Results tagged “santaclaus”

Merry Christmas! It's bright and sunny in New York, with a high of 45 degrees (it may be windy). We hope your enjoy your day.

'Tis the time of year when NORAD, the "bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada," turns its attention to tracking a certain visitor from the North Pole. The NORAD Tracks Santa website features a map showing where Santa has gone and NORAD also has an explanation of how Santa can work the way he does:

The fact that Santa Claus is more than 16 centuries old, yet does not appear to age, is our biggest clue that he does not work within time as we know it. His Christmas Eve trip may seem to take around 24 hours, but to Santa it may last days, weeks or even months in standard time. Santa would not want to rush the important job of distributing presents to children and spreading Christmas happiness everyone, so the only logical conclusion is that Santa functions within a different time-space continuum than the rest of us do.

The US Postal Service reopened a newly modified Operation Santa Claus yesterday after it had been temporarily shut down earlier this week following a "breach of security" when a postal worker discovered that a registered sex offender in Maryland "adopted" one of the hundreds of thousands of letters to Santa sent in by needy children this holiday season.

The U.S. Postal Service shut down its beloved Operation Santa program, where people can take letters to Santa written by needy children and send those kids gifts. The NY Times has the grim explanation:

A Postal Service official in Washington, after an initial, limited acknowledgment of a “privacy breach,” said that at one of the programs, not New York’s, a man whom a letter carrier recognized as a registered sex offender had “adopted” a letter. When postal officials confronted the man, the official said, he said he was sincerely trying to do a good deed, but postal inspectors nonetheless retrieved the letter and notified the family of the child.

The double-parking Santa who got a big 'ol ticket as an early Christmas present is speaking out! The Daily News reports that "he appreciates the outpouring of support, but he won't accept any charity to pay the $115 fine." He doesn't, however, want to pay it himself either. Commonly known as Chip Cafiero, he says he is "very appreciative to hear that so many people want to help him out, but as a matter of principle, we have to fight this ticket." Allegedly he'd like to prove a point about parking in the area; "These meter maids are harassing our small businesses in Bay Ridge, and it is time that we make a stand and fight for what's right. All those people who wanted to help Santa may be getting something a little extra special under the tree this year." Cafiero was dressed as Claus to hand out gifts to children when he was ticketed—so many, including Marty Markowitz, have rallied to support him.

Santa may be able to fly fast through the sky, but when it comes to parking he's got to follow the law like the rest of us civilians. The Daily News reports that one Santa (The Santa?) double-parked his sleigh SUV on Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, and "neighbors and politicians demanded the summons be quashed." But James Huntley, "who heads Local 1182, defended the agent who slapped a ticket on Chip Cafiero's SUV." He also added that seeing the driver in a Santa suit wouldn't have changed the law, and notes that calling the agent a Grinch or Scrooge isn't going to make matters better (is that a threat?). Marty Markowitz, whose office sponsored the event that Santa was at, said "It's the holidays. In these situations, there should be a combination of common sense and holiday spirit instead of humbug." Free double-parking at Brooklyn Borough Hall for everyone in a Santa hat!

Mayor Bloomberg spent Saturday the same way many New Yorkers did—taking advantage of one of the final weekend days to get some shopping done before the holidays arrive. But unlike most, the mayor was playing not-so-secret Santa for two young Washington Heights siblings who had written their letter to St. Nick and addressed it to City Hall. They mayor picked up some sneakers, a basketball and a Hannah Montana gloves-and-hat set that were requested in the letter from 7-year-old Bryan Diaz, who said it was the first year his mother figured out the address to Santa. The mayor spent over a $135 on the pair in what's become a holiday tradition—not just for Bloomberg, but for guests of his holiday party at Gracie Mansion, who each year take one of the letters to Santa that wind up at City Hall. The mayor did his shopping yesterday at a Modell's in the Queens Center Mall, skipping the one near his home on the Upper East Side because as a spokesman said, "He is the mayor of all five boroughs."

      

While some folks were out en masse to encourage New Yorkers to "Buy Nothing" yesterday, the Volunteers of America kicked off the holiday season by sending their Santas down Fifth Avenue for the 104th Sidewalk Santa Parade in hopes of discovering the spirit of generosity as the holiday season got underway.

Today's Post has discovered the latest way to point out just how tightly all of our purse strings are being pulled by tugging at our heart strings and highlighting the latest group to feel the burn of the tanking economy: holiday Santas. The paper talks to a number of Santas who are not surprisingly seeing a downturn in the Santa presence being used this year by malls and holiday hot spots around town like FAO Schwartz and Tavern on the Green--even Volunteers for America are taking them off the sidewalks. One Kris Kringle tells the paper that the $30,000 he made two years ago will likely be $3,000 this season. The situation is so grave that recently it was recently reported that the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas, which represents 700 Santas, held a series of meetings to discuss their economic survival. Where will Santas turn with all this time on their hands?

• SFist saw Christmas Day turn tragic after a Siberian tiger escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo, killing a visitor and mauling two others.
• Phillyist counted down the top ten items on Philadelphia's New Year's wish list.
• Gothamist looked at the wooden bikes being offered for NYC's first bike share program on Governors Island.

One of the most famous editorials of all time appeared in September 21, 1897 issue of the The NY Sun. Ten-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's letter asking, "Is there a Santa Claus" was published with a response by editor Francis Pharcellus Church that now appears reprinted in newspapers year after year (though many times with one paragraph - the third to last - deleted).

Have some extra cash to spend around the holiday season? Even the littlest bit can go a long way in the over 80 year old Operation Santa program. Every year letters pile up at the James A. Farley Post Office from (mostly needy) kids writing to Santa Claus (read one of them here). Their wish lists don't make it to the North Pole, but with New Yorkers pitching in every year, it's as if they did. There's still time to pick up a letter so you can help make someone's Christmas a little more merry this year. Head to the Farley Post Office (bring an ID) located at 421 Eighth Ave today through 4pm or Monday (from 9 to 4:30pm). Note: they are currently in desperate need of people who can read Spanish.

Perhaps it was the near-freezing temperatures at yesterday's Jets-Browns game that kept breasts covered, but that weather didn't stop crowds from flocking to Gate D at Giants Stadium for a halftime ritual - men yelling at women to expose their breasts and throwing bottles or spitting at them if they don't. Despite an attempt to shut down rowdy fan behavior at Gate D, things didn't seem to change that much at all since new procedures...

'Tis the season...not only for typical holiday shopping, but for auctions as well (the auction season kicked off earlier this month when a Matisse sold for over $33M). So what's the ultimate gift this year? If you missed out on the $18.5M Faberge egg, how about the Norman Rockwell painting of Santa Claus? The painting, titled Extra Good Boys and Girls, is expected to take in between $2.5 and $3.5 million, according to Christie's New...

An update about the Tuesday-night incident where a reckless 19-year-old driver hit a bicyclist in Staten Island: The Staten Island Advance reports that Leon Wilson was high on painkillers while driving. And his past driving experience was so terrible that his learner's permit had been revoked in January. Yet somehow, he was behind the wheel of a rental car on Tuesday night, crashing into 47-year-old Juan-Han Guan, who had been biking home.

If you ever thought that military spending was ill-advised, think again. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is tracking Santa with the NORAD Tracks Santa 2006 website. There's a live map of Santa's whereabouts, as well as videos at some places he stops. And how do they do this?

Detecting Santa all starts with the NORAD radar system called the North Warning System. This powerful radar system has 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America. NORAD makes a point of checking the radar closely for indications of Santa Claus leaving the North Pole on Christmas Eve.

Continue reading "Map of the Day: Norad Santa Tracking"

A look at some noteworthy programs this week:

THEATER: The Gershwin Hotel hosts a reading of History of Man, “an irreverent look at the past, the fear of aging and the meaning of plastic surgery.” It’s the second collaboration between award-winning director Esther Bell, whose feature films Exist and Godass (starring TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe) made a big splash, and Bruce Mason, who describes himself as a “freelance publicist/consultant/drifter.” (The Times dubbed him a “swarthy Noel Coward”.) - John Del Signore

On Saturday afternoon, Jose Sanchez and his fiance Sonia Lopez took their baby son to see Santa Claus at Macy's. Later that evening, Sanchez was crossing Conduit Avenue in East New York when a speeding car struck and killed him. The driver, Rudolph Daniels of Cleveland, was arrested and charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and driving without insurance; Daniels's license was already suspended in New York. The Post reports that he was driving "at least 48-mph in a 30-mph zone when he tried to pass another car" when he hit Sanchez. A witness tells the NY Times that he saw a second car drive over Sanchez, but the police have not confirmed that account.

After the display of a Santa Claus holding a decapitated doll's head in front of his East 18th Street townhouse, it's not surprising to think of Joel Krupnik as a wacky and/or eccentric neighbor. However, chasing a 13 year-old girl and attacking her with dog poo that her Chihuahua left in front of his house is pretty much going into new territory in terms of bad neighbors. The Post reports that the 13 year-old's 4 pound dog pooped on the sidewalk - and did not scoop. That's a fine-able offense! Unfortunately Krupnik didn't make a citizen's arrest - he just chased her to her apartment building and smeared dog poop in her hair and on her CATHOLIC SCHOOL UNIFORM. The girl's mother claimed the daughter didn't see the dog poop near a tree and said, "She's just a baby. She's scared and afraid. He's the creepiest person in the neighborhood. He's not friendly at all. He's scary looking." Then why walk the dog in front of his house? We would imagine Krupnik is peering out of his windows, waiting for someone to pull stunts like that. Krupnik was arrested for "criminal mischief and menacing" and was "expected to spend the night in custody."

It might be hard to get to a theatre in time to see any of these picks, but here goes. Even with our fairly averse attitude toward holiday-specific performances, it’s hard not to notice that the current crop of shows is pretty heavy on the fractured fairytale side of things. Except for kids, there’s almost no straightforward telling of a Christmas- (or other holiday) related story. We’re not complaining, but it does make it harder to pick out something as the zaniest take on the genre. Broken Watch Theatre Company’s A Broken Christmas Carol (a 21st century, NC-17 version) and the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre Company’s Christmas Carol, Oy Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa, Happy Ramadan (a version “with Old World accents and New World inclusiveness” – Scrooge would not approve) show that Dickens’s story is still the go-to touchstone for holiday theatre. Maybe because it’s so omnipresent, we can’t help but be a bit more drawn to Jeffrey Solomon’s one-man Santa Claus is Coming Out (or, How the Gay Agenda Came Down My Chimney) which is playing three nights at Queens Theatre in the Park. Solomon takes on a dozen plus characters in this reprisal of mockumentary about the jolly red guy with the giant belly. Oh, if the people howling about a “war on Christmas” could see all this now…not that they’d expect much more from us NYC heathens, of course.

This past weekend, the city's main post office, the James A. Farley branch started its annual Operation Santa program. The post office receives thousands of letters to Santa from needy children, and people can pick up a letter (or two or ten) and give gifts to the children. You can get letters one of two ways: (1) Go to the Farley Post Office (8th Avenue at 33rd Street) in person to pick from the letters in person; or (2) call 877-840-0459 to have letters sent to you (you can also pick what boroughs your letters come from...and you'll receive a confirmation number!). We're going to be Secret Santa to some kids this year, because everyone needs a little Christmas.

Anyone who has ever worked in a bar will tell you that Thanksgiving is one of their busiest days of the year- what they don't tell you is that the day, like Black Friday, also begins the Christmas drinking. We thought that there was no better place to start drowning the sorrows that sing Christmas carols than at a bar so festooned with tinsel and lights, it actually makes us wonder if they are hiding elves. From the windows filled with Nutcrackers and angels posed in from of domestic beer signs, to the tiny Christmas trees on every table and the tinsel hanging off every ceiling fan there isn't an inch of the place that doesn't look like the holiday exploded all over it. Our favorite table had a mini-pointsettia jockeying for space with a selection of Quikdraw lottery forms, right under the Budweiser digital clock.

Strong winds caused the M &M's balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to hit a street lamp whose light fell onto two spectators. The light, at 43rd Street and Times Square, dropped 30 feet onto a pair of sisters - and as you can see in the photo of the light, those suckers are big. The NY Times reports that 11 year old Sarah Chamberlain "had a chipped tooth and was cut in the back of the head" (now there are 9 stitches); her 26 year old sister Mary, who was in a wheelchair, had a CAT scan. Their father, Stephen Chamberlain, said, "It was a freak accident. We're very lucky. We're counting our blessings. Sarah's main concern was that she didn't see Santa Claus after the parade - so Macy's sent Santa to the hospital." Not only did Santa visit Sarah, but Mayor Bloomberg as well! The Mayor promised to form a task force to look into the accident, just as Mayor Giulliani did when the Cat in the Hat balloon hit a streetlamp that fell on top of a woman who then went into a coma. At any rate, Stephen Chamberlain said they would visit the parade next year; we imagine that Macy's will be offering them prime seats, as well as a settlement.

The first, and very possibly best, advice we got when we returned to the Big City after our self-imposed exile to the Midwest was twofold: "Don't take taxicabs and don't pay ATM fees."

The Metrocard is dispensable in ways that the MTA probably never guessed. In fact, the subways seem to be the transport of choice for suspected sex attacker, Peter Braunstein, who has been dodging the police for the past two weeks. The NY Post says that the NYPD has been able to track Braunstein's whereabouts because he purchased an unlimited Metrocard with his credit card, putting him at West Fourth Street and near Richmond Hill on various days. But the lagtime between receiving the information and getting detectives there takes a while - and Braunstein's unlimited card expired. We supposes the MTA never installed a special alarm if someone's card was swiped through, sort of like a "You're the millionth shopper" acknowledgement.

Gothamist loved loved LOVED the City section article about the teacher's cat who answers sixth graders' questions at MS 391, a specialized school known as Tapco, the Theater Arts Production Company, in the Bronx. Not only can kids write to Sophia the cat for love advice or to say that their teacher (and Sophia's owner) Craig Roberts shouldn't use their slang ("Please tell him to stay in his age group"), but they get class visits from her! Man, all Gothamist had as class pets were the occasional baby chick, newt, frog or dimestore goldfish. Best quotes about whether or not Sophia could really answer their questions:

Demetrious Cacheres, expressed his feelings more strongly. "I haven't sent her letters," he said, "because personally I feel it's ridiculous."

Continue reading "The Cat Who Knew How to Write"

Doug Williams, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

Did you have any nightmarish experiences while shopping this weekend? What are some of the non-harmful-spray tactics people use to get their goods?