Saturday, December 16, 2006

Zombie Santas vs. Desert Santas



San Francisco celebrates the holiday season in many charming ways from zombie Santas...



...to Santarchy events...



...to Mister Leather Santa (above)...



...to major gay bar decorations.



Palm Springs, on the other hand, has holiday signage on banners along Palm Canyon Drive downtown...



...that includes a cocktail-around-the-pool-Santa.



The banners are created from original art created by local children for an annual competition.



Whoever has the signage concession for Palm Canyon Drive has to be making a small fortune because they change almost every week, but these children's art banners are my favorites so far.



It would be lovely if San Francisco could institute a similar program for their own children and downtown shoppers.



It's also wonderful seeing a dark-skinned Santa, drawn not from political correctness so much as mirroring a young artist's reality.

1 comment:

JoyMeredith said...

Thank you for posting pictures of the banner program. I am the volunteer coordinator since its inception 19 yrs ago. We have a $1500 budget which is for blank banners and paint. These banners are actually handpainted by the students. We gets 100's of entries and have 50 new banners painted each year. I am actually giving a little presentation at the Calif Downtown Assoc conference this week. I'd be glad to talk to your downtown association about this program. It is my favorite thing to do! Happy children, parnets, schools, downtown businesses! joy@crystalfantasy.com