Ho, Ho, Bro: How SantaCon Went From Joyful Performance Art to Reviled Bar Crawl

Courtesy BoycottSantacon.com

Mike Ireland knows SantaCon. And when he learned the annual holiday bar crawl was eyeing Bushwick, he wanted no part of it. As a longtime bartender in the East Village, Ireland is a veteran of many SantaCons past. He says that over the years he's watched drunken, raging Santas urinate on walls, sexually harass women, break into fights, and annoy pretty much everyone in their path.

"I was terrified and angry," Ireland says of his reaction to learning in November that SantaCon organizers had more or less been chased out of the East Village and were interested in taking the party to Bushwick. He's seated on a bench inside Three Diamond Door, the cavernous Bushwick bar he now owns. "SantaCon is like the worst Saturday night times 30,000. You have thousands of people dumped onto the neighborhood — they come in, wreck it, and leave...It's comparable to a bad frat party."

See also: The Debaucherous Santas of SantaCon 2013

He decided to enlist the help of other nearby bar owners to try and block the event's entry into their community. He sent a text message warning them that SantaCon would be trouble for the neighborhood — and instantly, he says, they all agreed to boycott the event, vowing to refuse any patrons dressed as Santa on December 13, this year's SantaCon D-Day. They then took their pledge to Brooklyn's Community Board 4, which serves Bushwick.

They didn't know it at the time, but Ireland and his band of bar owners had unofficially initiated a massive anti-SantaCon movement that would eventually force organizers back to the drawing board to find their new home. A petition was circulated, bar owners made banners that read "No Santas," and even City Councilmember Rafael Espinal got involved, throwing his full support behind keeping the besotted holiday festival out of the neighborhood.

One group launched a "Boycott SantaCon" website, Twitter page, and email campaign, entreating bar owners to "prohibit from your bar anyone dressed as Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, sexy Claus, elves, sexy elves, reindeer, sexy reindeer, snowmen, sexy snowmen, candy canes, sexy candy canes, Krampus, sexy Krampus, or any other holiday-themed costume or sexy variant of that costume.

"Just say no to this monstrosity," the email concluded. "Bushwick does not need a pool of talking sewage slithering through our streets."

When the community board convened for its regular November meeting, it flat-out rejected SantaCon as its first order of business. The campaign had succeeded. SantaCon was out.

"If you're a five-year-old kid," Ireland says, "the last thing you want to see is one Santa Claus beating up another Santa Claus or Santa lying in his own vomit holding a bottle of Jack Daniel's. If I saw that, I'd be like, 'Santa is dead.' " He notes that organizers had planned to start the day in Maria Hernandez Park — Bushwick's only real green space and community playground.

Espinal tells the Voice that he later spoke with an event organizer calling himself "Santa," who told him they would spare Bushwick from "Santification."

"He politely and respectfully agreed that Bushwick cannot accommodate an event of this magnitude and was going to take his sleigh elsewhere," Espinal says. "It is one of the best Christmas gifts that Santa delivered to the Bushwick community."

Bushwick has had its share of tension between longtime residents and the young, artistic, hipster set that has descended on the community as they've been priced out of nearby gentrified strongholds Williamsburg and Greenpoint. But Espinal says the push to cut SantaCon off at the knees touchingly united the disparate groups.

"There was a sense of accomplishment," says Betsy Maher, owner of Pearl's Social Club and an opponent of SantaCon's plans to come to Bushwick. "It doesn't matter — new or old, people in Bushwick care about each other."

Maher, who likewise opened her bar after working in the East Village, says problems with SantaCon in that community began when its demographics changed. As rents rose in the early to mid 2000s, artists relocated to Brooklyn and wealthier, more entitled young professionals moved in and started taking part in the annual ritual.

"It wasn't until the Lower East Side started getting bro-y that it got bad," she says. "As the city is slowly drained of the artistic experience, that's replaced by money. The people who go to SantaCon go to the bars where I used to work. They treat you like you're their slave and if you don't do what they want that's your fault."

Despite organizers' stated commitment to steering clear of Bushwick, bar owners are employing extra bouncers to guard their establishments on the day of the event — just in case any SantaCon aspirants who didn't get the memo try to slink through the doors. And many bars, like Three Diamond Door, will still hang their brightly painted banners warning "No Santas Allowed."