SantaCon is Kicking Off in Williamsburg This Saturday

Drunken revelers of SantaCon will storm New York City again on Saturday, kicking off in McCarren Park and heading to the East Village, according to DNAinfo. The notoriously sloppy annual holiday bar crawl attracts tens of thousands of drinkers, but unlike past years, SantaCon's organizers met with city officials to address criticisms of the sloppy crawl. They've received permits and approval from the city, and the location and route, which historically have been revealed the night before the event, will become available on Wednesday this year, DNAinfo reports.

Famous civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who SantaCon hired last year, says the organizers are trying to mend their ways. "In the past, they just showed up, and even the police didn’t know until it started to happen," Seigel told DNAinfo. "I urged them that that’s not a good way to do it, and to their credit, they’ve adjusted."

SantaCon bills itself as a "non-sensical Santa Claus convention," but it is basically a holiday bar crawl with a reputation for bringing vomiting, vandalism, urination, and other similarly sloppy booze-fueled behavior to the streets of NYC. On Monday, elected officials and city officials asked the State Liquor Authority keep a careful eye on bars that participate this year, suggesting that they put inspectors on the route. They also urged SantaCon to reveal its route earlier so that the city, businesses, and residents can prepare for the onslaught of drunkenness. "SantaCon needs to grow up," one state senator says.

The event faced similar drama last year, when bars and residents in Bushwick, the Lower East Side, and the East Village banned boozy Saint Nicks from their neighborhoods. Ultimately, the bans drove SantaCon 2014 to start in Times Square, and most Santas stayed concentrated at bars in Hell's Kitchen and Murray Hill. Stay updated on the exact spots to join — or to avoid — the rager this year by following Santacon's Facebook, Twitter, or website.