Roadside Santa Claus Pulled Down From Roof of Candy Store

To some, he was a cherished example of “roadside vernacular” art.

To others, he was a perpetually smiling, red-suited hazard who had outlived his time and his owner’s patience.

Either way, he’s gone.

At 5 a.m. Friday, a crane eased the 20-foot-high statue of Santa off the roof of a candy shop from which he had waved a greeting at generations of motoring Americans.

“All day, people have been stopping and having their pictures taken” with the 8,000-pound icon, said Bruce Meister of Becker Construction in Santa Barbara.

Meister was hired to get rid of the figure, which had loomed over U.S. 101 down the coast from Santa Barbara for 52 years.

A reminder of an era of car vacations when modest commercial Christmas villages sprang up on major highways around the country, Santa had fallen into disrepair over time.

The snowman character that once stood nearby was taken away 20 years ago, but Santa hung on. While the plaster and chicken wire statue itself is fit enough, Meister said, the base where it was attached to the roof had rotted.

The former owner of the business inside, Santa’s Candy Kitchen, complained that the roof leaked when it rained. Mary Lou Dodson said she was afraid St. Nick would one day come through the roof, not down the chimney.

The figure was once part of a Santa Claus Lane commercial strip, but the owner, Dr. Steve Kent, said the Christmas theme had lost its appeal.

“This is a detraction, not an attraction,” Kent said recently.

Kent wanted to replace the North Pole theme with something modeled on a seaside village.

Preservationists fought to retain Santa as an example of roadside Americana.

Last month, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors broke the stalemate and issued Kent a permit to remove the figure.

Meister said the choice to remove it under cover of darkness was not made out of fear that mobs of Santa loyalists would try to stop him, but to avoid causing a disruption. It didn’t completely work.

“Right now, six people are taking pictures of him on the ground,” Meister said.

The county’s permit allows the statue to remain where it is until January, when it can be demolished if no one comes forward to claim it.

One problem with moving it, Meister said, is that it might not fit under freeway overpasses.

Removing Santa from the roof may have solved one problem, but it created another for Marybelle Rodriguez, the new operator of Santa’s Candy Kitchen.

“We’ll probably just cut ‘Santa’ off” the title “and call it ‘Candy Kitchen,’” she said.

How’s Santa taking his fall off the roof? “He’s still saluting,” Rodriguez said, laughing.