Ho!

Okay now I'm officially ready to tell you all about Santarchy 2009.

Are you ready?

First, some background:

In Santas of yesteryear, Santa may not have been so good at regulating her alcohol intake but last year's Santa was SO MUCH FUN and Santa Lo and I agreed that OMG IT'S BECAUSE WE WERE MATURE AND RESPONSIBLE! WHAT A CONCEPT! So this year we had two rules:

1. Eat something.
2. NO HARD LIQUOR!

Rule #2 was eventually ammended to read "NO HARD LIQUOR (until we settle in at the Gold Dust for the night)!

And let me tell you all something:

If you follow the rules you still have plenty of fun, you are able to maintain your Santa glamour in all the pictures AND you wake up the next day and go "OMG THAT WAS FUN!" and you say that knowing that you actually remember the whole thing. (And "the whole thing" doesn't include Alyssa and John dragging your ass home from Oakland in the longest cab ride ever in the history of the world.)

Santa is mature now, yo.

Proof:

Santa drinks California's finest sparking wines out of reusable, Earth-friendly containers:



Santa reuses last year's fur, which staples onto last year's boots like a charm:



We discussed taking After shots to pair with these Before shots, but I'll tell ya -- these Santas kept their youthful glows throughout the evening!

Santa Ho Ho Lo:



Santa Captain Carrie:



(Note: SCC was my very first co-Santa ever and when Santas I've only known for one year question who the hell she is, we do not take well to the bitchiness and we climb out a window to avoid you. For reals.)

Santa ME:



And then because we don't like the awkward "OMG I'm sober and in a Santa outfit and now I have to walk somewhere?" beginning of Santarchy, we decided to take a load off in the hotel bar and wait until we knew where Santa's first stop would be (thanks Twitter!) and then just cab it like the too-glamorous-for-schlepping Santas that we are.

And really, three very awesome Santas enjoying their light beers in the lobby of a nice hotel are a sight to see so we can't blame tourists for wanting their pictures taken with us:



(And okay...maybe it was only the ONE tourist, but STILL...his wife told us that it took him a couple of drinks to work up the nerve to ask.)

And then it was time to depart:



As it turned out, Santa was organized in a different way this year and instead of a few large groups of multiple hundred Santas like there were last year or, as is tradition, one very large group of Santas, there were like a BAJILLION tiny contingents of Santas and it was all very scattered. As a result, we ended up at the Gold Dust THREE times that day (which wasn't really a problem because we love the GD).

Here I am with the COOLEST SANTA EVERRRRRRR, but who, sadly, was also maybe the crankiest and least happy to be there Santa ever:



That's not Photoshop, folks!

Santas Ho Ho Lo and Captain Carrie think something is funny, but I'm not sure what...I just like this picture of them:



This was the Santa who Ho Ho Lo wished was single (that toy soldier wasn't his gf):



What I think is so interesting about that whole dynamic was that he was just a regular guy...yeah, he was a cute regular guy, but I'm reasonably sure he thought HHL was kidding with her affection for him. And really, he's not the type of guy I've seen her go for in the past so I think this is a case of him just having that certain something that called HHL's name.

(Incidentally, there was a whole army of toy soldiers and they were UNAWARE that Britney Spears has a song about their people!)

My posse:



Santa's Baby Mama:



This Santa thought Carrie was the bee's knees:



She totally is, duh, but Carrie's co-Santas were not feeling him.

We escaped him and headed over to North Beach, where we heard a large number of Santas were gathering at a bikini bar...but before entering said bikini bar, let's eat pizza!



Pizza, schmizza, but please refer to rule #1: EAT SOMETHING.

The hour or so after that was a rocky one for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was because I FELL and my BARE SKIN touched the NASTY North Beach sidewalk:



It wasn't even a *good* fall -- the sidewalk was hilly and wet and my shoes were slippery and I was gingerly tiptoeing down the hill when WOOSH, I went down on one knee and it looked like I was ready to propose.

Not to worry though because Santa was there with CANDY!



But ohhhhh, Condor...the M&Ms were the last good thing that happened in your fine establishment and we ended up escaping out the window (a large window, but a window nonetheless) because we needed to EJECT EJECT EJECT!!!!!!

(I should say that nothing REALLY bad happened, but other Santas and their drama were raining on our parade so we took our party elsewhere.)

Where?

Well shoot, let's go down the street, regroup amongst ourselves and then find a new batch of Santas when we're ready.

This is Lauren regrouping:



And then we met a gentleman who offered us drinks, drugs, ladies and Chinese food in exchange for our company for the evening:



There was a time in our lives when I could see us accepting his offer because WHAT A GOOD STORY IT WOULD BE! But we're old and less stupid now so instead of possibly waking up missing a finger or two, we thanked Adam and his cohorts for the Miller Lites and wished them all well.

Fun Fact #1: Adam (the older one) owns a Chinese restaurant in Humboldt and had a GIANT bag of Humboldt County's primary export that made the air around him stink.

Fun Fact #2: Adam's cat's name is Kung Pao. "Like the chicken," he said.

And then a bunch of other Santas came to join us, including this gentleman and his prop from 1997:



And this lady standing behind Lauren who wanted to take us (or at least Lauren) back to her warehouse in Oakland:



And then eventually we moved back to the Gold Dust to finish out the night with my homie Joel, who was not Santa'fied, but who was willing to be seen in public with us:



We finished out the night with an assortment of greasy foods that were half eaten on the street while we waited for a cab and half eaten in the hotel while we watched Nancy Grace get all fired up about something or other.

Great Santa, you guys!