santacarnage at the anticon

The costumed event started at noon when we met at the Paul Bunyan statue off of a North Portland Max stop.  We were a motley crew of men and women dressed in all sorts of holiday garb.  There were of course the traditional red-coated santas, but there were also people dressed as gnomes, elves, and one gentlemen wearing nothing but tye-dye long johns and a huge grin.  Many of the women wore variations of the santa suit with skirts and scarves as adornments.  Any santa with revealing clothing was immediately dubbed as sexy santa.  A few men had pimp santa garbs with velour capes and furry hats.  I wore a white top-hat and a red mask and was given the pseudonym of bandito santa.  Keegan wore a USC hat and a trailblazers jersey and took on the name of sporty santa. 

  There’s something about wearing a costume that makes any party better.  First off, costumes lend an otherworldly feeling to any event.  A costume indicates that it isn’t business as usual.  Because everyone looks strange it allows us to step outside the normal boundaries our superegos impose upon us.  People do not look as they usually do which inspires people to no act as they normally do.  We can be more fun, crazy, impulsive, etc (and a little alcohol doesn’t hurt either) Appearing differently makes you feel different.  Also, wearing costumes gives everyone in a group a sense of solidarity, a feeling that we are all part of a club.  Maybe you’re afraid to talk to a guy at a bar but if you’re both wearing one-piece track suits and leg warmers then a stressful sitiuation morphs into a humorous one.  As strangely attired individuals we are vulnerable to mockery by the general public but as a strangely attired group we can stand in solidarity and laugh in the faces of the sober, boring majority.  Recently I attended the most recent manifestation of a yearly event called Santacon.  This variation was called Anti-Con and took place Saturday, December 5^th in North Portland.  The sites were extraordinary, the people were outrageous, and the level of holiday cheer and drunkenness was incomparable to anything else that has ever been or will ever be.     

The excitement was palpable underneath the statue. Waves of santas would disembark from the MAX train and cross the street to congregate below the statue.  At its climax there were several hundred costumed inviduals, including a lone woman dressed as a dreadle.  Periodically the crowd would start to yell and cheer or someone would start a chant of “ho-ho-ho,” which would rapidly ascend in speed and volume. hand, I could feel that this was going to be a great day, looking out at the crowd under crisp, sunny Portland skies, holding my bag of treats filled with candy and condoms in one hand and a bottle of crown royal, hanging in a purple bag with gold strings in the other.

Keegan and I took some celebratory pulls from the crown as we walked down interstate towards our first watering hole.  The place was packed with santas.  We looked with dismay at the array of red coats and red hats all facing the bar and wondered how we would ever order a drink in time before the next stop.  Fortuitously a santa close to the door had ordered one too many whiskey and cokes and gave us one, “here you go, Santa,” the man said, handing us a drink.  “Thank you santa,” I replied. 

This was the first of many cordial greetings we shared with other santas.  A sense of old fashioned manners juxtaposed the usual belligerance of hard-core drunkenness, at the anticon.  As we walked through crowds at each bar people were exceedingly polite, always delivering an, “excuse me santa,” as they pushed their way towards the bathroom or the bar.  As I said, we were all in this mad project together. 

Our fears of not being able to order a drink turned out to be unfounded as we found our way to the front of the line at the bar in under 20 minutes.  Since it was still early in the day we decided to order a breakfasty drink of white Russians.  Feeling like a true Lebowskian I greeted some santas with a ‘hey dude’ as we sipped our drinks and surveyed the crowd.  A pirate santa walked past us holding a treasure chest.  I asked him what he was carrying and he showed me a display of several bottles of liqueur nestled in the chest, his personal stock of pirate bootie.  Throughout anticon people blatantly took outside drinks into bars.  Many indulged in drink while walking the street, and I met an underage santa who got into all the bars without trouble.  It appears that Saint Nick is above the law. 

After leaving the first bar we doubled back around to a neighborhood street close to our meetup spot.  People start proclaiming, “we’re going to the mayor’s house.”  At this point I’m getting a bit drunk and feeling confused.   ‘Does the mayor live in North Portland?’ I think to myself.  We stop outside a non-descript house and some santas jump onto the balcony and start cheering.  Another santa climbs a tree.  We begin ho-hoing again and the street is completely overrun with santas at this point.   

I can’t tell if this is really the mayor’s house or some poor, unfortunate sap whose front porch and privacy we were invading, but regardless, it was pretty damn funny.

Our walk to the next bar is a long one and I try to entertain my fellow santas with Christmas carols.  However, my voice is far from melodic and my recollection of lyrics is poor.  I often break down into unintelligible mumbles or humming to replace many of the lyrics that I have forgotten.  On the walk Keegan and I talked to a couple ‘colorful characters.’  One fellow told us that we had to check out the naked bunny ride on Easter (riders wear bunny tails and ears) and another santa told us she enjoyed the pleasures of glory holes (turn off your safe search features if you search that term on google)

At the next bar we ordered gin and tonics and sipped them while chatting with a guy about South by Southwest, a music festival in Austin.  I hung out with a reindeer too.  We bonded big-time. 

 

The next bar we went to was small so we decided to skip ahead to another drink station when we saw several santas pass us by.  This whole process reminded me of the Portland Bridge pedal where you stopped for refreshments at different locations to gain strength for the journey ahead, but, instead of water and bananas, we were fueling up with whisky, cigarettes, and chocolate candy. 

The next place was really hopping.  Santas lounged out in the parking lot smoking cigarettes, drank beers inside, and ate food at the tables.  We met a rotund she-santa who proclaimed ‘a merry Christmas to all.’  I ordered Keegan and I cans of Hamm’s as at this point I think we had quite enough hard alcohol.  I proceeded to spill my beer all over a pool table.  At this point in our journey our friend Sam met up with us, fresh from taking the LSAT’s.  He was dully impressed by our exceedingly inebriated states at 3-30 in the afternoon.  Out in the parking lot I found a wonderful gentlemen selling some of santa’s special cookies.  I purchased two for a quite reasonable price and split the first between the three of us.  The second cookie was eaten at around 1 am that night in an example of very poor decision-making.  Santa’s got one hell of a sweet tooth!

The next stop on the trek required a quick ride on the MAX train.  There was a short but heated debate among my esteemed colleagues about whether or not we should buy tickets.  Keegan and I had great confidence in the power of our costumes to get us out of any legal trouble and so we were of the opinion that tickets were not necessary on that day.  “There’s enough santas to take this city down!” I cried.  Sam, more rational and more sober at this point decided to buy a MAX ticket.

Our next stop is The Alibi, which, we are informed by another santa, is the only ‘real’ tiki bar in Portland.  But the doors are locked when we arrive.  Apparently, this tiki bar didn’t want a bunch of belligerant santas glugging down mojitos at their establishment.  What followed was 20 minutes of confusion interspersed with some pistachio munching and crown guzzling.  After a consultation of my trusty iphone maps feature we  relocated ourselves and took off for the next stop, the Mississippi food carts.

 

Pizza and beer, a combination for the ages!  At the food carts we ran into a Scottish documentary film maker, an anarchist santa, and a cigarette bumming Jesus.  It was the last stop on our tour and my memories are quite fuzzy, but from what I remember, we had a great time.  Inside we played a round of quarters.  We co-opted a fellow who was sitting at our table to play as well.  I’m not sure if we made any of our shots and some time into the game our table partner told us, “I just want to enjoy my fucking drink.”  I guess some of us were losing our Christmas cheer.  At some point I drop my bag of goodies, spilling candy and condoms everywhere.  A pint glass that I had stashed away also fell out, spreading glass all over the floor.  After picking up my possessions I popped a couple Hershey kisses into my mouth.  Chewing them they felt a bit more crunchy than normal. I started to fear that some of the glass shards had gotten into the candy but once I pop something sweet into my mouth I never go back, glass shards or no.  Well there was more beer to be drunk and we visited another food cart corner and well, you get the point…  

Well that’s about all that’s fit to print on this year’s anti-con.  It was a smashing success and I hear there’s another santa crawl on the 19^th.  I might just have to bust out the suit one or two more times before the holiday season wraps up.  Ho-ho-ho to you all and happy Chanukah too.         

     

stories told to me

I’m originally from Denver but it wasn’t until I got to LA that I got into drugs. I was a drug dealer before that but I didn’t do the drugs. Well, except for the ecstasy and the acid and the shrooms. But when I got into LA I started doing meth. I’m not going to lie to you like some other guys do and tell you that I’m so glad that I’m off of it and it was terrible. It was fucking awesome! The girls, the parties, staying up all night. I miss it every day. I would get meth so good it would burn a hole through the bottom of the plastic bag.

Everyone I knew growing up was wealthy. I grew up in a completely excessive environment. Some kids from my school would get their blood drawn and then do a bunch of coke afterwards so that they would get really fucked up. Their systems would be weak from the loss of blood so they would get totally tweaked on not as much blow as they would normally take.

There are tons of ways to buy weed in San Francisco and I know most of them. I was showing some kids around town a few weeks ago. We were walking around Golden Gate Park and I bet them that I could find pot in less than 5 minutes. It actually took around a minute before someone approached us asking if we wanted some nugs. I ended up trading him my jacket that I had bought at goodwill for some herb. Back in high school I used to buy from these asian kids. They would pick me up in their tricked out street-racer cars and we would tear around the city Fast and the Furious style while we did the deal. My favorite way to get pot now is the delivery services. You call this number and you get weed delivered right to your place. He shows up at your door with it in a brown paper bag. Several times the pot would show up at the house at the same time as the pizza guy. One-stop-shop!

I took a trip out to Jersey to visit some friends. It was fun, 5 days of straight partying. One of the nights we went out to the bars. We were standing on the balcony of a bar smoking cigarettes. My best friend’s friend, Danny was with us. She has a little kid so she doesn’t get to go out drinking much. She was really drunk off just a few drinks. There were some cops standing by their cars outside the bar and She just started screaming at them “pigs! Fucking pigs!” I couldn’t believe it. Then the cops came up to the balcony and started talking to me. They thought I was the one who was yelling at them. They took me down to their car and put me in the backseat. I was freaking out. I had two grams of coke on me and I was pretty drunk and blow which wasn’t helping my nervousness. I would be totally screwed if they caught me with it. That’s when I remembered that I also had 3 ecstasy pills on me that I was planning on giving to my friend. I was thinking ‘shit, what do I do? How do I get rid of this?’ At this point my hands were cuffed in front of me so I could still use them. I dug into my purse and pulled out the coke. All I could think was that I had to get rid of it. I opened the bag and started eating it. But I couldn’t get it all in cleanly and some of it spilled on the seat. The seats were black plastic and the powder was easy to spot. That’s when the cops came back in and trained their flashlights on the seat. They saw the powder and asked me about it. I had to admit what I had done. That’s when the Jersey cops went off on me. They started saying things like “you’re a fucking ugly person. You need to get back to Los Angeles. You’re ugly and disgusting.” At this point I was really freaked out, drunk, and coked out of my mind. I was crying and crying. Then they let me go. That was it, they just let me off and they never searched my purse for the ecstasy. The coke I at eventually hit me hard. I couldn’t even talk really, I was kind of emitting these high pitched squeaking sounds. I stayed up all that night.



Dude, don’t ever hook up with a hot chick. That’s one piece of advice I can give you. It’s not worth it. They try to pull all sorts of shit. Alice told me that we could only have sex once a week because she didn’t love me. Then she complained that it hurt when we had sex. She made me get her warm clothes after we did it. That doesn’t seem normal.

We were at a party and Sasha was wasted. She walked up to me and she told me, “you’re so cute. I really want to make out with you right now.” So I was like ‘alright, I guess I’ll make out with you’, so we did. She was so wasted and she was squeeling and shrieking, and she asked me to go back to her room, and I said that sounded fine to me. So we went back to her room. We were hooking up on her bed. She’s still so drunk, rolling around. I’m getting kind of bored so after a while I steel up the courage and say in my deepest voice, “so, you wanna fuck?” But she doesn’t answer me because she’s passed out. She starts snoring and I gather up my stuff and quietly leave.

My wife could beat me up. She’s a big lady. She’s got some guns on her. She’s Latino too which means she uses her shoes as weapons. There could be two closed doors between us and she would still manage to hit me in the head with her flip-flop.

When I was a young guy my friends and I loved talking to strange women. I had the prefect pick up line. Most pick up lines are cheesy and I don’t believe they work but this one was golden: “Hi my name is Eli do you want to go swimming tonight?” It sets the perfect tone. Your not asking to date them or do something serious. It’s a fun, simple activity, and it involves taking off your clothes! I always lived in apartments so we had access to pools and hot tubs. When I lived in Arizona my friends and I all financed scooters. We found a place that would let you put $17 down and $17 a month. We would ride around town on our scooters with flip-flops and board shorts. It was so easy to pick up girls with the swimming line. We didn’t even need to stop the scooters, they would jump on as we rode past.
“Come swimming with us,” we would say.
“But I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“It doesn’t matter, neither do I.”
“But your wearing one.”
“oh yeah. Whatever, let’s go.”
I actually met my wife with the swimming line.