"If you've ever found yourself in New York City on a weekend in December surrounded by thousands of Santas bar-hopping around the neighborhood, you may have been affected by SantaCon. Now a worldwide phenomenon, SantaCon descends upon New York City once a year. Though New York City's SantaCon has a philanthropic element to it (tickets sold for SantaCon go to support several charitable causes), the day is often regarded as a drunken day of chaos, with Santas stumbling around the city."
"However, Porges told amNewYork that he had met up with his friend Scott Beale when he learned that Beale had started SantaCon with his friends several years ago in San Francisco, and it piqued his interest. [Beale] started telling me that he had personally video recorded many of the early years of SantaCon, and he still had the footage. When I saw these tapes, that's when I was kind of blown away, said Porges."
SANTACON traces SantaCon's origins to a 1990s San Francisco prank created by the Cacophony Society and documents its spread into a global phenomenon. Early years featured performance-art stunts aimed at creating moments of wonder and playful anarchy. The New York City iteration raises money for charities through ticket sales while simultaneously earning a reputation for drunken bar-hopping, public disorder, and being widely disliked. Archival footage captured by co-founder Scott Beale preserves a sense of freedom and possibility from the movement's beginnings. The event's evolution reveals tensions between original performance-art intentions and contemporary social impact.
Read at www.amny.com
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