On September 11 of this year, I received an urgent instant message that read, “Something terrible happened.”
My mind raced through all the horrible possibilities. Had Osama bin Laden struck again? Had there been another earthquake?
The tragedy instead turned out to be much more trivial: Zanta had been arrested. Again.
“September 11 just got worse,” I was told, as I watched the video of Zanta, having allegedly run amok on the TTC, being escorted away in handcuffs by two burly members of Toronto’s finest.
Zanta is well-known throughout Toronto as the shirtless, Santa hat-wearing eccentric with the physique of an amateur body-builder. He often flexes his muscles or does push-ups for passersby while shouting, “Yes yes yes!”
Zanta’s real name is David Zancai. He is a former construction worker who fell approximately twenty-five feet and ended up in a coma for more than two weeks. Now he has recovered enough to do hundreds of pushups every day and wander about the city, day after day, rain or shine.
Zancai created his alter-ego, Zanta-a combination of “Santa” and his last name-when he refused to remove his Santa hat in court. He claimed to have worn the hat to amuse his daughter during a custody dispute. Zanta’s shirtless clowning has inspired two documentaries, a website, and a growing collection of videos on YouTube.
Despite this rather harmless portrait, there are those who feel that Zanta has gone from being the city’s unofficial jester to a major public nuisance. Earlier this year, Zanta was banned from sections of downtown Toronto after an altercation with Chum City building staff who were sick of him getting into the background of their cityscape shots. A judge sided with the broadcasters and Zanta was prohibited from appearing in the downtown core. He has also been barred from two major city squares because of his bizarre behavior, and most recently the TTC prohibited him from riding any of their vehicles.
Heated debates have arisen on message boards as to what to do about Zanta. As a Torontonian, I believe that Zanta is a harmless, unique character who brings humour into our mundane lives. Every great city has its famous eccentric, from Emperor Norton in San Francisco to the Naked Cowboy of New York City. Attracting one of these colourful characters is as big a milestone in a city’s development as the construction of a landmark building.
Putting aside all the attention surrounding Zanta, this city has bigger issues to deal with. The increase in gang violence, TTC labour unrest, the future of the Gardiner Expressway, and the growing homeless population all put the “problem” of Zanta into perspective.
Frankly, Zanta isn’t even the worst eccentric I regularly encounter in the city. Between the aggressive panhandlers on King Street and the six-foot-eight meth addict on Church Street, who picks fights with local merchants over their “discriminatory” customer-only bathroom policies and hugs tourists until they agree to give him change, I can think of much more effective uses of police manpower.
When the rest of the city’s pressing problems are dealt with, then we can turn our collective attention to Zanta. Until then, I say we focus on the much larger issues at hand.
