No fucking warning = megabitching

I thought it was well worded, OP. I just wish I hadn't driven back over to the city.

If only others could see that:

santacon.tribe.net/thread/9...cc9fe8e7e

;)

And I'm not whining as much about my need for a published route as much as I am saying to stop blaming it on the police. I used to work in law enforcement, so I know this excuse is not at all accurate.

Just about every SantaCon regardless of where it is at least has the Santas knowing what general metropolitan area they're going to be in well in advance, so they know how to plan to get there, get around, and get their drunk asses home, without expecting to be "taken care of" in an unfamiliar city by a bunch of organizers who they don't know.

Ya better watch out...
you better not cry
you better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is fu....cking your clown

The original point of that line was countering the claims that SantaCon is all "spontaneous" and unplanned, when it's not.


I would have volunteered to help out, if I had known of a way to do so (i.e. advance notice). I can't see any calls for volunteers in any of these locations:

sanfranciscosantarchy.wordpress.com/
santarchy.com/
www.santacon.com/
santacon.tribe.net/

'Course, public notice then gets into that perpetual cycle of "We can't make a public call for help, because then the cops could infiltrate us, but we could use more people to help, but we can't make a public call for help..."

I did get lucky and found out the night before how I could help build robot costumes and join in the Robot Rumble in Berkeley. I've posted here that I'll volunteer help to plan and organize for the future. The level of secrecy surrounding this, though, makes it hard to help out.

"we were hoping people would splinter."
"people got impatient and missed out on many of the fun activities that were in store."

So why were so many surprised that there was so much complaining?

People were complaining because they were worried that the red tide would splinter and/or people wouldn't be able to find it, and they, or their friends, would miss out on "many of the fun activities that were in store." And it happened.

And ho boy was txtmob so not up to the task.

I did my best to help out. I was sending txtmobs from Berkeley onwards (loading the website on my phone's browser, which was painful, but sending actual texts wasn't working for me). I could only send to the SFSantaConRevolt txtmob, though, because I didn't have access to send to the santarchy one. I was updating my Twitter feed, which helped some Santas join up. I also posted some updates here on Tribe, which may have at least gotten some Santas to join in at the tail end at Zeitgeist. I would have updated prior to Berkeley, but I got details the night before about the Robot Rumble, so I drove over, helped build robot costumes, and joined in as a robot myself.

As I posted in another thread here, I'll volunteer to help out in the future, via txtmob/Twitter/Pownce/website updates/whatever, as long as I can get the info needed to make it happen. I'll help planning/scouting locations, and whatever else necessary, too.

And y'know, if people were hoping the red tide was going to splinter, it would have been easy to accomplish that. Just tell everyone in advance that there's going to be separate contingents, with multiple starting points. The complaints then, if any, would have been reduced to mostly "But which one do I join??"

this was my first CA santacon, as ive mentioned. it was great fun! pier 39 was a good kick off, i loved hearing some guy say 'what is this, a santa convention?" i told him he was exactly right, and i would have given him a prize had i not been running from the bathroom to catch the ferry. i havent taken the ferry to jack london square before, we sang on the top deck. i have a few santa friends who live close by who were waiting for us on the other side. yay!

i had read about the bitching here at one point, about oakland vs SF. when it came time to split, i chose the o-town side, even though this is my first SF santacon... but i wanted to be with the real santas, not the whiny bitches! so off to berkeley we went!

i loved chatting up so many santas over random things, repeating myself constantly and laughing my ass off. and i only had to wait in a long bathroom line, once. that was amazing! but, what was up with the stretcher at jupiter? anyone know? heard some nasty rumors about that one.

went back to SF around dark, and was a little jealous to hear the santas had been around union sq and macys and whatnot. while i loved talking to the santas, in hindsight i had spent a lot of time standing outside of places talking to other santas, and not much time interacting with the public. this makes me feel like i missed out, just a little. i love freakin' the normals! :)

as for no warning, i dont see that as being much of a problem, really. if you plan to go all day, what does it matter where you are so long as youre with santa?! a few years ago in NYC there was a lot of bitching over santacon planning, a few burners were planning that year, and a few cacophony peoples were very worried that it would become a bar crawl. there was much discussion of this, which i think helped set a standard of non-bar stops: grand central station, santa dodegball in central park, riding the subway, visiting the rockefeller center tree, brooklyn bridge, etc. its still a bar crawl to some extent, it just takes awhile to get to one :)

it was lovely meeting you all, santas! see you next year if not before!