SantaCon Protest Planned for Saturday: 'We Will Stop SantaCon!'

UPDATE, Monday afternoon: Only two SantaCon protesters showed up Saturday, and they were detained by police in the Flatiron before they made it to the East Village. All the details here.

UPDATE, Friday evening: The anti-SantaCon demonstration will be held at noon Saturday outside Bar 13, given event organizers don't agree to cancel before then, according to the group planning the protest. "Tomorrow our voices will be heard and we will stop Santacon!!" the group said in an email sent to its growing listserv of interested parties. And in an email to Patch, an anonymous rep for the protest group said: "We are anticipating at least 100 but maybe upwards of 500. The response has been overwhelming."

Original story below.

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A mysterious protest group called NYC Residents (NYCR) with an equally mysterious website has been posting fake "SantaCon Cancelled" fliers around the East Village this week — an apparent guerrilla tactic in the group's crusade to convince SantaCon organizers to cancel the controversial bar crawl, scheduled for this Saturday, Dec. 10, between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The fake fliers say:

"New York City residents have petitioned to cancel SantaCon 2016 due to the types of people it attracts. This petition received overwhelming support. As a result, SantaCon 2016 and all future SantaCon celebrations have been cancelled within New York city limits. Residents of New York City thank you for your cooperation."

If SantaCon marches ahead as planned, and 20,000 or so drunk people in Santa costumes overtake Midtown and Downtown Manhattan this Saturday, NYCR members say they plan to hold a protest outside Bar 13, one of the festival's main East Village venues — and they're urging other disgruntled neighbors to join them.

"We are only planning our actions only if the Santacon organizers don't cancel," an anonymous NYCR member told Patch in an email. "The offer is on the table for them to cancel and we hope they will make the right decision."

A SantaCon organizer, however, told us that while the group's rebel spirit is right-on — and in line, even, with SantaCon's anarchist beginnings — there is no chance of the event being canceled.

"We appreciate such things," the also-anonymous SantaCon organizer said, "but good luck with that."

The line outside Bar 13 is expected to be around 150 Santas long for most of the day, our SantaCon source said.

So in case the scene on East 13th Street didn't promise to be ridiculous enough this Saturday, now we can expect some NIMBY vs. Drunk Santa action.

In an interview with Gothamist, an (again anonymous) NYCR member said: "Our country feels so divided right now that we are all searching for things that unify us. The one thing that I have found that we all have in common is our disdain for SantaCon. Over the past few years myself and others have witnessed several horrible acts including but not limited to; sex acts in aisle 4 of the Duane Reade on 14th and 3rd, countless fist fights, and excessive vomiting."

The NYCR member also assured Gothamist that "this is not just a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds," and that "we have several people under the age of 35 planning on participating."

Lead photo via Phil Whitehouse/Flickr