The 10th Annual No Pants Subway Ride will take place on Sunday, January 9 in New York City. More info with the meeting point and start time will be posted to this site in early January. For now, save the date. You can RSVP on Facebook.
Once again we are encouraging folks in other cities around the world to stage their own No Pants rides on the same day. Here is the list of cities who participated last year. Anyone organizing a regional No Pants event should let us know by leaving a comment on this post along with all of the necessary details. The lead organizer must also send us an email via our contact form. In a few weeks we will publish a list of all participating cities along with links to any Facebook events. Groups have staged the event on trolleys, light rails, and buses in the past, so don’t let a lack of subway system stop you! 44 cities participated last year. Check the list linked above to see if one happened in your city last year before trying to start your own (preference will go to the prior year’s organizers.)
If you are unfamiliar with this tradition, you can read the history here: The No Pants Subway Ride.
To get you in the mood for the start of the holiday season, we thought we’d re-post our mission from this time last year, Guerrilla Handbell Strikeforce. A 13-member handbell choir provides some unexpected accompaniment for a Salvation Army bell ringer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.
And if you’re looking for a perfect gift for the comedy-fan in your life, pick up Improv Everywhere’s book, Causing a Scene You can order it on Amazon for just $13.59 or you can order a signed, personalized copy straight from us.
We’ve created a custom Google Map to show the location of every Improv Everywhere mission to date. The embedded map above shows our New York City missions, but you can zoom out to see a few that took place in other parts of the world. Zoom in and click on each placemark for the date the mission occurred, which serves as a link to the project page/video. Enjoy zooming around and finding old missions from the past nine years!
We limited the map to official missions and did not include touring events at college campuses and international festivals. Those missions have been plotted on a separate map below.
Here’s a bonus video featuring additional material from The Mp3 Experiment Seven that didn’t make it into our main video. The video ends with a time-lapse shot of the Bryant Park section of the event, sped up by a factor of 100.
For our latest mission, over 3,000 participants downloaded an MP3 file and pressed play simultaneously in retail stores in Midtown Manhattan. The masses converged on Bryant Park where a series of fun activities unfolded, culminating in a huge “mummy dance party.” This was the 7th installment in our Mp3 Experiment series.
Enjoy the video above first, and then go behind the scenes with our photos below. We’d like to thank Bryant Park for generously hosting the second half of the event and all of the stores for putting up with the unauthorized first half.
Here’s a bonus video, containing footage we didn’t have room for in the main video:
Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based prank collective that causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents.
