Every December for the last 14 years, Cacophonous Santas have been visiting cities around the world, engaging in a bit of Santarchy as part of the annual Santacon events.
It all started back in 1994 when several dozen Cheap Suit Santas paid a visit to downtown San Francisco for a night of Kringle Kaos. Things have reached Critical Xmas and Santarchy is now a global phenomenon.
You'd better watch out! Santa's coming to town!
Santacon 2007 Information
and Event Coverage
- For the most part Santarchy! is an archive only. We don't do any active planning on this website, however we will mention upcoming Santacons that have their information posted online.
- If you are looking for Santacon planning info, try contacting your local lodge of The Cacophony Society or the Santacon and Santarchy tribes.
- We do not condone or encourage any kind of vandalism or violence at a Santacon event. Our santas do not destroy property, steal merchandise or do harm to others.
- Santarchy is not a movement, that's what you do in the bathroom. In addition to that, the annual Santacon events are not a protest against Christmas or commercialization. Really, it's just a bunch of santas getting together to have a good time.
- We do not provide or sell any stock photos or video footage and all images on this website are copyright of their owners. If you want to use any photos or videos on this website, please contact the owner directly.
- We do not do interviews with the media and so on. We're not actively involved with organizing any of the Santacon events (see #1), so if you are looking for people to interview, try contacting the organizers of various regional Santacon events.
- We have absolutly nothing to do with any idiot santas you may have heard about in New Zealand. Contrary to misreporting by the media, they are not associated Santarchy or the Santacon events.
- If you came here looking for Chuck Palahniuk, he's the one drinking cheap tequila over here.
January 2008
December 2007
August 2007
December 2006
November 2006
March 2006
January 2006
December 2005
Do you have a santacon website you would like to add to the archives?
Contact us at:
hohoho AT santarchy DOT com
Make sure to mention what which city it took place in.
"You'd Better Watch Out:
Portland Santacon '96"
Weird America's San Francisco Santacon '95
This site is maintained by Santa Squid (retired), with occasional input from Santa Melmoth (retired), both veterans of the great Santa wars 1994-98.
With special guest bloggers Santa de Nada & o'Santa Bin Laden
This blog runs on WordPress (ask Santa to bring it to you for Christmas)
this website is licensed under a
Creative Commons License
Santarchy History: The Early Years
Dateline, San Francisco: Midget Dressed as Santa Disembowels Carmelite Nun with Teeth While Hundreds of Yobs Dressed as Santa Cheer
Now that I have your attention:
Santarchy: a brief history.
Santa names have been obscured to protect the guilty.
Talk about an absurd one trick pony event with a half-life of Strontium 90! The first “SantaCon†took place in San Francisco in 1994 and was sponsored by The San Francisco Cacophony Society. The original inspiration came from an earlier SF adventure club called The Suicide Club. The Founder and Avatar of The Suicide Club, Gary Warne decided to organize a non-political, purely surreal Santa prank event after reading a Mother Jones article about a Danish political group dressing as Santa’s and mobbing a Copenhagen Dept. store just before Christmas. Gary’s untimely death and the demise of the Suicide Club put the kibosh on this super obvious, (destined to be) Yule-time tradition. Gary’s idea, which was eventually given life years later by Cacophony was simply to play with the archetypal image of Santa using a barrage of many Santa’s (hopefully) inducing a psychedelic reaction from the public while the core of Santa’s had a real adventure and a lot of fun while goofing it up at various downtown X-mas locations. Had the Suicide Club organized the event it would have fit in nicely with other Club winners such as Clowns on the Bus (dozens of seemingly unrelated clowns going to work, all waiting at succeeding bus stops along the Geary bus line on a commute morning,) The Mud People (the mechanics should be obvious; this event was reprised with great success on Rodeo Dr. by L.A. Cacophony in ’94,) and many other public pranks pulled in the late 70’s & early 80’s. Alas, it was not to be. The Suicide Club, best known for climbing major suspension bridges, throwing insane costumed events in cemeteries, abandoned breweries and sewers, and for infiltrating cults such as the Moonies and the American Nazi Party left only a forlorn Suicide note from the Caliph of the North Pole.
Flash forward:
Inspired by the Suicide Club idea and the Danish group, Santa Rob decides he wants to organize a Santa event for Cacophony. He enlists the help of Santa M2 & (yours truly) Santa Melmoth and lists the event in Rough Draft, the Cacophony Society newsletter. Professional bus driver Santa Alex is drafted to haul the Krimson Kringles about downtown SF.We get in the bus & end up downtown. We take a Cable Car up Nob Hill hit a few hotels & descend into Union Square where after making a pass thru Macy’s, I don a body harness and get “hanged by the neck†on scaffold in front of The Saint Francis Hotel around midnight. We didn’t drink much at all and (with the exception of the hanging) almost all interactions with the public were fun, funny and amiable. This 1st event is so perfect and such an unbelievably fun time, most of the Santa’s seem to believe once is enough – why try & recreate such magically singular experience? The ever-brilliant Santa Mangrinus in his “zine†(remember zines?) Twisted Times, while discussing another event of epically stupid proportions that we had all had a hand in noted dryly: Anything worth doing is worth driving into the ground. This brilliant adage applied as aptly to the impending Santa Deluge.
Of course we did it again! We start at the ice skating rink at Embarcadero & Market where, as we are suiting up some bad Santa’s engage in a snowball fight (the zamboni scrapings from the rink leave a huge pile of soft slush side the rink) with a bunch of 10 year old’s which culminates in the Santa’s chasing the kids across & out of the park, to the amused concern of their parents (the Santa’s parents! Hohohohoho) This is the year we learn when a group of pranksters become a stupid mob. The number is around 100. You can’t see everything the Santa’s are doing. You can’t intercede between really dumb, drunk and malicious Santa’s and the authorities if you can’t see em. The control Santa’s are unable to piss on the various holiday fires. One Santa in particular is responsible for most of the violent chaos. I’ll use a pseudonym: SANTA CHRIS RADCLIFFE, 1140 Corondolet St, New Orleans, LA. 504-606-6156!!!! Screw MY Redwing boots to the redwood deck while passed out on cheap gin and then hose me down with a water hose AND film it and show the film to 600 people at MY party, motherfucker!!!! Hohohohohohohohoho!! Santa_______ as we’ll call him from now on, pretty much invented all of the bad, stupid Santa activities that have become de rigeur for santas like the New Zealand crew of this year. On the 2nd Santacon in 1995, Santa_______ insulted pedestrians, made lewd comments to passing ladies, threatened security officers and generally did for Santa what Harvey Keitel did for the NYPD in the Abel Ferera movie Bad Lieutenant. Santa_______ crowned his evening activities by getting in a shoving match with young, macho security guards at The Emporium and telling them: …. “What’r you punks gonna do? There’s a HUNDRED OF US!!!!†Oh, there were other Bad Santas. Santa Robert (not to be confused with the benign & low key SantaCon originator Santa Rob) swiped a bottle of Skyye Vodka off a families table at a debutante party we crashed in the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel. He pounded the whole bottle. He later projectile vomited on the Geary 38 bus as we were attempting to escape the police. Santa’s Flash & Dana spirited him off the bus before we were detained by the cops, no doubt saving him a night in jail. After escorting Santa off the fleeing bus the heat found a nicely packaged commercial looking “Santa’s Heroin Cooking Kit†containing a spoon, lighter, big rubber band & syringe! Earlier Santa’s P & R staged a mock Santassasination in Union Square using a very realistic looking starters pistol which they ditched in the mob as police zeroed in after the loud guns report. Cops got the piece, too. Elsewhere, cops nailed a lady Santa for allegedly baring her breasts. Two Santa’s were taken from the ill-fated Geary 38 and arrested after one of them was mistaken for Santa_________ who had mysteriously disappeared. Like most natural disasters (Katrina, the Bubonic Plague, Michael Jackson, etc.) it takes years of research to find out what really happened. Fortunately at the time two friendly journalists printed largely positive accounts of the event (SF Weekly & SF Bay Guardian). The Daily’s were less forgiving (San Francisco Chronicle).
We were determined never to do it again after all that! Then our friends in Portland Cacophony decided they would do a SantaCon. We figured, what the hell. Portland was such a sleepy, calm, reasonable place. What could possibly go wrong there?
trackback by Scratchin the Surface...
on Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 at 4:39 pm
Are you ready for Tokyo Santarchy??
The annual Santarchy event is descending upon Tokyo tomorrow. Have you got your Santa suit ready? Available at Don Quixote all over Japan for a mere 1000 yen. Anyone interested in coming? Santarchy will start at Hachiko in Shibuya…
comment by juicebox
on Friday, December 23rd, 2005 at 5:03 am
i’ve looked around and haven’t found any specifics about this event. can someone provide a report?
comment by Santa T
on Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Thanks Sebastian, for writing your version of SantaCon history. I was at that ill-fated 2nd SantaCon and witnessed much of what you wrote about. One other nasty was that someone beaned our poor Cacophony photographer with a snowball (was it Santa ____?) as he was shooting pictures near the rink. I saw Santa _____ do a lot of the stuff at the department store that irked the security guards: throwing clothing around at people, and grabbing a wreath and trying to make off with it. I saw the Santa Heroin kit on the bus floor, but I do not remember seeing a syringe in it. Perhaps the Chron was less forgiving because we crashed their Christmas party?
pingback by Laughing Squid » 1996 Portland Santacon 10th Anniversary Party
on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
[...] For more on this whole Santarchy thing, check out santarchy.com, especially Santa Melmoth’s write-up on the early history of the event. [...]
pingback by Patrick Rice.com (PRdotC) » Santacon is coming to town
on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
[...] Breakers and BYOBW; now Santacon 2007. The story on the their website says “It all started back in 1994 when several dozen Cheap Suit Santas paid a visit to downtown San [...]