Asbury Park SantaCon canceled? Sort of

Austin Bogues | Asbury Park Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Hoboken SantaCon 2019 Santa Con in Hoboken on Saturday, December 7, 2019.

ASBURY PARK - Santa Claus won't be crawling through town. At least not this weekend.

City officials said a planned Asbury Park SantaCon event won't be happening, at least not with a pub crawl, after event organizers didn't follow the permitting process.

"This city council is looking to move away from pub crawls in Asbury Park," said Deputy Mayor Amy Quinn. "Until we have completely moved away from it, while we’re looking at our legal options, you need to fill out a special events application, meet with our special events committee and pay any fees that the city has to endure for this pub crawl. This applicant did not do this," Quinn said.

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The event, with patrons dressed as Santa, was initially billed as being scheduled to begin noon Saturday at the popular pizzeria Porta.

Quinn said Porta had canceled their event.

"We want to thank Porta for immediately taking action once our city attorney sent them a letter advising them of the proper protocol for this event," Quinn said.

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Neither Porta nor the Asbury Park SantaCon organizers could immediately be reached by the Press for comment. It's unclear how many other venues, if any, were going to participate.

The website SantaCon.org still listed the Asbury event Friday evening.

Last year, SantaCon coincided with the Asbury Park Santa Run, in which runners dressed as Santa ran five kilometers. This year, that race was held last weekend.

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In a letter dated Dec. 11, city attorney Frederick Raffettto wrote to the event organizer, addressed to Demitri Strok, director of Integrated Marketing, HolidayEvents, that the city initially was under the impression the event was limited to a single site, at Porta. But Raffetto cited a Dec. 5 article in "Night and Day Magazine" that stated attendees can join "hundreds of other Santas" at participating establishments.

"The above representations, if accurate, are completely opposite to the representations which were previously made by the planners of this event to city officials," Raffetto said.

Asbury Park Police also issued a statement on Thursday on Facebook, stating that "contrary to reports on social media outlets as well as other websites, there will be no SantaCon events or pubcrawls held in Asbury Park this weekend."

Check out the video at the top of this story for a SantaCon in Hoboken.

Austin Bogues spotlights the changing development scene in Asbury Park and Neptune. He can be reached at 732-643-409 or abogues@app.com