I'm watching a special on TLC about massive Christmas light displays (shut up, it's interesting). Knowing how expensive that shit gets and quick (the street side of my house has icicle lights along it, the visible part of my backyard fence has some rope lights along it, I have two snowman blow-ups in my yard, and it ran me a few hundred), I can only imagine how much some of the guys spend that do this: You know the kind of displays. We're talking around a million lights. Miles of extension cords. Specialized electrical systems that require an electrician (or two) just to get it going each year. Custom metal fabrication of displays and scaffolding. They start setting it all up in October. All for one month out of the year, if that. In my mind, that's a bit too far. Focus: Have you/anyone you know had a hobby that you took "just a bit too far"? Alt. Focus: Holy fucking lights batman!! Discuss people that do these kind of displays.
In my area we have a couple "candy cane lanes" where the entire street goes all-out like this. It's really pretty impressive. Not if you care about sustainable energy or the future of the planet or anything - it's just impressive from a purely first-world, hedonistic perspective. It's gotta be some goddamn pressure to buy a house on the block, though. What does the real estate agent say: "It's got a grand room, cathedral ceilings, and new carpet. There's just one catch...if you don't decorate your house like a crazy motherfucker every Christmas, you will be ostracized from the neighborhood and possibly unsafe in your own home. But other than that, it's perfect!" I doubt many Jews live on these streets.
There was a guy who lived in a more affluent neighborhood behind mine that had a truly spectacular Christmas wonderland display. Some of the rumors were that he spent 10 thousand dollars a year on new displays in addition to the cost of the lighting and over all energy consumption. This one was believable since there was a fucking train that ran through it as well as numerous 20 foot animatronic santas and statues. He supposedly worked with the electric company or had a deal with them so that it wasnt that outrageous, Ive read it was more than 350k lights. Since he lived on a private drive in the neighborhood there would be a 15-30 car line at all times during the hours he had it running from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Each year he had to replace his neighbors lawns and mail boxes as they were damaged. Eventually his neighbors started trying to take legal action and a few years ago he moved. I just read that he moved it to a ranch in Morrow Ohio. Apparently the dude was just a dentist.* * edit: A dentist named Dr. Fuchs.....
While browsing Reddit yesterday, one of the posts was about a guy who hooked up his lights to a computer. People can sit down in a sleigh in his driveway and play Snowball Blaster.
Alt. Focus: There is a small town just north of here that does their christmas lights to music. They have a radio station set up to play christmas music so you can tune to that station and watch the lights blink to the music. It's pretty neat and it's about a dozen houses in the town.
I wanted to start a similar thread where we take pictures of the crazy fucks in our areas who go all out and then see who lives near the craziest person. Our local guy has his house covered in light, naturally, but he took it 1 step further. He has about 60+ of those light up, animatronic figurines in the tiny yard he has, and then the sides of his house are covered in 2-d figures made our of that tube lighting. The strangest one is Santa shooting a canon. WTF?
On my street, we don't go all out like some of the others are referencing on here. But we all have two story homes where some of the roof peaks are closer to three stories high. Every year on Thanksgiving weekend, about 10 of us rent a "cherry picker" so we don't have to climb ladders to hang our lights. We just have standard lights, but since there are about 12-15 houses (some guys use ladders instead of the bucket) in a row all lit up, it looks nice.
Alt. Focus: Holy fucking lights batman!! Discuss people that do these kind of displays. http://www.bentleyvilleusa.org/ This all started on the other side of town from me, just a single household that was crazy about christmas decorations. Clicking the history section you can see that over 70,000 people toured this attraction at the families house before it was moved to a larger town and now 150,000+ people visit it. Before it moved, it got to the point that school buses were bringing people to the house since there was no room to park anywhere. I have a small, cold, black heart so I have never visited it.
I always wondered how the hell they afforded it, but realized that it's like walking into a guy's workshop and seeing the thousands of dollars in tools that he has. It's not like he said "I want a workshop," he started out with just the basics and gradually turned it into something bigger. We just see the result, even if the process takes twenty years. Focus: I had a buddy in high school who worked a full-time job to support his model train hobby. I went to his house, and he had turned his entire fucking attic into Thomas The Tank Engine Land. Supply yards, train sheds, passenger lines, freight lines, everything. And the stuff was SMALL - it wasn't like he had big trains running around. The tracks were about the width of your thumb, and they went everywhere. Winding up and down hills made of boxes, through tunnels, bridging gaps in the boards where insulation showed. It was pretty awesome. Except this kid basically lived for his hobby. When he wasn't in the attic, he was working a job so he could buy more shit to put in said attic. I don't know what his parents are doing with it now that he's in college. There's gotta be ten thousand bucks in train shit up there, maybe more.
There is a house in my town that does this. Their house has an alley that runs along the one side, and they have every inch of that alley decorated, plus the front and back of the house. When I was a kid, they had Christmas theme Smurfs, Power Rangers, and Strawberry Shortcake decorations that they made themselves. There is also Christmas music playing 24-7, little kids on the porch pretending to sing along to the music every night, and a Nativity scene with real animals. They do this every year and every year the street their house is on is backed up for miles. The worst part is that they practically live downtown, and the road in front of their house is a high traffic area as is. I don't go to this part of town for the entire month of December because of this.
I still think this is awesome: <a class="postlink" href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10414561-71.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10414561-71.html</a> I think this is the same house that thabucmaster posted about, just a different year.
This is "Candy Cane Lane" near where I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in LA. It's multiple blocks, and rumor has it that if you buy a house on one of those blocks, part of the sales contract is that you MUST do lights.
Have you noticed that the majority of these jolly assholes are fatter than Tuesday in New Orleans? If they spent 1/4 of their passion they have for lights in working out, they'd be ripped and athletic assholes. Stupid fuckers.
I'm not a fan. I consider it a colossal waste of time and electricity. That, and I would much rather spend my time reading a book or somesuch instead of driving around looking at pretty lights. Just doesn't do it for me. That being said, if that's what these folks want to do with their time and money then that's their choice. I've never had a problem with the neighbor's lights shining through my bedroom window at night, or anything like that, so I figure it's a non-issue. My only complaint is that the money they spend on such things could go to so many better places, like local charities and the like, so a little real joy can be spread, instead of electric joy.
This always bothers me. No one puts up signs saying, "I donated 10,000 to the local homeless shelter." You have no idea whether or not the people with the lights didn't put funds to worthwhile causes, too. They might all be dipshits, but it's a pretty odd assumption to make.
The Dr Fuchs I mentioned now charges 10 bucks a car and donates it all to The McDonalds House. Which is apparently hovering around 100k a year. Uncaring bastard.
If they're spending the cash on one thing, then they can't spend that same cash on something else. Of course, this would assume you know their income, and know whether or not they can really afford it. But it's their money and you aren't their accountant, so fuck it, the electric company's employees've gotta eat too.