Santa The Red Menace
SantaCon 2008’s Rein(deer) of Terror
By Ron Garmon
High Concept
Culture is endlessly recursive, as reporters and documentarians know; you can trace the origins of most social behavior surprisingly far back in history, even the postmodern Yuletide custom of SantaCon – hordes of inebriated citizens in cheap Santa Claus outfits staging a marathon charge through select bars and public spaces. The roots in early 20th century surrealism are easy to discern and almost a century old.As Christmas became a mass-produced cultural experience, the very ubiquity of the fat, fur-trimmed icon became, in turn, oppressive, even totalitarian, so the impulse to lampoon the Big Red One became irresistible. Then, too, the public scarcely needs instruction from Damon Runyon’s “The Lemon Drop Kid” to know street-corner St. Nicks can be a raffish lot. Since public roistering itself has been on the downgrade since VJ Day, that this idea took so long to lunge its way into the zeitgeist is as puzzling as it was tardy.
And so it was with a certain historical inevitability that the San Francisco branch of the Cacophony Society threw the first SantaCon in 1994. The idea: (1) parody the rotten-souled commercialism of the Xmas season; (2) acquit (with honor and no dignity) the Cacophonic principles of antic anarchy; and (3) get five-bells, call-the-cops plastered with many of one’s current and future close personal friends.
Founded in the mid-1980s on the bones of the daredevil Suicide Club of San Francisco, the Society remains dedicated to the proposition that if you can’t beat the system, you might as well slip it a joy buzzer. The L.A. branch is best known in prankster lore for the zombie delegation it fielded during the 2000 Democratic National Convention and, in the hearts of many of the veteran Santas assembled last Saturday at Echo Park Lake for the Santacon ’08, the memory of that triumph was yet green. With a touch of formaldehyde.
Less Full Disclosure Than Modified Limited Hang Out
Though not present at that particular hallucination, I’ve run with L.A. Cacophony some. One February night, a bunch of us dragged a couple tons of dead Christmas trees down to a distant fire pit on Dockweiler Beach. There, in outrageous ceremony, we salted the dry and knotted heap with fireworks and set it alight. Cops are generally quick to buzz Dockweiler, but that night miraculously stayed away as the pile detonated, taking crude icons with it. As fireballs from Roman candles roared past my ears and my eyes filled with flame, I realized anarchy is wherever it can be pulled off.
The Running of the Beards
Not that last Saturday afternoon at Echo Park Lake was anything even so small-bore apocalyptic. The gathering of the Santas at the boathouse was on a comedy level somewhere closer to the Firesign Theatre, as nearly 300 crowded the park. There were hippie, hipster and biker Santas; Santas in Lucha Libre and green gorilla masks; and some tall St. Nick with a star on his eye like Paul Stanley from KISS. All moved in cheery circles around red-suited and tinsel-daubed ladies, some of them too slinky and sexed-up for lap-sitting shifts at any department store.
I paused at the sidewalk at Lemoyne Street, pulled over my street clothes the already-ratty $39.95 Santa suit I’d bought at Hollywood Toy Co. the day before, adjusted beard, hat and sunglasses, and joined the throng gained.
Bottles passed from hand to hand, and it was plain many participants had already glugged down considerable starters as Zero Hour approached. I haven’t taken a drink in six years, but instead steeled myself against the rigors ahead with several tokes of Sandoz-grade kush, so the scene took on an almost unbearably loony aspect. Bullhorns led a ragged chorus of “Come All Ye Faithless”:
Sing, choirs of sinners,
Sing in expectation
Oh, sing, oh, sing, like Jesus H. Christ.
Glory to God who will damn you all.
On our horde’s periphery, the civilians who got it were grinning broadly and those who didn’t were plain by their puzzled or hostile expressions. Within, all was restless bonhomie until organizers wheeled five rented school buses into line along Glendale Avenue and we piled in. I dropped down next to a squiffy dude chugging foamy tequila from a plastic bottle and occasionally spitting graceful arcs out the window into traffic. The caravan lurched forward and chugged down Sunset Boulevard with a lusty group hoot.
Snowballs on Sunset
We turned left for Silver Lake. Too big for any one bar, the party split itself between the 4400 Club and El Cid, with a trickle of red-suited roisterers staggering between the two. Inside El Cid, a pretty-boy tranny displayed a formidable ass (upon which someone thoughtfully marked in Sharpie “Santa comes here”), while drunks encouraged two female St. Nicks to make out, and I knew a moment of almost mind-bending tranquility as the PA unloaded Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me.” Knots of Cacophonists stopped traffic with sudden, oft-pointless dashes across Sunset Boulevard while startled drivers leaned on their horns and howled in laughter. Hippie Santas sprawled on the sidewalk and I was glad to see whey-faced twentysomethings rolling crunk-bombers with all the precision of their Boomer forebears.
There was apparently some hitch in the route, as organizers kept busy on cell phones and the party dug in along this stretch of the boulevard until late afternoon. By sundown, a semi-permanent Santa refugee camp had formed. Then, a kindly someone dumped a few hundred pounds of cracked ice onto 4400’s parking lot and an instant free-for-all ensued, with shrieking revelers lobbing crude snowballs over traffic. Just as I’d begun to nuzzle a promising female Santa or two, the cry went up for departure and we crammed our jollity into the buses and slowly rolled toward Hollywood and Highland.
uWink Waterloo
Our stately procession west was escorted by dozens of bicycle Santas weaving with boozy expertise through Saturday evening traffic. Every stoplight occasioned a full-throated roar that bounced riotously off shop windows. By the time we pulled up to the Hollywood & Highland Center, the party had reached a boisterous peak, the group had jelled into something resembling ideological cohesion, and we charged the escalators with froot-loop élan. At the top, we clotted outside uWink’s futurist cocktail bar, looked out over the shoppers milling below, and started up a group chant of “Buy more shit!” that the mock-Babylonian architecture echoed many times its already monstrous volume.
Security panicked. One runty guard ran around shrieking threats of cops and jail, while his co-workers eyed us in nervous embarrassment. Most of the party moved downstairs to the Power House, a venerable Highland Avenue dive well used to rowdies. I lingered there myself a while before legging it with a knot of other Santas down to a distant corner of Yucca Street where the buses waited. Inside one, I skinned out of what was left of my now-mangy suit and got high with a comely female elf. The sidewalk outside began to fill with bedraggled Kringles and fresh bottles were passed around as I temporarily abandoned the party for home and wardrobe change. One Santa was falling over a potted palm tree as I rounded the corner, with throngs more reeling up Cahuenga, hungry for fresh outrages. The next stop was Jumbo's Clown Room, a famous booty-works not unknown to me.
Epilogue: Because the Night
Barely 90 minutes later, I stood outside the closed doors of the Echoplex on Glendale Avenue, where a remnant of Santacon 2008 had convened around the entrance, carefree and wasted before the afterparty. I’d just chemically primed myself to dance all night to mashups at Bootie L.A. when a delightful lady named Velvet gently grabbed my wrist and said simply, “Hi.” We dallied pleasantly at Echo Park Lake, a few yards from where this mishigas had begun half a day before, and saw other fragments of our party with similar ideas. It was past 11 when my new friend split for O.C. and home and I met a straggler Santa from San Pedro wandering along Sunset Boulevard, hot to party, but little-lamb lost. I steered him to the entrance and tottered off downtown, already hours late for the clubs. But even Santa must feel the weight of years and hours on Christmas Eve, so I bent clubward: Partying is way too serious a business to leave to fat men in red.
Published: 12/11/2008
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