You better watch out, as Santacon is back on Saturday. But many SF bars are actually rolling out the red carpet to welcome the Santas, a pretty remarkable culture shift for this jolly old event that had gotten too blitzened.

The naughty list will surely grow larger on Saturday, as the “fat, bearded Bay To Breakers” known as SantaCon will draw an expected 12,000 red-nosed revelers. The flash mob of Santas will begin congregating in Union Square at 12 noon, and then rooty-toot-toot and rummy-tum-tum all over town in ways that are impossible to predict, but the red menace will likely migrate towards neighborhoods with plenty of bars.

Santacon’s horrible reputation has been richly deserved. Deplorable Santas have become known for leaving a stream of broken bottles, vomit, and urine behind them, and many bars have banned Santacon revelers. As the event spread nationwide, a frustrated New York resident penned an angry 2013 New York Times op-ed begging city officials to “Bring Drunken Santas Under Control.” But the nadir of Santacon may have have arrived in SF in 2012, when Eater SF published their handy “NO SANTAS: Go back to the North Pole” signage for establishments.

“There are still some bars that have that sign,” laughs current SF SantaCon organizer “Santa Tom” DiBell, a retired Marine who’d previously been a mall Santa for 20 years. Santa Tom took over organizing the SF SantaCon more than 10 years ago when he saw how it became defined by drunken and boorish behavior.

“Bars saw it as the bane of their existence. They hated Santas. They hated SantaCon and everything going along with it. And they wanted absolutely nothing to do with it,” Santa Tom told SFist this week. “Those voices from ten years ago are still haunting me. These are people who have told the city they would like us to go away.”

But San Francisco is still a town that loves to day-drink, especially when costumes are involved. And over those ten-plus years, Santa Tom has shepherded SantaCon from blood-alcohol poisoning life support to a most wonderful time of the year where bars are actually welcoming the Santas, and the Santas are coming to town hard for one of SF most worthy charitable causes.

Hark, how the heck did he do this?

“I had some experience with crowd control, I spent some time working for Bill Graham Presents,” Santa Tom explains to us. “Bill Graham was always big on how crowds should be handled. One of the ways, to quote him, was ‘Give them a center of attention, and the crowd will be much more manageable.’”

One of the ways Santa Tom changed the culture of SantaCon was to make Union Square a more focal gathering point, encouraging the Santas to delight (and not terrorize) families and children. But he also made Union Square the physical centerpiece of SantaCon’s partnership with the SF Firefighters Toy Program, for which SantaCon SF alone now brings in nearly 10,000 toys per year for Bay Area kids in need.

But the most remarkable change has been how the previously reviled SantaCon hoi polloi are now being specifically welcomed to nearly 100 bars and restaurants in town.

“It’s a huge amount of money that comes into the city one day every year,” Sata Tom says. “Some bars have told me unequivocally that SantaCon is the best day of the year for them. Bigger than New Year's Eve, bigger than Halloween. There’s no other event in the city that has people going out to bars and restaurants like SantaCon does.”

There is now an official SF SantaCon map that lists nearly 80 bars and restaurants that are very specifically rolling out the red carpet for the SantaCon riffraff. Obviously, these last ten years have seen the advent of the holiday-themed pop-up bars, which did not exist before, and are likelier to welcome people in garish Christmas attire. But the bottom line is money, and the unwashed Santas are now bringing in more revenue than trouble — unlike the rudderless SantaCons of Christmas past.

“No one really understands that like the bars that are welcoming the Santas,” according to Santa Tom. “The bars are welcoming the Santas in. And that’s a big change from what it was ten years ago when I first started on this thing.”

And what’s this? The Handlery Union Square Hotel is now a SantaCon sponsor? Yes they are, and they even call themselves “The official SantaCon Headquarters.”

“The Handlery has actually been working with the Fire Department and the Toy Drive for a number of years,” Santa Tom explains. “The Fire Department used to run [the toy drive] out of Lefty O’Doul’s.” (Lefty O’Doul’s, of course, is no longer available as a venue.)

Now SF SantaCon has numerous bars and venues as sponsors, but none of them give money, as SantaCon is a free event. The sponsors generally provide prizes and venue space for the day’s various SantaCon contests, like costume contests and photo contests.

But the biggest gift under the tree is now SantaCon SF’s contribution to the SF Firefighters Toy Program annual toy drive. In his his first year organizing SantaCon SF, Santa Tom managed to scare up 900 toys donated, without much real planning

“Here it is 11 years later, and last year we collected over 8,000, approaching 9,000 toys,” according to Santa Tom. “And the San Francisco Firefighters Toy Program run by the union local is absolutely ecstatic with SantaCon and the participants that are bringing toys to the event. We were told three years ago that we were the single largest donator of toys to the program. And that is a big deal.”

The abominable snowman known as SantaCon dates back to 1994, first organized by the anarchist-prankster collective called the Cacophony Society. It grew in size, and to cities across the world. The original organizers grew dissatisfied with the increasingly large crowds’ loutish behavior, and even declared SantaCon dead in 2014.

Yes, there are still some scattered flurries of bad behavior at SF SantaCon. And worse yet, there are still hucksters charging money to attend SantaCon, so will remind you that SantaCon SF is a free event and does not requeire paid admission or a wristband. Though still, some SEO-scamming bottom-feeders like SantaConSF.com, SanFranciscoSantaCon.com, and PubCrawls.com San Francisco SantaCon are trying to hawk $20-$35 wristbands to this event that is free. And those con artists are all in on the cheesecake advertising, like the above AI-generated image of Kimberly Guilfoyle in a hat five sizes too large.

It could be worse. In New York City, the official SantaCon NYC suggests a $17 donation for a wristband, claiming the money goes to charity. But a 2023 Gothamist investigation showed they were spending most of that money on Burning Man camps and failed crypto investments.  

Meanwhile, the original SF SantaCon is still free, and still going strong 31 years after its virgin birth. The event is making its peace in earth with the bars it used to trash, and is a top contributor to one of the holiday season’s greatest charitable causes in the SF Firefighters’ toy drive.

"That has become my focus over the last five years or so,” Santa Tom tells SFist. “And if a bunch of  drunk Santas can be the center of that drive, then by god, I’m going to agree to that.”

SantaConSF is Saturday, December 13 beginning at 12 noon in Union Square, and continues at various venues across town all day.

Related: Hold On to Your Hats: Santacon Rears Its Bearded Head Again Saturday [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist