SantaCon is an annual pilgrimage of New Jerseyans and Connecticuters to great the world’s largest vomitorium stretching from midtown to the financial district, following the mantra, lasting only one night and then vanishing with every trace.

December 23, 2023 marked the 200th anniversary more or less the first description of the man who would come to be Santa Clause: it was crammed in one of the 6 columns of the Troy Sentinel that day on page 3, under the title Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas, with no author. You probably know it as The Night Before Christmas, best covered over a trap beat by Family Force 5.

To oversimplify and misquote Santa historian Pamela McColl from what I remember of her remarks at the 200th anniversary proceedings and induction of author Clement Clark Moore into the New York Libraries Hall of Fame:

Long before Christmas there was Saturnalia, and long before a right jolly old elf there were right jolly Roman drunkards marauding through the streets every third week of December, breaking into upperclass houses, and stealing things.

Hello from the back right table at the temporarily relocated (across the street) Ben’s Chili Bowl, the restaurant that’s like if an old NYC 24/7 diner decorated a Philly steak joint, the chef subscribed to Chicago’s lax restrictions on hot dog toppings, and even more inkjet photos of celebrities sitting where you are sitting adhered to walls—all wrapped with good chili and black DC.

This is Geistlist. You met me (Jacob Ford) somewhere, somehow, and now you get this thing sometimes. Unsubscribe at the bottom.

I missed Leith Ross’s Brooklyn concert last week because I was hosting the inaugural world-famous Bridge & Tunnel Brewery Musical Bingo, so I this morning hopped a PreviousGen and found a $60/night cyberpunk porta potty to sleep in, so I can see Leith at Howard Theatre tonight before she departs the Right Coast.

Fun fact: last time I was here (2014) it was because I overslept a free NYU bus trip to see the new NYU DC campus, but managed to grab a Bolt Bus myself and find the crew, where we got a tour of Barack Obama’s favorite Ben’s seat (there’s a plaque).

A lot of physical media I worked on is suddenly materializing. Collect them all.

¶. Stereogram (Friday 7pm)

The City Reliquary, Williamsburg, NYC, $25

Hosted by Stephen Colbert’s former producer, with me slinging beers. 2 tickets left.

Hello from Sunset Park, where you truly can just Park anywhere, there are still those coin-operated unicorns in front of shops, and bakeries are 24/7. It feels like the NYC I pretend to miss.

Somehow we met, I gave you a strange URL, you gave me an email, here we are. This is Geistlist. I am Jacob Ford. Unsubscribe at the bottom.

That thing I asked you to save the date for last time is also toward the bottom: it’s a little party in a little bookshop on Saturday, November 1 in the East Village where you can buy a book I designed for a website I loved.

¶. Now: Ballistic Interests: Knurling, Elastics, Kevlar Implements Lunch & Learn

It’s been a real month for chance encounters, serendipity, and small-world moments in the great human particle collider of NYC. I (nearly literally) ran into a friend from Pennsylvania on the sidewalk for not the first but the second time this decade. This time was in Brooklyn, last time (circa 2016) was in Manhattan. Jared: three boroughs left.

Then I went to the final performance of the Flotsam River Circus, only to realize/discover that the lead troubadour is Jason Webley, writer of the beautiful Last Song, which I probably heard indirectly via Welcome to Night Vale.

Two people I met recently only to find out we were in the same room in 2016 and 2018 (respectively) via photos. One of those rooms in Ecuador.

Strange attractors, we are.

¶. Wednesday 6–9pm: Opening Reception for the COVID Material Culture Museum

The City Reliquary, Williamsburg, NYC, free

Saturday, February 29, 2020: At Mount Sinai Hospital on Central Park East, Doctor Angela Chen treated a 39-year-old woman for respiratory symptoms. Hours later, Dr. Chen diagnosed the first case of COVID-19 in the state of New York. “Pandemic” evolved from science fiction plot to household term.

Five and a half years later: I would be honored if you would join me for the first exhibition from my ongoing collection: artifacts, signage, medicine, tools, and badges from the strange era when protesters covered their mouths, government signage told us how far from each other to stand, and everyone knew who was wrong.

I’m having an Eminem phase. People don’t know he coined stanning. Other people know that as well as they know who the first president was and know it means something much darker than obsession. Or, obsession means more than we let it. Unfortunately you can’t watch the official music video because it cuts out half the verses because of Al Gore’s wife Tipper and fragile Y2K kids like me, so watch a version like this one.

Did you know Nate Ruess co-wrote a song with Eminiem about going no-contact with your mom? Another good one. Nate Ruess wrote more songs than you think. Nate now just does excellent dirtbag parody podcasts.

Sorry I thought you were a bad influence on bad kids when I thought I was a good kid, Eminem.

¶. Through Wednesday: Sleep No More Romeo & Juliette with Teenagers in Cars

This is Geistlist. For typographic reasons, I have moved links to the metadata line, below the titles.

?. Have you ever taken a photograph on February 8?

Please upload them to our collection. I will be editing into a video shown on February 8, 2025 (see below). Possibly uploaded online but note if you’d like your content excluded from that part.

¶. Tonight 8pm: Nosferatu live scored by FRIPP & Anthime

The Jews are whooping our gentile asses: this morning I saw a Prius with a 3-foot working menorah strapped to the roof. What happened to Christmas kitcsh? I guess that Prestonwood Baptist Christmas show with the flying on-fire Santa was pretty cool, in Plano. The one you saw on Reels.

¶. In 30 minutes: Harry Potter but Brad Neely voices every character

Wonderville, Bushwick, NYC, free, or say hi in the chat

A mid-COVID Christmas tradition, now five years running. Tonight: followed by Spiders & Snakes, Dear Reader, the unauthorized sequel to the unauthorized soundtrack.

This is Geistlist. Live from a brewery where we’re taping up signs for my party.

¶. Now: New York Neo-Futurists Give Each Other Stick & Poke Tattoos While I Count to 20

Bridge & Tunnel Brewery, Ridgewood, NY, $10 suggested

nynf.org/party

To the IRS and NYS in a few months, I will write off 67 drinks purchased aboard the vessel Anthem of the Seas and private island CocoCay during a Royal Caribbean cruise last March, where I was developing my experience into what I hoped would become a new tradition of nonfiction travel writing.¹ Unfortunately then Lauren and then Gary and then even Maria on my own website beat me and now the genre is dead.²

¶. Through November 14: a musical which began below deck in the crew bar of a cruise ship, presumably at a cast party for For The Record™ The Brat Pack Live aboard the Norwegian Escape en route to (or possibly from) Bermuda, and is likely to go places

The Tank, Chelsea, NYC, $25–45

It’s got some Monty Python with some Holy Mountain, some Unfinished Swan, and puppetry. It’s got Golem With One L and An E (from Jewish folklore) who owns the only independent Tropical Smoothie bar in the Southeast USA, and I have just been informed by the drummer that I left during intermission thinking the show was over (it was that strange). Will report back on the second half after Monday.

My grandma texted me hadn’t gotten an email from me in over a week and feared I was dead, so I guess it’s time for Geistlist. Unsubscribe at the bottom.

Oh real quick: I’m involved in another Kickstarter. We’re making theawl.com (RIP): The Book (OMG). I’m designing it!

$. Roll 10 dice, donate the total

every Saturday & Sunday at 10:30pm in the West Village, NYC, but see below

It’s easy to see the future. Challenge is not overcompensating for it now.

Once you’re a regular anywhere you can portend the goodbye note on its Instagram account and then countdown note on its door. Every party has its hangover, some sales are final, and everyone you love is gonna die. Saturn’s rings will eventually dissolve, and John Boswell’s video of it happening is what inspired that lyric: pre-grieving is good practice for recalibrating your now; the only trick is not to get stuck in what’s not yet.

Crest Hardware has five days left in its 22,646 day run¹. Most of you haven’t been there, but if you have, you know. It’s our big little hardware store in Williamsburg run by Joe and Liza with the staff who will tell you what spray paint is best for graffitting the subway and what houseplant won’t kill you cat, and ask you next time how it went. It was home to Franklin the backyard pig and an African grey parrot named Finlay who probably heard and said more about metals than Apollo could ever hope.

Friday is the last day of business, though there’s not much business left: the entire floor was cleared by Friday to become our farewell dance floor while the staff lounge become a tattoo parlor, and the greenhouse was portapotties and bar.

Caroline Weaver used to run a pencil shop which she gracefully closed in 2021. Now she’s back in physical retail with The Locavore Variety Store, a newly minted lovely little variety shop built upon her blog which sells things made within a hundred miles.¹ Caroline is the charming town shopkeeper of your nonexistent Cohen/Shopsin/Wanamaker memories, and she’s was in the 90s. She’s my hero and yours.

Tonight, we celebrate the launch of a new pigeon book there. Yeah I should have sent this weeks ago but I didn’t. Get off the train now and swoop by.

¶. 6–8pm: Pigeon Book Launch Party

The Locavore / Greenwich Village, NYC / free

This is Geistlist.

Welcome to the newcomers. Thank you to the longtimers.

¶. Today 9pm: The 2024 CNN Presidential Debate, moderated by Crackhead Barney & Friends

free, the internet

Yesterday was Allen Ginsberg’s 98th birthday. If you arrived at the Wilson Avenue subway station between 7:15 and 7:45pm and found the lady with a red parasol, a chaperone would lead you northeast to the edge of New York City where veiled dancers and a jazz guitarist perched on the retaining wedge over the approach to the East New York Tunnel, through which the last LIRR trains traveled sometime around 2010. Some mysterious boxcars sit still on the tracks, stuck between derails. A reciter, from memory, read Howl until the sun set, in three parts. The third was punctuated by kerosene twirled fire. We howled each time the poem did.

In the early peak/pit pandemic Fall I hosted Aaron Wolff and a few friends at the City Reliquary to record New York, Alone: a collection of music and poems and poems to music about feeling alone in the United States’ most populous city. Ginsberg’s My Sad Self was there. We debuted the film the following April. You can watch it if you ask.

Allen Ginsberg hasn’t yet clicked for me but clearly has for the people who create and find the types of underground public benefits that click for me.

This is Geistlist. I am Jacob Ford, and it’s nice you’re here.

Welcome to Geistlist, the newsletter about Things for People that arrives when it needs to.

¶. Tonight 7-10pm: Open VCR Night

Open VCR Night is now the last Monday of every even-numbered month. I'm working on stickers.

Tonight: special guest Brian Thompson plans to drop by. Brian is the Pulit Surprise-winning investigative journalist behind Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald’s, and will be accepting any tips you have on whether you tried it, how it tasted, and your favorite VHS tapes from the early to mid-1990s.

As we close the naughty & nice books on 2023 it’s a decent time to remind you where you are, who I am, and why.

If you’re receiving this you

• met me
• found me
• are my best friend
• were found to be interesting by me, and I risked life, limb, and FTC law to add you directly, with vague consent.
• were given The Gift of Geistlist as a last-minute Christmas gift by an anonymous stranger who write your email address on a postcard and sent me $60, and you now have a rare, yearlong, paid subscription to this free newsletter. Thank you, immensely, for your support.

This is Geistlist: the newsletter for you about things by Jacob Ford, increasingly likely to go straight to your spam folder as I fly too close to the spambot sun with my subject lines. Unsubscribe at the bottom. If you’re new here you can read up on past issues and sync future issues to your Palm Pilot.

Salut from Paris, and good morning to you.

Found an Irish pub in the final hour of November with a musician who counted down to December by beatboxing and sleigh belling into what he later informed me is Boss’s hottest new loop pedal called the RC-600.

My Christmas music repository (and this very newsletter, dear readers who make it worth writing) got a shoutout on Mace Griffin’s Independent Study, the last music blog left at the end of the internet.

The scaffolding encasing Notre Dame lights up (and then goes black) overnight on a schedule I cannot determine, and they are painting the Eiffel Tower gold for the Olympics.

Please consider helping me win free money and hang out with good vibes and slow servers on the hot new social network that is definitely going to last: yowza.social. My referral code is FIREY PAGAN CREAM.

¶. Tonight 7:30pm: find an illuminated moonshoe-powered kangaroo in the Philadelphia Zoo

$29, Philadelphia Zoo, Fairmount Park, Philly

I'm back in PA for T'giving, and tonight Catie and I are headed to the Philly Zoo for their annual LumiNature, where they light up all the trees, hide the animals in mysterious back rooms, and hire struggling/thriving actors to become illuminated animal-inspired fursonas, like some kind of child-friendly Burning Man at night.