Santacon, the yearly gathering of drunk people in Santa Claus costumes, will feature a lot less red velvet and a whole lot more pasty white this year. An offshoot of the main Santacon flashmob/bar hop group is looking to nab the Guinness Book record for the World's Largest Gathering of Naked Santas, thanks to San Francisco's longstanding history of tolerating nakedness and the fact that all the other Santa-related records were already taken. But what is Santa without his fuzzy red suit, you might wonder? The organizers explain the rules: more ›

John Toomey, the Santa Claus who was fired by Macy's last Christmas for telling off-color jokes, was found dead today at the Budget Inn on Market Street. The cause of death appears to be natural causes but has not been determined. more ›

"Beginning Saturday, John Toomey will appear on a specially constructed North Pole Winter Wonderland stage at the restaurant from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. until Christmas Eve," Lefty's spokesman Lee Houskeeper explained to BCN (via SF Appeal). "His four-point contract stipulates that he is allowed to tell jokes." more ›

Sad news, kids. Christmas is canceled. The Union Square Macy's store has, sadly, fired John Toomey, known for 20 years at the store's "Santa John." Why? Well, according to the Chronicle, it all started with a humorous "adult" joke, one that's been told for years. more ›

What do you get when you couple a torrentially rainy day with the now annual SantaCon in which people gather in SF (and around the globe) to lead citywide bar crawls and/or flash mobs all dressed as Santa? You get a lot of wet, drunk people in who smell a little like wet dogs -- but nevertheless, the party went on yesterday, and there was an all-day dance party at Triple Crown for those who wanted to huddle indoors with their PBR rather than traipse around the city with others dressed in red. A little bit of rain wasn't going to stop these determined drinkers from having a festive good time! See a few pics here (more possibly coming), or check out this extensive slideshow by Gretchen Robinette over at the Weekly. more ›

For those of you who celebrate Christmas (not the "birth" of Jesus Christ and/or but the wildly festive gift-giving holiday), we have some disheartening news. The U.S. Postal Service planas to stop its popular Santa letter service, which began in 1954 in the Alaska town of North Pole, where residents volunteer to open and respond to "thousands of letters to Santa each year." more ›

Described as a wiki of stupidheads, jerks, and self-awareness-free men, the Wikipedia parody site lists notable dickslices such as homecoming queen murderer O.J. Simpson; sexist boor Donald Trump; the Gisele Bundchen-impaling Tom Brady; that fat Arctic bastard Santa Claus (mean!); and Marin County's very own Harvey Milk impersonator, Sean Penn. The nerve. more ›

• SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others.
• Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list.
• Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island.

--A source passes along these pictures of Gavin Newsom and Carole Migden at a Pride event some time back. We saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus! more ›

It was about a year and a half ago when we interviewed a colorful local eccentric about his plans to rip off and then go to the moon. Since then, things have been kind of quiet; but imagine our delight when we got an email, late last night, notifying us that a trailer for the film is finally available. Which is pretty impressive, since filming hasn't started yet. more ›

What, you don't believe in Santa Claus? Don't tell Dr.Lloyd Darrow, a self-proclaimed 'Santa-ologist', whose made it his life's mission to uncover the truth about this elusive fat man who visits us just once a year. Darrow's proof the jolly man exists include a lost video from a 1949 polar expedition, the Santa Papyrus dating from 1342 B.C., and an actual jingle bell found in the wreckage at Roswell, New Mexico. more ›

Happy Holidays! Chances are, you're reading this the day after Christmas, back at your day job after all-too-short a holiday, and the last thing you want from us is stuff about the holidays. But that's just too bad. Because, see, here in the Ist-A-Verse, we do things ahead of time. It might be December 26 for you, but that's what you get for not checking your Favorite Local Blog on Christmas Eve. more ›

Because we're sure nobody is really working right now as visions of sugar plum fairies dance through your head, we have another video to give you. Look at it as a bonus. And we're sure you've all seen this even if it's been only up for a few days . But what the hell, some of you we’re sure haven’t seen it and the thing is funnier the more you watch it. more ›

We'll admit to some stunted growth and immaturity on our parts. The Holidays brings that out of us. So you won't be surprised to learn that the only thing we're excited about watching tonight, (aside from a new episode of "Battlestar Galactica," of course), is the ultimate Rankin-Bass Christmas Special, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which CBS is running at 8 p.m. (followed by the slightly less stellar "Frosty the Snowman" at 9 p.m.). more ›

Hark! The herald angels at Left in SF heeded our plea and forwarded along some pictures of last night's singalong Christmas carol protest of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association's holiday party. more ›

Is nothing sacred? more ›

Check out The Bigamist tonight at the Balboa's Reel SF film fest! And Santa Claus legends negatively impact yet another man -- a guy in Hayward, high on unspecified drugs, got stuck trying to sneak back into his house through the chimney, naked. He was trying to rappel down the chimney using the cable TV wire on the roof when the cable snapped and he got stuck three-quarters of the way down. He was stuck there from about 2:30-6:30 a.m., when a neighbor overheard his cries for help. It then took the cops about an hour to push him back up. Four triathletes had to be rescued from the San Francisco bay by the SFPD boat crew and the Coast Guard, after they were swept into strong-moving currents Sunday morning that outpaced their companion safety boats. This is why we compete in the TV-watching/book-reading/music-listening Our Couch Triathlon every weekend instead! And this is a little outside of our coverage area, but a Santa Cruz woman is in custody after biting off the fingertip of a guy she was fighting with. Authorities say alcohol may have been a contributing factor (no way!). On the bright side, that guy can make some quick bucks selling that fingertip to someone who wants to dunk it in a bowl of Wendy's chili. more ›

To introduce Gilda (1946) at the Balboa Theater on Thursday, NoirCity founder Eddie Muller offered a familiar interpretation of the film: its protagonist (Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell), like its director (Charles Vidor), is confused about his sexuality. Now, we've always found this reading a little juvenile, and a little too easy--most film noir, after all, is about homoerotic relationships (see also: cowboy movies) and the beautiful, dangerous women who threaten them. In this setting, though, it was worse than lazy criticism: it produced that most annoying feature of the art-house moviegoing experience, the inside joke. You know this one: whenever something they've been told to watch for happens, moviegoers (clad, again, in fedoras--these must be the same people who wore tutus to the ballet when they were younger) laugh nervously, not because they're amused but because they get it. more ›

In our ongoing efforts to Stick It To The Man, we threw off the shackles of local cable giants and went with Alameda Power & Telecom for all of our cable service needs. One of the pleasant side effects has been getting public access channel 31, which produces the TV show "Monster Island Theatre." more ›

We here at SFist not so fondly remember our adolescent quest, our desire to find the true essence of rock and roll. With a puberty induced punk rock fervor, we wanted to be rock stars that would catch panties thrown at us with our teeth, smash our equipment, mosh with the gnarlyist metal heads, and captivate audiences with our own brand of rock and roll mayhem. What we got instead were guitar lessons from new age gurus and burnt out Vietnam veterans. Instead of learning how to rock, we played 12-bar blues and learned to pluck "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Our young idealist upstart selves needed to feel the raw emotion of rock. Even if our dumb fourteen-year-old selves just wanted to learn how to play "All the Small Things" by Blink 182. more ›

Wait a minute, starf**ks! We're just reporting the news! Don't sue us like you did to local artist Kieron Dwyer when he produced the image at right for his comic book series . Though we don't know much about the terms of your settlement with him, we do know that it wasn't terribly favorable to the artist, and includes such stipulations as that he's never allowed to design a circular logo ever again. The republic certainly can sleep safe tonight thanks to you. more ›

The anti-war protestor hit in the jaw with a wooden dowel that was fired by the Oakland police as "non-lethal crowd control" back in 2003 (and who was our yoga teacher's yoga teacher, for what it's worth) has settled with the City of Oakland for $210,000. One of her co-protestors got a settlement of $500,000. You know, this seems remarkably similar to our new obsession, that new game show Deal or No Deal. Speaking of TV shows... guess who's going to be on America's Most Wanted? The cop from the Village People! As you may recall, Victor Willis from Daly City has a bench warrant out for his arrest after failing to show up in court on his coke possession charges. Remember, folks -- the true Macho Man respects the law. The America's Most Wanted episode will probably air around February. And the Merc News ominously intones, "it's beginning to look a lot NOT like Christmas!!!" in a story about two 18-year-olds in Redwood City who've been on a holiday-accessory crime spree this year. Some of their haul included, among other things, a moose-head Christmas wreath that sings "Here Comes Santa Claus." Dude. We are totally going to get ourselves one of those too! more ›

Full of more holiday cheer than Santa Claus after a weekend bender in Vegas, Barrespondent Drew returns with more reasons to put down that A-Team DVD your friends gave you for Christmas as a joke and head out to the local. more ›

Sunday is Easter. Yes, ALREADY! Didn't we just celebrate Christmas? Weren't we just watching creepy Rankin/Bass puppetoon holiday specials mere weeks ago? more ›

Kron-4 is a non-stop laugh riot tonight. The always-adorable Mark Tamayo was wrapping up the weather by reporting that Santa had been sighted leaving the North Pole. A picture of a sleigh flashed on the screen. The following dialogue ensued: more ›

Well, we just heard Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" on the radio the other day (the kickoff song for the season), so it's official -- Santa Claus will be coming to town. And with him comes an assortment of Bay Area secular holiday entertainment -- kittens in the windows of Macy's, the Kristi Yamaguchi ice-skating rink at Justin Herman Plaza, caroling children thrown out of Union Square and then shamefacedly reinvited at the command of Mayor Gavvie Gav to sing at City Hall instead..... and how could we forget? Tap-dancing Christmas trees! The Oakland Trib profiles some of the more unique Bay Area Christmas entertainers, including the 28-member strong tap-dancing Christmas tree troupe, the trumpet-playing gorilla Santa Claus (he dresses up as Vampire Gorilla for Halloween), the Incredible Hulk Santa, and the Nerd Elf, among others. And The Standing Room gives us the lowdown on the itinerate life of the seasonal Dickensian caroler. (Who knew there were four verses of Jingle Bells?) So while you're frantically trying to get all your presents purchased (maybe at some of the stores we're profiling?), don't forget to kick back for a bit and enjoy the scene -- over a cup of scammed free cider from Williams-Sonoma. Pictures courtesy of The Standing Room. Check out that sexy tap-dancing Christmas tree hip-wiggle! more ›

Whether you plan on celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Chrismukkah, Kwanzaa, or Festivus, the month of December blows. Err...we mean the month of December is magical. If you'd prefer to experience some of that magic from the comfort and safety of your own home, we've got a few TV viewing suggestions. more ›

transportation news in the Bay Area more ›