Before we left California, HGTV did a program about tacky Christmas Lights. They showed beautiful home grown light shows that would make the Rockefeller Center look like amateur hour. Originally started by my sister in San Francisco, one of our favorite holiday games back in Cali was to honor one holiday light disaster with the utmost accolade of the "It's Christmas Dammit" award. It looked like HGTV had quite a few contenders on that show. We simply had to take a look.
Turns out most of the lights they were highlighting were in Richmond, Virginia, of all places. This year Keith and I made a special trip out to go check out the hub-bub for ourselves. What an interesting experience that was.
Our expectations of the once capitol of the Confederate States of America were mixed at best. After making several trips through Richmond on our way to North Carolina, there wasn't much except the shrine to cigarettes (a.k.a. the Phillip Morris headquarters) and several unforgettably smelly power plants. Even with all that this so far bad resume had in store, the draw of Christmas lights was just too powerful. A 2008 "It's Christmas Dammit" honoree must be crowned.
Richmond delivered on it's promises. There were pockets of amazing lights throughout the city. We tried to use the Tacky Light Tour website to help guide us to the best spots. Unfortunately, their site is so full of bugs and bad user interface that it was just about unusable. Regardless, we jotted down a ton of addresses and put our trusty GPS (affectionately dubbed "MoneyPenny") to work.
Some places did a bang up job. We especially loved the don't eat yellow snow reference demonstrated by two jolly Frosties. At one point a tour bus pulled up behind us in line to see the lights, opening it's doors to unload a mess of drunken light lovers. With all the trial and error of playing GPS roulette, however, led us to believe we should have followed the bus to the hot spots. Oh well.
One word of advice for those looking to upload their houses for consideration on the Tacky Light Tour... If you live extra far and aren't going to put up at least 20,000 lights around your house, don't bother!!! There was nothing worse that driving all over winding roads to get to your lazy 4 string attempt at holiday cheer, or even worse, no lights at all. Shame on you.
Overall, we enjoyed our trip to Richmond. The lights were fun and the food was amazing (Mekong review). No winners of "It's Christmas Dammit" this year though. No worries. We're heading to LA in two days where I KNOW we'll find a worthy honoree.
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