As Seen By Me, NYC Holiday Photos By Lee ©: NYC SantaCon (Santa Convention) 2009 Pics

I must apologize for the first part of this post because it is totally self indulgent. Lol! :D

Man, am I getting old! Lol!! As soon as I finish posting this I plan to fully enjoy the rest of my day. I was awoken by the BEST EVER birthday serenades! My family and friends are JUST THE "BESTEST!!"

Ok, now on to the true topic of this post. :)

I don't know if any of you all that are visiting the site have actually been to a Santacon, but if you haven't I really think it is something to experience at least once! Below you will see the description for NYC's Santacon, but Santacons occur in multiple cities and countries. Santacons can be a bit crass and adult-oriented so in order to be able to not have to mark this blog as X-rated I have edited the NYC description, taken from the actual site, to make it PG and will not directly link to either the parent site (that lists all the Santacons) or the NYC site. You can google them on your own if you want more information and/or want to download the mentioned X-rated jingles booklet.

Despite how crass the description is, I have found the Santacons I have attended to actually be fun and PG-rated (as long as you don't enter the bars! Lol!) and children have attended them. In addition to being fun, Santacon actually does good work through its food drive collection.

Last year's Santacon started with everyone meeting on 35th Street in Manhattan and then moving down to the HUGE, 2 city blocks wide 34th Street Post Office. So many Santas attended that all two blocks worth of the stairs were covered with Santas. (The picture below only shows about half of the width of the stairs.)

I have heard it said that NYC's Santacon is the biggest of the all the Santacons and that some people no longer attend the Santacon near them, but instead travel to attend ours. I guess the massive growth of our Santacon is the reason why this years start was different. Instead of one central meeting location there was five starting points, two in Brooklyn, one in Queens, one in Staten Island (if they do the same thing next year, maybe I will start in SI because I think pics of a ferry full of nothing but Santas would be terrific! :D) and one in Jersey. The plan was that eventually all locations would meet up later in the day in one central location, but things didn't quite turn out that way. One of the bad things about Santacon is that the organizers are anonymous and getting clear directions of the "official" movement of the "convention" can be quite difficult. Having five different starting locations made this difficulty quite worse and honestly I hope they go back to one central starting point next year. However, I don't know if they will be able to do so without getting some sort of official "gathering permit."

Here is the PG description of NYC's Santacon "rules".

Disclaimer: I just want to explicitly state that when you see photos of children that I asked all the parents/adults if it was okay to take and post pictures of their children and received their permission.

I went to the Eastern Parkway/Franklin Ave. Brooklyn staring point and though ultimately we did end up with a nice sized group, I missed the MASSIVE starting group of last year.

Hope you have Fun enjoying the pics and if you can you should definitely try to attend a 2010 Santacon near you! :D

Of course there was a police presence, but they really weren't needed because things were remained calm and festive.

Now this is my idea of Holiday Unity! :D

All of the costumes were SO GREAT!!!

When I saw this guy I remembered him from last year, but this year he had a few additions. :D :D Here he was last year as Bail Out Santa ....

..... and this year. :D

This picture is from last year, but this couple was there again this year (and dressed the same), but I was not able to get a good picture of them.

I LOVE how this woman and another woman below incorporated their pregnancies into their costumes. :D

Just in case one didn't eat breakfast before they came .... :)

Awww! How Cute! :D

Need a table?! Lol!! :D :D

Pimp Santa, without ....

and with his "Ladies."

Would you necessarily take candy from this Santa? Lol! Just Joking! :D :D

There were international Santas.

Mexican Santas ...

.... and a South African Santa.

But of course I am a bit partial to the good old USA Santa! :D

This was another repeat couple. Here they were last year ...

... and this year.

This couple was actually advocating for SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) Awareness. She was a light box that is used to treat SAD and he was medication used to treat SAD. I really liked them and their outfits!

This was Hands Down the BEST costume of the day! :D :D

Guess who was on her Naughty list ....

I just LOVE those slippers! :D :D

The Santas then moved to in front of the Brooklyn Museum. Not quite as big a gathering as last years in front of the 34th street post office shown above, but still Very Fun!