Thank you for your interest in covering the 19th Annual No Pants Subway Ride! Each year the event is covered by journalists around the world. We have set up this page to give you some facts for your story and to make a few requests. We also have links below to high res media you can use.
FACTS
– The 19th Annual No Pants Subway Ride will take place in on Sunday, January 12th, 2020 in New York City and dozens of cities around the world – this year includes London, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, Chicago, San Francisco and many more.
– The event was started by Improv Everywhere in New York in 2002.
– The first No Pants Subway Ride had only 7 participants.
– Recent No Pants Subway Rides have had nearly 2,000 participants in New York, and thousands more around the world. We anticipate around 2,000 participants this year in New York.
– Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. There is no agenda for the event apart from a desire to make others laugh and smile. Improv Everywhere founder Charlie Todd refers to the event as a “celebration of silliness.”
– The idea behind the No Pants Subway Ride is simple: Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants behave as if they do not know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.
– Participants are of all ages, races, and backgrounds. Men and women are about 50/50.
– Please note that the name of the event is “The No Pants Subway Ride” and not “No Pants Day,” which is an unrelated event that takes place in May.
– Please note that the regional events (all events outside of NYC) are organized independently. We will post links to these events on our site about 5 days in advance.
GUIDELINES
– Please mention Improv Everywhere in your story as the creators of the event. If you are doing a story for the web, please link to https://improveverywhere.com. If you are doing a Facebook post about it, please tag Improv Everywhere. We work really hard to organize this event every year and we really appreciate it when news sites pay us the respect of linking to us. It would also be nice if you could embed a prior year’s YouTube video in your story. Find them here.
– Here are some hi-res still images you can use for your story. Please credit “ImprovEverywhere.com”: Press photos.
– You can use footage from prior years’ events in your news story. The videos on YouTube are in HD quality and there are tools available that should let you download it. Please credit ImprovEverywhere.com on screen with any usage (usage should be less than 30 seconds and for news outlets only– any usage beyond news should be licensed from us. Contact us for rates.)
JOURNALISTS ATTENDING IN NEW YORK
If you are interested in covering the event live, please read the following:
We usually get dozens of requests by journalists to cover the No Pants Subway Ride in person each January. We appreciate the interest, but it is more important to us to keep the event about the participants and not make it a media circus. At it’s heart, the No Pants Subway Ride is still a prank performance and having professional still and video cameras all over the place can really ruin the whole thing.
We strongly encourage participation of everyone, including the media. As I say every year, “If you’re not here to take your pants off, you’re in the wrong place.”
We are OK with journalists filming the ending point and interviewing participants, but please do not take out your professional cameras during the event. Your camera may get a good shot for you, but you will ruin the moment for everyone else on the train, and that’s the whole point of the event. We promise that any footage you get will look exactly like last year’s video that we’re making available to you. If you absolutely must film or photograph the event, I ask that you at least wait until after the first six stops on the ride when discretion is most key.
The ending point is Union Square, and participants should start arriving there as early as 4 PM. There will be 2,000 people with their pants off walking around at that time.
Feel free to interview anyone you see at Union Square. Again, please credit Improv Everywhere as the creators of the event in your story and please link to our site in any web coverage. We really appreciate it when we are paid that respect.