This being San Francisco, our department store Santas should tend toward the bawdy, right? Well, veteran Santa John Toomey, who always kept a few adult jokes up his sleeve for those times when creepy adults wanted to sit on his lap, met a couple who clearly didn’t want their idealized vision of Santa Claus destroyed by meeting one with a sense of humor. After being fired from Macy’s, Toomey quickly got offered another gig a block away at pub/hof brau Lefty O’Doul’s — an otherwise unremarkable bar that seems particularly adept these days at grabbing the attention of local news outlets — and he’ll be starting work there on his own platform in back on Saturday to help with their toy drive (and help sell a few cocktails).
Toomey was fired from Macy’s after asking an uptight couple if they’d been good, and when they said they had, he replied, “That’s too bad,” and then said he was always so jolly because he knew where the naughty boys and girls lived. This was apparently too much for this couple, who must not be from here, and they insisted he be fired. Macy’s agreed! Even though he’d been doing the job for 20 years and only told such jokes to adults!
Anyhow, please enjoy CBS 5’s Mike Sugerman hilarious coverage of the story, which begins with Toomey coughing like a TB patient into a microphone. That, by the way, is exactly what we’d expect from a department store Santa.
Union Square Santa, Fired By Macy’s, Gets New Job [CBS 5]
Earlier: Union Square Bar Tries to Keep Rangers From Sleeping… With Trumpets [Grub Street]
Arm of Lefty O’Doul’s Mannequin Returns After Three Years on the Road [Grub Street]
