NoPo Exposure: NoPDXAnticon Hit Streets This Saturday
Dear readers: Let me introduce to Matthew Subotnick. You might know him as one of the good folks behind the NoPo (now in hibernation) Wicked Waffles food cart. Well, Matty is also a wickedly awesome writer. He shared the following story with me and I thought it might be nice to share it with you. Enjoy!
BAD-ASS SANTAS: There’s nothing wholesome about it and yet it feels sooo Christmasy -- watching several hundred Santas sitting at the rail in the Dancin' Bare shouting, “Can I Get a Ho!?!” -- as red velvet-and-white fur clad girls wriggle and shimmy in a moment Bad Santa couldn’t even dream of.
Everyone here is Santa, men and women, there’s Gangsta Santa, Hippie Santa, Naughty Santa, Sweet Santa, Ten Dollar Walgreens Santa, Dressed to the Nines Vintage Santa, and more, and after an all-day pub crawl Santa has landed at this tiny strip club on the end of the Yellow line for one final hurrah before the real holiday season begins.
You’re part of this, dressed in your own Santa suit and fake beard, whisky coke or Pabst in hand, by this point late in the evening, you’ve already enjoyed a half dozen of North Portland’s finest watering holes.
North Portland Anticon, or NoPDXAnticon, or just Anticon, is the brainchild of Scott Mazariegos of Urban Golf fame, and was in part a response to the Cacophony Society’s prank in 2008 of sending all the Santacon party-types to deep Hillsboro.
“I wanted my own thing in town. I contacted my friend Charlene and said 'let’s do something in our hood for our friends,’” Mazariegos said. “We expected around 70-80 peeps, we got 200 + at the first bar, 300+ at the second, 550+ by the time we hit Georges and the Florida Room...”
The annual Santa-themed pub crawl has grown, with an expected 1,800 Santas participating for 2010. According to Mazariegos, the big difference between NoPDXAnticon, and the Santacon events are that “the bars in NoPo actually look forward to us coming now; this was never the case downtown.”
Participating in NoPDXAnticon is simple. Show up at the Paul Bunyan statue in the Kenton neighborhood at 12:30 pm on Saturday, December 4, dressed as Santa; whatever kind of Santa you want to be. There’s no cost to participate, but it is strongly recommended you bring cash for the bars, and purchase an all day Tri-Met pass, as most of the event follows the Yellow Line or major bus routes, as “only a douche-y Santa drinks and drives.”
The event has one purpose, “drink and be merry, I guess, is there a point to anything we do but go out and have fun?...Santa has to have a life outside of little kids sitting on his lap and asking for that new Barbie/GI Joe doll... Santa needs a release from all the kids that wet on him,” Mazariegos said.
Beforehand there is a "Breakfast with Santa" at the Dancin' Bare at 11:30 am, and later that day, around 5pm, there will be caroling around the Xmas tree on North Mississippi by the Laughing Planet burrito joint. "I have a dream of creating the first 'Bad Santa' photo experience," Mazariegos said. "So if you have a friends with a kid that would like a pic with his/her choice of Santa, comy by the tree around 5 on Saturday."
—Matthew Subotnick
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Last Updated (Thursday, 02 December 2010 13:57)
