There's a new Santa Pub Crawl in town. What? You never knew that there was an old one? Neither did the new one. Sound confusing? It gets more confusing. There's also a SantaCon (Santa Convention) as of this year. A couple of nights ago I met up with one of the original Santas, Jim Kupczyk (from the Santa Pub Crawl for Charity), who gave me the lowdown regarding this year's pub crawl. Then yesterday morning I received an email from Evan Pond, who is helping to organize a different Santa Pub Crawl. "We tried contacting the Santas from the original group," Evan expressed. "But we never heard anything back from them. So we figured that they were no longer around. This will be our third pub crawl, and we've got a lot of Santas this year. I'm surprised to hear that there's [still] another Santa Pub Crawl besides ours... we were aware that SantaCon was happening this year, just not another Santa Pub Crawl. I'd like to be a part of that one too."
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The original Santa Pub Crawl (est. 2004) takes place this Friday. It starts at Coles and is a pre-pay, exclusive event - instead of a sleigh, the Santas take two 40-passenger limo buses which carry them to a variety of bars before ending up at SoHo Burger Bar with an open-to-the-public post-party called Santa Clause (starts at 11:00pm - donation of $15 with toy and $25 without - goes towards Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital - open bar). The best way to connect with that Santa group is to know a member. Then, the newest Santa Pub Crawl (Facebook) takes place on December 17th in Allentown. The open event starts at Fat Bob's at 6:30pm and is a benefit for Carly's Club. I find it interesting that the majority of this group's members are female... did you hear that you single Santas out there? Finally, SantaCon is (also) scheduled for December 17th at noon, with Santas meeting on the front steps of City Hall at Niagara Square. The group is calling the event a North Pole Stroll, and is a spin-off from the national SantaCons events. The final destination for SantaCon is Chippewa, which leaves us with three very different Santa events for very different types of Santa personalities. Which Santa are you?
I actually did the NYC santacon 2 years ago, it was awesome. The event there has people start at different venues in each borough and then every borough's group meets up in manhattan and strolls around parks, bars, public transportation, etc. The responses from people are classic and the participants get really into it. It's not just about Santa costumes either, there's reindeer and snowmen and mrs clause costumes, people got pretty creative! It's a really good time, I'd recommend people look into attending one In our city, I know I'm gonna try to do it!