In 1996 The Portland Cacophony Society hosted Portland Santacon ‘96, the third annual Santacon event (the first two took place in San Francisco). 40 Santas from the San Francisco Cacophony Society boarded a Southwest Airlines flight to join other Cacophonist Santas from around the country who were all converging in Portland.
I brought my video camera along, shooting the Santarchy as it unfolded, chronicling the non-stop cat-and-mouse game between the naughty Santas and the police. I edited the video I shot into my 40 minute Dragnet-style documentary “You’d Better Watch Out: Portland Santacon ‘96”.
I used to send copies of the video to people planning Santacons in various cities, as a kind of Santarchy training video. At long last I have finally posted the video online in it’s entirety for the whole world to enjoy, thanks to our friends at Blip.tv.
Along with The Cacophony Society, the documentary features Art Cars, 24 Hour Church of Elvis, plus Chicken John and his Circus Redickuless.
Here are the production credits, along with a review by Jack Boulware.
The video was shot on HI-8 and manually edited on SVHS (no fancy non-linear editing) at Film Arts Foundation (FAF) and Artists’ Television Access (ATA).
UPDATE: For more Santacon videos from the archives, check out Weird America’s coverage of San Francisco Santacon 1995 and Los Angeles Santacon 1997.
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I think my favorite is the frisk700!
I think we need one of those in Austin! so visionary of 96… considering todays airline security I think we should make all the santas strip to skivvies.
rad. YBWO:PS’96 is what I’d show people who came to visit me in SF and asked what I was up to. These are the weird who are too weird to even want to go pro. Go ahead, sit on their laps. Thanks Scott, as always, for amplifying the most interesting stuff going on. Amazing that it’s now all online. Yes, Virginia, there really is an internets.
Wow this is too fabulous. (And heck, I didn’t know you could film inside an airplane…) I’ve heard about Santacon a lot this year, and it’s great to get a glimpse inside the reality. Love the voiceover, too…just wonder: where is Hanukkah Harry?
A year or two ago, walking in Santa Monica one fine December day, I passed 500 Bad Santas parading down the promenade. Took a few pix. I was just looking at them, and wondered if I could find anything about it on the web. And so I came to this site. Loved the video.
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