo visible,” contest organizers say. “Then post the photo on IG or FB with these 3 hashtags: #Macy’sUnionSquare, #SantaConSF2024, #MistletoeBar.”

It is well-known that these days, many SF bars ban SantaCon participants from even entering the premises. But the current crew of SF SantaCon organizers have rebuilt some of those bridges, and now even offer a SantaCon Mobile Map to direct the Saint Nicks to bars that not only tolerate, but actively welcome Santa Clauses coming to town.

While SantaCon started in San Francisco in 1994, by 2013 it had spread to more than 300 cities worldwide. And the results were not good, as drunken Santa babies turned the event into a toxic fruitcake of boorish behavior, public urination, and shitshow antics. Our former New York sister site Gothamist called for an end to SantaCon in 2011. The anti-SantaCon backlash was in full effect here in San Francisco, as in 2012, Eater SF published “No Santas” signs that bars posted in their windows. Most notoriously, two drunken Santas trashed the Polk Street restaurant Shalimar (and skipped on their tab) in 2018.

But by 2014, the official SF SantaCon organizers were so horrified at the abominable snowman their creation had become that they declared San Francisco SantaCon was dead.

That’s when Tom DiBell stepped in to take the reins of the sleigh. A former mall Santa Claus in Petaluma and a US marine veteran of the Vietnam War, DiBell took over for the same reasons that many of you absolutely hate SantaCon.

“I go back about 10 years,” DiBell tells SFist. “One year I went, and I was in a party mood. And I just saw a bunch of people milling around, and not really doing much of anything other than getting drunk, getting high.”

“I thought that maybe with a little help, this thing could be better,” he says. “I decided, I can collect toys.”

So DiBell took over organizing SantaCon and started encouraging all participants to bring one new unwrapped to donate to the SF Fire Department toy drive. The event pulled in 900 toys the first first year he did this, 1,500 toys the following year, and now brings in about 4,000 toys with each SF SantaCon.

“We became the single largest donator of toys to the SF Fire Department Toy Program,” DiBell tells us. Now the SF Fire Department provides the event with a pop-up tent, a throne for “Santa Tom” to sit on, and a fleet of firefighters collecting the toys.

Though as SFist reported in 2021, hucksters are trying to sell tickets to SantaCon, even though it is a completely free event. This year those hucksters have even jacked the price up to $40 for their “pub crawls” that are no different than normal SantaCon. They’ve also gummed up the works of SEO and Google searches by buying the domains SanFranciscoSantaCon.com and TheSantaCon.com, apparently hoping to dupe younger and newer people who might not realize that SantaCon is free.

DiBell takes this in stride. “Even the folks that have ridden our coat tails and started this pub crawl, I don’t have a problem with them being there,” he says. “Just as long as they don’t call themselves ‘the Official SantaCon.’”

And obviously, many San Franciscans see red when the Santas appear on their street or at their business, because SantaCon had developed a terrible reputation in previous years.

“Yes, there are bad actors,” DiBell explains. “There are going to be bad actors no matter where you go. Doesn't matter if it's Outside Lands, or Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, or any of the events that are held on Saint Patrick's Day. What I’ve been trying to do over the years is tone that back a little bit.”

“Eat food throughout the day. Drink a bottle of water after every two or three drinks,” he emphasizes. “If you see a child, give them a candy cane. Have some candy canes in your pocket so that you can give them to a child.

“Make it a SantaCon that’s a good SantaCon not only for you, but for those around you.”

Related: Hold On to Your Hats: Santacon Rears Its Bearded Head Again Saturday [SFist]

Image: Kevin Y via Yelp

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.

What’s worse than SantaCon? A copycat Santacon that’s stealing the idea and charging money to participate, with an advertising blitz that belongs on the naughty list.

SFist has traditionally had plenty of disdain for SantaCon, the annual Santa Claus-themed pub crawl that is indeed returning next weekend after last year’s COVID cancellation. But this particular SFist correspondent fondly recalls going through a jolly SantaCon phase in years past, before you could buy a Santa suit on Amazon, back when we would go to craft stores and meticulously hot-glue-gun together a whimsical Saint Nick Christmas outfit with all manner of creative yuletide. Because back then SantaCon was all about the community, man.

But even the contemporary SantaCon community is giving a lump of coal to a New York-based group called PubCrawls.com, who’ve started a knockoff SantaCon that’s charging $19.99 for a wristband, and advertising heavily with a highly heteronormative marketing campaign. That group is apparently throwing not one, but two knockoff SantaCons (this Saturday, December 4, and next Saturday, December 11). Their seemingly bot-written event text promises “VIP access” and “the best food and drink specials the bars have to offer during the holiday festivities.”

We see their flyer above, and don’t even get me started on the improper use of apostrophes. You’ll notice a lack of dates, time, location, or any additional context other than the SantaCon name and a conventionally attractive white woman. That’s because this out-of-town organization PubCrawls.com is throwing these copycat SantaCons in at least a dozen different cities nationwide, many of which already have established SantaCons (they also throw a ton of other pub crawls like Ugly Sweater Pub Crawls and Cinco de Mayo Pub Crawls).

This organization has additionally gummed up works on the Google/SEO front, buying up the domains SanFranciscoSantaCon.com and TheSantaCon.com, probably in hopes of scrooging money out of newbies who do not realize that the real SantaCon does not charge admission or sell wristbands.  

SFist reached out to PubCrawls.com for comment, but we did not hear back.

The official SantaCon, for whatever faults it may have, has always been a free event. The copycat SantaCon has been charging money for their “VIP pub crawl” version since at least 2018, and the legitimate SantaCon organizers have been seeing red for years.

“They were calling their events ‘The Original SantaCon,’” says Tom DiBell, who's taken on the mantle of organizer and spokesperson for San Francisco SantaCon. "I had to say ‘Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Your event is not the original SantaCon. The original Santacon goes back now 26 years to an event that was held here in San Francisco."

"I said, 'You had nothing to do with it, don’t you ever advertise that you were the original. You weren’t,'" DiBell tells SFist. "So they stopped doing that. Now they’re just saying that they’re SantaCon."

Of course, DiBell himself is not the original SantaCon organizer. SantaCon goes back to 1994, and was organized by an anarchist-prankster collective with OG Burning Man cred called the Cacophony Society. It grew in size, and is now held in cities across the world. But the original organizers distanced themselves from the event as it acquired a reputation for boorish behavior and drunken debauchery, and even declared SantaCon dead in 2014. DiBell then took up coordinating the event and being its unofficial spokesperson, because clearly there's still some demand for the event.

“The ones that started this originally were aging hippies,” DiBell tells us. “When they started it, it was like a page out of the Anarchist’s Handbook.”

So the current SantaCon is not really the original SantaCon either, but at least stays true to its loose roots, and has never been a for-profit event.

“All SantaCons are free,” DiBell says. “There are those that collect money for a specific charity. In my case, I ask everybody to bring a new unwrapped toy [for a toy drive]. But that’s it. I don’t charge Dime One.”

Meanwhile, this Saturday’s paid iteration is $19.99 a ticket and starts (where else?) in the Marina, and next Saturday’s is $14.99 a ticket and also starts in the Marina. The promotion below gives you, well, a sense of what to expect.

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“Their advertising has been a little heavy-handed,” DiBell says. “These folks are out there, be aware of them. If you want to spend your money, go right ahead. I’m not going to tell you no, but just understand that they’re not an official part of SantaCon.”

The ‘official’ SantaCon probably has no legal recourse here, since it’s an unpermitted event, and they certainly have no intellectual property claims, trademarks, or copyrights.

“I’m never going to go down that road," DiBell says. “This was started as an anarchist movement. It's kind of counterproductive if someone wants to trademark this. Somebody forcing us to trademark it, we’d say 'Go fuck yourself and use it anyway.'”

Related: Madrone Art Bar Apologizes After Crazed 'Critic Santa' Bounced From Bar [SFist]

Image: PubCrawls.com

SantaCon was, at some point, scheduled to occur on December 12 in continuation of its annual debauched messiness — and giving young, booze-loving locals another chance to day-drink in costume while terrorizing area bars. And even though it's been "canceled," it's always been kind of an unofficial event, and unofficially there may be drunken, hopefully masked Santas out there whether we like it or not.

It turned into a national thing that pops up in cities all over, a drunken bar crawl involving holiday-themed costumes that often leads to twentysomethings puking in gutters while someone holds their Santa hats. But SantaCon had its origins in the kooky San Francisco of the mid-1990s, back when costumed drinking wasn't something the kids did nearly every other week. As KQED narrates, SantaCon grew out of something the prankster group the Cacophony Society — whose members helped inspire the first Burning Man in the Nevada desert — and an event they started called "Cheap-Suit Santas."

SFist has been bemoaning SantaCon's existence for over a decade now, mostly because the boozy brunch crowd and the amateurs among us don't need another holiday in this city in which to drink en masse. Way back in 2012, Eater SF even made a printable "NO SANTAS" sign for bars to hang on their windows. And, like everything else, what seemed fun 25 years ago has been run through a wringer of repetition and laziness until it's nothing more than an excuse for bad behavior. Last year, the city refused to give a permit for a SantaCon gathering in Union Square, but that didn't stop the revelers from doing their thing.

Now, in a pandemic, with bars closed across the city, trying to do a pub crawl seems both pointless and unsafe. But will be people don Santa and reindeer outfits and go brown-bagging it in city parks and elsewhere? Possibly!

Original organizer Tom DiBell, who pushed for the Santas to revel last year despite city protests, tells KRON4 that this year, for the record, he doesn't want people partying in SantaCon's name. "Please… I’ll say it directly to the camera — do not go down there,” Dibell says, referring to Union Square I guess.

“The bars are going to be closed, the restaurants are going to be closed, San Francisco is in lockdown,” he says. “Please, you’re wasting your time.”

Right. That should be obvious.

Also, here ye all twenty- and thirtysomethings who don't think COVID is going to affect them much: Stop passing this fucking virus around while you're out drinking and laughing and making out with strangers! You are very much part of the problem and why restaurants and bars are closed right now! Yes, you!

Photo: Erik Wilson/Flickr

Image: Flickr via rulenumberone2

Here comes Santacon, here comes Santacon, but December 7 could be a date which will live in infamy as the event is again unpermitted and loosely organized.

Few San Francisco events have worn out their welcome quite like the annual Santa Claus-themed pub crawl Santacon. Once a holly, jolly, and inspired prank event cooked up by the revered culture jammers of the Cacophony Society (and in 2011 had enough holiday packages to make a run at the Guinness World Record for Largest Gathering of Naked Santas), the event has been moved to the Naughty List in recent years for increasingly loutish, entitled, and drunken behavior. By 2012, bars were printing Eater SF’s No Santas sign to nix the Saint Nicks, and in 2014, red-faced organizers declared Santacon dead. The then-official Santacon SF Twitter account announced “RIP SantaCon. It started here, it ends here. 1994-2014.”

But apparently it ain’t over ‘til the fat man gropes someone, pees in your bushes, and gets thrown out of a bar. Another back-door Santa named Tom DiBell has picked up the sack and has organized the event in the wake of the above declaration of death, this year under the guise of a Facebook group called SantaCon San Francisco 2019 December 7th. As seen in the post below, the Con is on for December 7. “I want to make sure that ALL YOU SANTAS OUT THERE help to make the 25th Anniversary of SantaCon the best ever,” DiBell says in a post to that group. “I’m going to meet with the police and try to assuage their fears and let them know that we are far more responsible than in years past.”

That may be, but Curbed SF has confirmed that Santacon 2019 has no Rec and Parks permits. This is similar to the “Santacon is canceled” controversy that preceded last year’s event, though that even still went on — for better and worse.

As KPIX reported in 2018, at the time two deplorable Santas trashed Shalimar restaurant on Polk Street, an incident complete with incriminating video of red-capped revelers throwing a glass sugar dispenser at staff. That employee reportedly suffered a black eye.

This is indeed the 25th Santacon, a tradition that KQED explains started in San Francisco in 1994 under the name “Cheap Suit Santas,” and has since spread to dozens of cities. More discerning (old) veterans of previous Santacons have seemingly replaced that pub crawl with something called SF Krampus, celebrating Santa’s more satanic alterego, which has events on both December 7 and December 14. But it looks like the Santas will be out on Saturday, December 7, so consider that the bar scene that day is something ‘yule’ want to avoid.

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

Image: dayabay via Flickr

Isn't it about time that San Francisco passed common sense Santacon laws? I'm talking, of course, about a complete ban.

If you're blissfully unaware of the annual scourge, allow me to ruin your day. Santacon, a massive pub crawl, is exactly like Saint Patrick's Day but completely arbitrary and without historical precedent and way worse and with Santa Claus costumes instead of green outfits.

What's so bad about that? Oh, I don't know, what's so bad about the absurd entitlement of hordes of twentysomethings getting ultra wasted in public and in bars, most prominently in North Beach, Union Square, and the Marina? If that just sounds like Bay to Breakers to you, well, it is sort of, but at least Bay to Breakers has a cool history, creative costumes, and components that aren't just belligerent drinking, and Bay to Breakers has plenty of problems too, so bad comparison.

For real, unequivocal, first-hand confirmation that Santacon is indeed bad and wrong and should be stopped, simply ask any bartender who has ever dealt with a drunk fratbro in a santa costume.

It hasn't always been this way: What began here in San Francisco in 1994 with a slightly subversive Burning Man bent, created by a group called the Cacophony Society, has lost whatever charm it may once have had, spreading like a virus to cities like Chicago and New York, where it's also a problem. Last year we grew hopeful when Santacon's San Francisco Twitter account announced that the event was over, done, kaput. But to believe that was wishful thinking: Organizers attributed the tweet to an unauthorized takeover of the account.

To literally rain on Santacon's parade, let me point out that inclement weather this weekend may dampen the spirits and moisten the red coats of this year's shitfaced revelers. The event takes place Saturday from noon until whenever people call an Uberpool to get home and throw up in it.

If you want to be sure to avoid the bars actively inviting so-called Santas with cheap drinks and shots, like usual suspects Bar None and newcomers including expensive ping-pong bar SPiN, consult the map below. Santacon is also sending out information to 17,000 people on Facebook who say they'll attend, plus 33,000 who have indicated they're interested, so consult that for your addd safety.

Finally, some establishments with common sense have banned Santas in years past. A few of those are denoted with X's below, but to be completely safe, you may want to stay out of North Beach and Union Square altogether.

CommunityWalk Map - SantaCon San Francisco 2016 Event Map

Related: The SFist To-Do List: 12 Cool Things To Check Out This Week

I'll just let the video-taker and uploader, Eric, summarize this one with his title: "King Dick of Douche Mountain."

As seen Saturday, December 12, in Union Square, San Francisco.

Previously: SantaCon Disputes Death Reports, Ramps Up For December Revels