NYPD Wants SantaCon Gone

John Del Signore

Published Nov 21, 2013

Modified Nov 21, 2013

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These tiny alcohol bottles are great for sneaking onto trains.

Katie Sokoler/Gothamist

John Del Signore

Published Nov 21, 2013

Modified Nov 21, 2013

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We never meant for it to come to this. In previous years, this publication has grown increasingly intolerant of the fratastic holiday tradition known as SantaCon, in which thousands of debauched buttheads turn our fair city into a public urinal/college campus under the guise of "holiday cheer." It goes without saying that the Christmas season is insufferable enough without this annual explosion of obnoxious conformist vulgarity. But it was never our intention to make this a police matter!

According to DNAinfo:

The NYPD's Midtown North Precinct sent letters to about 30 bars, clubs and lounges in Midtown and Hell's Kitchen earlier this month, urging the nightspots not to welcome participants in the annual daylong bar crawl for hundreds of bearded, red-and-white-clad revelers.

"The number of participants has grown large enough to completely overwhelm the sidewalks and public spaces," Lt. John Cocchi, head of the precinct's Special Operations division, wrote in the letter, which he sent to members of a Bar & Club Association he founded in September.

"Having thousands of intoxicated partygoers roam the streets urinating, littering, vomiting and vandalizing will not be tolerated in our neighborhood... It is my recommendation that you do not sponsor this event in any way."

It appears that some neighborhood bars are going to comply with the NYPD and refuse to serve Santas at this year's event, which is scheduled for December 14th. While we applaud any grassroots effort to banish Santacon to Hoboken, the NYPD's pre-emptive Santa crackdown strikes us as an overreach. The Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint. And SantaCon had already promised to avoid Hell's Kitchen this year. Isn't enough to just blanket the city with riot police on the 14th armed with Tasers and an LRAD X?

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John Del Signore

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Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.

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