Better run and hide, VirginiaHundreds of Santas hit the streets as part of 10th raunchathon
By JACOB QUINN SANDERS Issue date: Tue, Dec 20, 2005
The Tribune
Bad Santa. Bad, naughty, wicked, lascivious Santa.
Elvis Santas, pirate Santas, rodeo clown Santas, punk Santas, tie-dyed Santas — more than 200 in all — spent Saturday wandering downtown Portland drinking, hitting the strip clubs and playing “elf toss” by the Willamette River.
This was SantaCon. For the 10th year, anyone and everyone who cared to join in the wearing of cheap Santa suits could partake of more than 12 hours of raunchy revelry.
There were Santas with spanking paddles, Santas chain-smoking, Santas making out with other Santas, Santas handing out unending strings of one-dollar bills to gyrating girls.
During their “Santa games” at Waterfront Park, they launched fruitcake after fruitcake into the air.
“I think the reason the fruitcakes were not lit on fire as originally planned was because we had acquired a police escort by then,” said S.W. Conser, 40, of Northeast Portland, who on this day went by the name “Santa Stinkbeard.”
The Santas met at Saturday Market at noon. They would not stop until they reached their final destination, the Fez Ballroom, at 11 p.m.
In between, they tried to talk their way past security into the Meier & Frank Santaland. They paid homage to the departed Chinatown landmark bar Hung Far Low and sang carols in front of random houses on side streets near Northwest 23rd Avenue. They attended a screening of clips from frighteningly bad Santa-themed movies — “Santa Claws” and “Silent Night, Deadly Night” among them.
They dropped by Powell’s City of Books, the strip joint Mary’s Club, the gay club Eagles PDX, the Galleria, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Jake’s Famous Crawfish and the Governor Hotel.
In the decade since SantaCon migrated to Portland — it began in San Francisco in 1993 as a “Cheap-Suit Santa” event and has spread to Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, along with a few other places — four main rules have developed.
As Ken Straight, 35, of Southeast Portland — aka “Santalicious” — describes them:
• Don’t mess with the police. “That’s a no-brainer. Santa doesn’t want to get thrown in jail.”
• Don’t mess with store security. “Like rule No. 1, but they have video recordings.”
• Don’t mess with kids. “You’re Santa, y’know? You can’t do anything mean to a kid.”
• And don’t mess with another Santa. “When you’re drinking as much and as long as we’re drinking, you have to sort of monitor your attitudes, so things don’t get out of hand.”
At Saturday Market, the Santas mingled and meandered, then around 1 p.m. filled three full blocks of West Burnside Street on their way to the Cabaret strip club. The Santa with the sign on his back reading “Jews for Santa” was hard to miss.
Outside on the sidewalk at Burnside and Northwest Fifth Avenue, while Santa after Santa squeezed through the club’s narrow doors, the uncomfortably drug-addled and the comfortably suburban alike gawked and took pictures.
Matt Montoya, 30, of Southwest Portland heard about SantaCon at a Chuck Palahniuk book reading.
“I thought immediately, ‘I have to do that — that is so Portland,’ ” he said.
Not far away was Sharon Gattman, 34, of Gresham, one of a few dozen female Santas.
“Everybody’s got to be Santa sometime, right?” she said. “This, I guess, is the best possible way to live that particular fantasy.”
One Santa in a garish black braided wig gave crudely wrapped gifts to Brittany Schuldt and Bridget Carlson, both 18, of Milwaukie. The two teenagers stood, mouths agape, giggling and flashing a digital camera at the spectacle. They took the gifts, looked at each other with mild trepidation, and ripped them open. Inside: freaky mutant dolls made of the parts of other toys.
“Thank you,” Schuldt said, barely breathing for all the laughing. “You just made our season.”
Inside, a nodding sea of Santa hats glowed in the black lights. The faces of the Santas reflected in the mirrors behind the twirling, grinding strippers.
“This is what this season is all about, right here,” one Santa said to another. “How about another drink?”
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