MTA Rails to Ban Alcohol for SantaCon This Weekend

The MTA is again bracing for the notorious annual pub crawl that is SantaCon with an alcohol ban on its rail trains and stations this weekend.

Alcohol will not be permitted on Long Island Rail Road trains or at its stations, including Penn, from 11 p.m. Friday through noon Sunday. The event-specific ban partially coincides with LIRR's usual alcohol ban between midnight and 5 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. 

On the Metro-North, alcohol is banned from trains and in stations, including Grand Central, from 5 a.m. Saturday through noon Sunday. 

The MTA added that officers will be on duty at Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal and other stations, as well as on trains to enforce the ban. Police will confiscate alcohol beverages and issue summonses "carrying fines or imprisonment" and "violators may also be subject to removal from the train or station by police." 

The commuter rail lines have banned alcohol during SantaCon in years past. 

This year's SantaCon event is expected to kick off in McCarren Park in Brooklyn and take place through Williamsburg and Greenpoint. 

New Yorkers have complained in past years about drunken Santas vomiting in the streets, and some community boards have banned the event from their neighborhoods. But organizers stress that SantaCon raises tens of thousands of dollars for charity, mostly through partnerships with participating bars.

Organizers have also retained famous civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel for a second year to transform the bar crawl's image amid backlash to the event. And in contrast to the typical surprise reveal of the route the day before, this year's itinerary was developed in coordination with police and the parks department over the last month, according to DNAInfo.

SantaCon organizers "are working with the appropriate city agencies...because in the past, they just showed up, and even the police didn’t know until it started to happen," Siegel told DNAinfo. "I urged them that that’s not a good way to do it, and to their credit, they’ve adjusted.”

Siegel helped kick off last year's pub crawl through Hell's Kitchen with a brief lecture on the costumed participants' First Amendment rights. He told attendees that the government cannot ban SantaCon, but it can reasonably regulate the event.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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