Meet the Yeti…

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The winter of 2015 was fit for neither man nor beast. It was, however, fit for man disguised as a beast: The Boston Yeti, a furry ambassador of fun who garnered international attention during a record-breaking season. Now, after spending nearly a year batting away media requests to reveal his true self, the man behind the beast has decided to shed his mask for The Improper and share his identity: John Campopiano, a 30-year-old archivist who lives in Somerville.

“The motivation for wanting to come forward is wanting to put my own stamp on it and feeling a little protective of it. I see people getting drunk at Bruins games in Yeti costumes and local car companies using the Yeti image in ads,” Campopiano says. “If that continues—fine. But at least I can assume some kind of ownership of it. … Just because I’m coming forward doesn’t mean he goes away.”

Campopiano, who loved Bigfoot and UFO stories as a kid, initially bought the suit as a Halloween costume in 2014. When the first monster storm of the season approached on Jan. 26, he decided to don the costume again and roam the streets. After seeing an NECN request for viewers’ wintry photos, he asked his girlfriend (now the soon-to-be Mrs. Yeti) to take some shots. Then he set up an email address, claimed a Twitter account and waited.

“In a matter of minutes, people were picking it up. It was surreal,” Campopiano recalls. “The rest of that night, I just sort of sat and watched Twitter.”

Within hours, he was fielding a request from Good Morning America. He shared headline space with Tom Brady in The Guardian. Childhood idol Pee-Wee Herman tweeted at him. His girlfriend’s family in Germany saw it in their local paper. There were radio requests from places as far as Japan. The Today Show asked to come to his house.

“It was a perfect storm, no pun intended, of people being tired of the doom-and-gloom news,” he says. “It was an opportunity to be lighthearted and fun.”

A couple of family members who guessed the Yeti’s true identity were sworn to secrecy, but the digital records manager and archivist for WGBH-TV’s Frontline was compelled to disclose his secret at work after WGBH’s Greater Boston requested an interview. He opted only for online correspondence, declining radio and TV interviews and commercial opportunities.

“I wanted to keep the identity of the Yeti a secret, and I didn’t want people to know that it’s male or female,” Campopiano says, though he relished the chance to create a character from scratch, declaring the Yeti a vegan, for example.

But Campopiano considered hanging up the costume in February, when a close friend unexpectedly died. He wondered if it was distasteful to be cavorting through town. “The last thing I wanted to do was run around and be jolly. I was grieving,” he says. “Then I thought: No, I’ll use this as a way to grieve because it’s bringing people joy and it brings me joy. It felt like I really needed to keep this going because it was keeping me going in a way.”

In March, Campopiano, a self-proclaimed cat fanatic, teamed up with the MSPCA for a fundraiser that used the sale of Yeti merchandise to raise $2,000 for neglected animals. “I liked, conceptually, the idea of a big furry guy raising money for little furry friends,” he says. And that month also saw his favorite Yeti moment: Shooting a video with Mayor Marty Walsh. “I said, wouldn’t it be funny if I took the nameplate and wrote ‘Boston Yeti Mayor’ on it. And then I kicked up my feet on the desk,” he recalls. “I was thinking, ‘This is just unbelievable that this is happening.’ That had to be the highlight.”

Campopiano is still mulling what the future holds for the Boston Yeti. The first step, he jokes, is dry cleaning the costume: “I thought about having it dry cleaned, but then I thought, no, there might be too many questions. … That’s why I’m [going public]. So I can get it dry cleaned.” While he doesn’t expect to recreate the magic of last season, he is looking forward to that first snowstorm. “It’s funny talking to people as you get closer to winter. They say, ‘Oh God, last winter was so bad.’ And I have a totally different view,” he says. “I loved it. I loved that I could give people in the city a fun outlet. It was a blast.”


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One response to “Meet the Yeti…”

  1. […] Yeti chose to reveal his identity in a “tell-all” article written by the Improper Bostonian in 2015. The article revealed that Boston’s beloved snow creature is Somerville resident and […]