Let me set the stage for you: It's the day after Black Friday, you're in a crowded mall in Beverly Hills watching a performance entitled "Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls," and then ... disaster strikes. An acrobat, working without a safety harness, loses her grip an falls over 40 feet to the ground in front of hundreds of stunned, upper-crust shoppers -- at least one of whom is filming the whole thing on a cell phone.
According to Ray Pierce of Hollywood Aerial Arts, the veteran performer fell on some video projection equipment, injuring her wrist and pelvis. Firefighters responded to the accident around 6:15 PM on Saturday and took the acrobat (who smiled heroically from her stretcher) to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Incredibly, the aerialist is reportedly doing OK and -- even more amazing -- the show will resume on Friday.
The "Hunky Santa" show begins when the mall crowns its official "Six Pack Abs Santa" who leads the events every morning and evening from Black Friday to Christmas Eve. "Hunky Santa" has apparently been terrorizing the Beverly Center for the past five years and, thankfully, this was the first major accident. A marketing director for the Beverly Center is calling the fall an "isolated incident," but I'm a little hazy on what exactly passes for an isolated incident these days.
In my opinion, if you name a promotional holiday event "Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls," you're practically inviting disaster. That's a given. Add a few aerial performers at spellbinding heights of up to 80ft -- without a net or a harness -- and you're really pushing it. Does it have to happen twice to not be considered isolated?
Will you be heading over to Beverly Center to watch the show when it resumes on Friday? If so, are you going so just to see if another acrobat falls? Hopefully, they'll be performing with some kind of safety equipment this time around.
