(From left) The 1987 winner of Richmond’s Tacky Xmas Decoration Contest and Grand Highly Illuminated House Tour, Frank Hudak, with Barry "Mad Dog" Gottlieb and Chuck Wrenn
“Tacky Today, Trophy Tomorrow,” extolled the headline of the Dec. 9, 1987, Barbara Green article in the Richmond News Leader. “This year for the first time, local entrepreneur and idea man Barry Gottlieb is taking note of the flip side — the far side? — of Christmas. … Gottlieb is a man who doesn’t think twice about charging in where elves fear to tread.”
The full official title for the history books: Richmond’s Tacky Xmas Decoration Contest and Grand Highly Illuminated House Tour.
Known by the nickname “Mad Dog,” Gottlieb had carved his idiosyncratic Richmond niche by performing with and producing indie rock bands (Good Humor Band, Single Bullet Theory) and also, with promoter Chuck Wrenn, managing the “Richmond Rock Line” telephone service that gave the dates and venues for shows. Under the banner of Mad Dog Productions, he created novelty items, including Earl the Dead Cat, that hung from car trunks, among other places, and parody Ralph Lauren polo shirts with a logo depicting a horse dragging its rider.
During the 1980s, he maintained offices in pre-rediscovery Scott’s Addition. “No breweries in sight,” he recalls, “but we had the Dairy Bar!” He conducted his tour efforts from 3122 W. Clay St., near Highpoint Avenue.
Gottlieb and the siblings Gay Chafin Chapman and Carlos Chafin made Yuletide merriment by cruising around to find residences adorned by a dazzling magnitude of amperage. A contest immediately sprung into Gottlieb’s fertile mind. “They’d come out of the woodwork,” he predicted.
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The Whitfield family’s house with all blue lights on Rockwood Road was a winner for several years.
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Lawrence Johnson Sr., of Rosewood Avenue, receives an award during one of the early years of the contest from Barry Gottlieb (center) and Chris Enyart of NBC12.
His certainty proved correct. A news release with his office phone number — sent to the media by regular mail, this being 1987 — announced the contest. His message machine soon overflowed. The nominations yielded an unwieldy roster of around 40 houses. Gottlieb went around to pre-judge and winnow the nominees, whittling the list down to between 18 and 20, then he assembled judges. Categories included Overall Wattage, Originality, Action, Sound Effects, Incongruity, Sheer Quantity and the Gridlock Factor — traffic backed up as travelers viewed the house.
Gottlieb and Chapman were among the initial five judges. In later years, judges included newspaper writer Harriet McLeod, radio broadcasters Tim Timberlake and Dick Hungate, WWBT NBC12 anchor Lisa LaFata Powell and reporter Chris Enyart, then-Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Mark Holmberg, then-Style Weekly writer Janet Giampietro, and Jessica Ronky Haddad, then a writer for the T-D (now editorial director at Richmond magazine). One year, NBC12’s Campbell Brown covered the entire tour in a wretched rain. She later worked for NBC News, hosted a CNN series and earned an Emmy for reporting on Hurricane Katrina. She’s currently the head of global news partnerships at Facebook.
“I’m glad that out of all that, somebody’s career trajectory took off,” Gottlieb deadpans.
When the demand exceeded the capacity of rubber-wheeled, trolley-style trucks, Gottlieb called Winn Bus Lines for a 44-seat vehicle, thinking he would sell tickets for $10 each. He’d provide refreshments, decorate the interior and throw in a keg of beer. “Cheap stuff,” he says. “It certainly wasn’t from a brewpub.”
On the first day of sales, the bus sold out in an hour. He asked for a second bus that filled up by the next day. This meant another keg. “I thought about a third bus and then got scared: How am I going to control this?” He put out an announcement giving the start time and place and offered hastily photocopied maps for those who wanted to follow along.
On the first day of sales, the bus sold out in an hour. He asked for a second bus that filled up by the next day.
Festive adornments and refreshments came from Peoples Drug Store at Boulevard and Broad streets (now home to CVS). On Dec. 21 at 6:30 p.m., Gottlieb, in his tuxedo and plaid cummerbund, emceed one bus, and Wrenn, his Rock Line partner, took the other. At one point, a seven-block-long line of cars followed the buses.
“The light would turn red, and it was like a funeral procession,” Gottlieb says. “The cars kept following because they didn’t want to lose the bus.”
The appropriately named Ann Holliday reported in The News Leader that all the houses fulfilled the qualifications of tackiness, which, she emphasized, “is the way people do things different than the way you do them.”
Gottlieb walked up to the winning houses to present prizes to surprised homeowners. The awarded trophies were plaques marking the occasion with adhesive red-and-black label type.
“Tacky,” Gottlieb adds. “In keeping with the theme.”
“The people who had the houses had no idea,” he says. “Frank Hudak on Wistar Court was flabbergasted when we arrived and people piled out of these buses and cars.” The group spontaneously began singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”
John Donati, owner of Helen’s Inn, the tour’s perennial Best Business winner
Hudak took first place for his carol-inspiring display of 7,500 lights, candy canes, Santa with a sleigh and reindeer, a manger scene, and a color-shifting Nativity star. He donated his $150 grand prize to the Salvation Army Shoe Fund. But, Holliday reported, he kept the glowing plastic Santa and the trophy.
By tour’s end, about six trailing cars returned to Scott’s Addition.
Gottlieb cranked up the tour a second year, but the effort and expense proved too much. He continued to generate a list of high-voltage achievements in decoration, which entailed escorting judges around in his Mustang and Wrenn’s Buick. The tours were taken over by bus and limousine companies, with various sponsors.
Gottlieb’s version of the tacky lights tour revived from 1992-95 under the sponsorship of WVGO-FM. During one of those years, Giampietro, Haddad and then-Richmond State newspaper reporter Jeff Carle were packed into the back of an old black cab to evaluate the displays. Carle told his fellow judges that he found the displays “creepy and disturbing.”
“It was a looooooong evening of going from house to house and making notes,” Giampietro remembers. “Of course, Mr. Christmas’ house on Wistar Court was one of the award winners. The tree in his front yard looks like the lights have been airdropped onto it. And he stands out there in his light-up jacket. It’s all very delightful.”
The media continued to cover the tour, with national exposure on National Public Radio and the Bravo network. Then WVGO’s format changed, and this version of the tour ceased. Gottlieb moved to the San Francisco Bay area. But Richmonders still seek out tacky lights with a guide produced by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and transportation companies continue to offer tours.
“I honestly can’t believe it’s still going on,” Gottlieb says, “that something that started between two people is now a tradition I follow in the newspapers.”
