Warming to the cult of Snuggie

The faithful lined up, two to three deep at the bar, looking like Druids in electric-blue fleece. Tim Jester and Brian Griffiths, two young San Francisco guys in polo shirts, leaned against a railing, surveying the scene.

They had gone to the Rouge nightclub on Polk Street on a Friday night without any idea that it was the starting point for a 200-person Snuggie pub crawl and were a bit confused.

"I think they need more colors besides blue," Griffiths said. "It needs more diversity."

"It looks cultish. Very cultish," Jester said.

Dedicated wearers of the fleece-blanket-with-sleeves would have a hard time disagreeing with that statement, seeing as many of the hundreds of Facebook fan groups set up to celebrate Snuggies list it as a "religion."

The Snuggie is not the first product to imbue fleece with robelike properties - figure-obscuring leisure wear has been knocking around catalogs for years - but since hitting the market in October, Snuggies have hit a cultural nerve.

Buoyed by an inadvertently funny and rhyming commercial ("Blankets are OK, but they can slip and slide/ and when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside"), Snuggies have sold more than 4 million units through online orders and Walgreens drugstores, where they go for a mere $14.99. (Blue is the only Snuggie color sold at Walgreens; online, red and green Snuggies are also available.)

The San Francisco Snuggie pub crawl is the brainchild of Oakland resident Keith Charles F. (he preferred to not give his last name or his occupation), 25, and Patricia Prislin, 24, of San Francisco. About a month ago, the pair, who met on Yelp, got to chatting about a similar pub crawl earlier this year in Chicago. (Snuggie pub crawls are a national phenomenon, with forthcoming events in Des Moines, Iowa; Scranton, Pa.; and Burlington, Vt., to name a few, according to Snuggiepubcrawls.com.)

In about three hours, according to Keith Charles, they had created Yelp and Facebook pages dedicated to a Bay Area event. Within weeks, they mapped a route down Polk Street, starting at the Rouge Lounge and rolling downhill, and secured drink specials for Snuggie wearers.

At the Snuggie pub crawl where a bunch of people meeting up in their wearable fleece blankets are now dancing at Vertigo in San Francisco, Calif., on Friday, March 20, 2009. At the Snuggie pub crawl where a bunch of people meeting up in their wearable fleece blankets are now dancing at Vertigo in San Francisco, Calif., on Friday, March 20, 2009. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Warming to the cult of Snuggie 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

One catch: Snuggies were selling out at their major vendor, Walgreens. "We kept moving the date back because people were not going to get their Snuggies in time," Keith Charles said before the event. "Don't tell anyone, but I got a red one off of eBay."

Keith Charles and Prislin went beyond just asking people to wear Snuggies in public. They organized an "American Idol"-style costume competition with categories for best male, best female, best group, best couple and sluttiest Snuggie.

Keith Charles had contacted Allstar Products Group, of Hawthorne, N.Y., maker of Snuggies, but the company didn't seem to want formal connection to the bar hoppers. "If I were them, I'd have sent a few marketing reps and a box of Snuggies," Keith Charles said.

For his part, Allstar Marketing chief executive Scott Boilen says that the pub crawls are "fun and unique," but Allstar has no plans to host them.

Beyond the sheer number of Snuggie-wearing people flooding the bar, there was one person in particular who attracted attention: local oddball celebrity Frank Chu, carrying his 12 Galaxies sign, and standing resplendent in a blue, borrowed Snuggie. "It feels comfortable," he said, as people snapped his photo a few minutes later. "It looks like something from a church choir."

The event started promptly at 8 p.m., although Keith Charles - who had transformed his maroon Snuggie into a gladiator's outfit with gold trim, a gold mask and gold sword - didn't arrive until around 8:30. One group of friends from San Francisco, dolled up in Hawaiian attire with leis and coconut bras over the fleece, snagged a table early on at Rouge.

They had spent considerable time on their outfits. "We were in Party City for a good hour," said Alison Berding. "We considered a lot of costumes - Playboy Bunny, Pirate, Fiesta. This was best suited for everyone."

"We stapled the bottoms so we wouldn't drag," Erica Yoli added.

Organizer Prislin stood out in the crowd: She had turned her red Snuggie into a matador outfit. She sat with her friend and co-worker Jenny "Snuggi-hontas" Wilner, whose American Indian-inspired getup, with fringes and beads, later won sluttiest Snuggie honors. They estimated that assembling their outfits, with the gluing of ribbons and beads and whatnot, took about two to three hours each.

Prislin's relationship to her Snuggies is uncommonly strong. "I was lying in bed, watching Lifetime movies on a typical Sunday when I saw the infomercial," she said. "I wanted it so badly. It was all I talked about for weeks at work."

"This is true," Wilneraffirmed, sipping her cocktail.

After a monthlong delay in shipping, the duo's matching sage Snuggies arrived in January. They wasted no time taking the items to a surprising place: the boardroom. "I wore it to a few meetings," Prislin said, demurring on the question of the women's employer, just saying it was "a typical Financial District office."

Snuggie elitists

As Prislin showed off pictures of her adventures in Snuggies in the workplace, a cheer erupted. A pair of rare sage green Snuggies, Dave Fischer, 29, and Christina Newman, 33, had entered the bar.

"I feel ridiculous," said Fischer, who hadn't expected the extra attention. "But I guess that's the point."

A few minutes later, a red Snuggie with pockets rolled in. Could it be - gasp! - a Slanket, the similar fleece product that is the Snuggie's natural rival (if only because it costs an elitist $40)? "Slanket, go home!" someone bellowed. But it was just an online-only Snuggie Deluxe that is 50 percent thicker and boasts pockets.

The pub crawl officially had five stops, but by the second one - Shanghai Kelly's on Polk Street - the crowd had already grown too large to comfortably enter at once. After some sidewalk discussions, Keith Charles announced that people should spread out on Polk Street but plan on making it to McTeague's Saloon at 11 p.m. for the costume judging.

The Snuggies roamed freely, most in small groups. Shanghai Kelly's doorman, Antonio Garcia, himself the recipient of a gift Snuggie from a woman carrying an extra, laughed at the suggestion of bar fights over the fleece. But as he expertly removed an open Coors Light from a Snuggie-clad man's hand, Garcia allowed that "maybe something will happen. There are anti-Snuggie people out there."

"Snuggies suck!"

As if on cue, a new cry rose out down the street: "Snuggies suck!"

By the time the hordes descended on McTeague's Saloon for the judging, however, nothing worse than a few too many beers had happened. Glassy-eyed men and women, all seemingly in their 20s and 30s, danced and drank. The organizers ran around the room delivering handmade prizes to the winners, such as crowd favorite Laura Wullschleger, 24, of Pleasant Hill, who did a version of pop singer Lady Gaga's infamous "no pants" leotard, complete with hood, sunglasses and platinum hair.

There were those who were not impressed with the concept of bringing Snuggies onto the city streets en masse. Richie Johnson, smoking a Marlboro outside Shanghai Kelly's, grew contemplative watching the crowd giggling and shouting as they waited in line to get into the bar.

"I guess this is why I moved to San Francisco," he said, waving his smoke at the Snuggies. "But I guess this is why I would move away from San Francisco."