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Happy Thursday in New York, where the city’s most powerful Santa impersonator just turned into the Grinch.
Every year, hundreds of people in cities around the world dress up like Santa Claus and parade from bar to bar, spreading festive Christmas cheer, shouting “ho ho ho” and donning loose wig hair. The tradition began in San Francisco in 1994 and soon spread to NYC. Last year, 25,000 people paid the $17 admission fee to attend the event in Manhattan.
It’s called SantaCon, the name may spark cheer or terror as it is one of the most loved and despised NYC traditions. The point of the bar crawl is to raise money for charity… or so it claims.
Federal prosecutors yesterday accused Stefan Pildes, the organizer of SantaCon NYC, of diverting more than half of the $3 million raised between 2019 and 2024 into a private slush fund that he used for “personal ventures” like luxury vacations, home renovations, concert tickets and expensive meals. Pildes faces up to 20 years in prison.
Over the years, SantaCon has held up against mounting backlash from police and community members — tired of the streets and subway cars packed with inebriated cosplayers — by pointing to its charitable endeavors. The event’s official website bills itself as a “charitable, non-political, nonsensical Santa Claus convention that happens once a year to fund art & spread absurdist joy.”
“Pildes allegedly stole Christmas from tens of thousands of victims and deprived local charities of more than $1 million,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Barnacle Jr. in a statement. “The FBI continues to root out scrooges that greedily exploit the goodwill of New Yorkers.”
Call it nominative determinism, because it looks like we all just got conned.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso is set to deliver his 2026 State of the Borough address tonight at 7 p.m. at the Brooklyn Museum.
NY Attorney General Letitia James and a coalition of 33 fellow state attorneys general secured a federal jury verdict on Wednesday that finds Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary liable for unlawfully monopolizing concert ticketing.
If members of 32BJ SEIU don’t reach a new contract agreement with the Realty Advisory Board by Monday, then roughly 34,000 doormen, porters, superintendents, handymen and other residential workers would walk off the job on Tuesday.
The fifth annual BedStuy Film Festival is set for July 17 through July 19 at the Billie Holiday Theatre inside Restoration Plaza. Submission and ticketing details are posted at the festival’s website.
The Brooklyn Bookstore Crawl begins Saturday, offering the community a way to support 34 of Brooklyn’s independent bookstores.
Our World In Photos
Photo: Peter Dejong/AP
NETHERLANDS — Tulips, ‘diamonds of another era,’ on display: People visit the world-renowned Dutch flower garden and showcase, the Keukenhof, in Lisse, Netherlands, Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
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The Brooklyn Museum presents ‘Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection’
An image created using the software DALL-E 2 with the prompt, “artificial intelligence.” Photo courtesy of Daniel Cody.
This fall, the Brooklyn Museum will open “Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection.” The exhibition, which follows LACMA’s presentation on view in early 2025, showcases more than 50 modern European works from the late 19th to mid-20th century, drawn from the renowned collection of Henry and Rose Pearlman.
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By Milt Priggee
For the Road
‘Bridgadoon’: The Narrows Community Theater is gearing up for its latest production, “Brigadoon,” beginning April 24. The show offers audiences a transportive journey as two New Yorkers stumble into the heart of Scottish folklore and romance. Learn more.
Happy Birthday to Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar!
On This Day in 1896, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Today is another hot weather record breaker. It is the warmest April 16 of which the weather bureau has any record, and that covers a period of twenty-six years. The record was previously held by the April 16 of 1884, when the highest point reached by the temperature was 71 degrees. At 10:30 o’clock this morning the temperature had reached the 77 degree mark and was still rising.”
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