No Pants Subway Ride in Istanbul, Turkey, January 8, 2012
If you participated in one of the 59 regional No Pants Subway Rides today in 27 countries across the world, leave us an agent report in the comments below letting us know how it went. Post links to any photos and videos from your town’s event as well. Let us know how many people participated and what the temperature was. Reports from the New York ride are here.
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New York City’s 2012 No Pants Subway Ride:
The story of the first No Pants Subway Ride in 2002 in New York City:
Check out the complete history of The No Pants! Subway Ride with videos of past years.
Get the official 2012 No Pants Subway Ride t-shirt:
First NPSR (although we don’t have subway so we took a bus instead) in Ljubljana successfully finished :) We had fun for about 2 hours and we’re definitely doing it again next year \o/
Some pictures and maybe a video will probably follow in the next few days :)
Great fun with ~40 people in Hamburg! :)
First pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/travel_andy/sets/72157628778344895/
We in Vienna had a great time! A guesstimated 30 people attended, and we all had a lot of fun! First we all got on the same trains, but after a good 30 minutes we split up in smaller teams and went on for around for another 60 minutes. The outside temperature was 4°C (39°F), so not too cold – and luckily, most of the underground is, well, underground.
As expected, mostly younger and foreign people responded very well, the older Austrians looked grumpy – but they always do. Lots of bystanders took pictures and videos, and of course we were also asked why we’re not wearing pants a lot.
So yeah, for a rather small and conservative country like Austria, this was a big win!
I didn’t take any pictures or videos, but I’m sure something will come up in the near future.
5 Pioneers here in Munich. We event got a Chinese with us that was here on holiday. We did a little fotoshoot as well. Me and my Sunday-suit http://www.facebook.com/events/352588644755365/
Also we went for a quick beer afterwards. I have to say I meat 4 great people! -> “Life is about the people you meet and the things you great with them”. People where really friendly and asked us what we were doing with smile on their faces. We even asked a older couple to take a picture of us in our pants afterwards.
A very nice turnout for London. I’d guess around 150-200? Anyway, I was on the Marylebone team, which was the smallest. Had a lot of laughter but then all seriousness as the half empty rear two cars pulled in..and we pulled off. A lot of people stifling laughter and taking pictures and one cynic even going “It’s student. It’s a sociological experiment. It’s students.” Although most took the typical commuter attitude was that of ‘I didn’t see it but I still want to peek.’
Once we got to Paddington we decided the best thing to do would be go all the way down to Elephant then back to Charing Cross trouserless. Of course, Elephant being the terminus of the Bakerloo Line, there were about 5 fully clothed people in the car. One got very close to taking his trousers off to. Couldn’t stay for the trouserless pub thingy, had to run home!
Here’s some photos I’ve found.. http://www.demotix.com/news/994768/no-trousers-day-tube-ride
Another of the London Mob from The Stiff Upper Lip Society…our team went Charing Cross to Paddington, onto Paddington Overground station to regroup, then back to the Bakerloo Line to Queen’s Park where the tube terminated. Over the bridge to the other platform and back down the Bakerloo Line to Charing Cross. then walking the streets of London to get to the Verve Bar. Finally put my kecks back on when leaving the pub and catching the bus home. In the pictures Alfie sent my token photo is of three of us leaving a carriage, my legs being the ones with the inkwork.
Well done on representing London
Here’s my blog post of No Trousers on the Tube Ride 2012 with some more photos & a great video from You & I Films
Things ran slightly out of hand in here Milan. Even though we had a GREAT (!) time, our fun was partly spoiled because there have been some arrests for public indecency! I wrote an article about it on my blog (for the occasion in English): http://kogelperspectief.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/italian-pants-free-riders-arrested-for-public-indecency/
Made Brazilian news earlier than London News
http://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2012/01/em-londres-passageiros-circulam-sem-calcas-no-metro.html
Reporting from Lisbon!
Our NPSR went without a hitch. 50 people rode the blue train uptown and back on a warm 16ºC day (down from around 100 in previous years). Almost all the reactions were positive, and everyone was cheerful. Then we left the subway, still with no pants, and gathered for drinks at a very popular bar where they serve only one drink: Ginjinha, a cherry liqueur which is served with cherries in the cup. The pun gets a bit lost in translation, but the gist of it is their billboard says “Ginjinha: you can order with or without them”.
Of course we all went in and ordered it without them.
Cheers!
A big success in Lisbon indeed, the walk through town afterwards also drew quite some attention. Here’s some pics: http://aeiou.visao.pt/veja-como-foi-o-passeio-em-cuecas-no-metro-de-lisboa=f641983
Can’t wait for next year!
Sydney, Australia – It’s our 4th year, and while numbers were down on what we’d hoped for, the event again went of without a hitch.
We had 35 riders, on an overcast day, with temps of 23C.
I don’t know how other cities go about their campaigns, but changes to Facebook group settings hindered our ability to recruit folks … curious to know if other cities had a similar result.
Next year marks our 5th event, and we’re going into overdrive. If you plan on being in Sydney during January next year, I highly advise you join us … :)
Damien,
Thanks for the report! I’m curious, what was the Facebook change?
It’s no longer possible to send mail to all the members of a Facebook group. This makes it very hard to announce changes or to send out repeated invitations. The members have to check the page themselves if they want ot know what’s going on.
As I understand it sending messages is now only possible from personal pages so we are planning to turn our Ms No Pants into a person for next year.
We have had similar problems with the Facebook changes but I was still able to send out messages from our old group… I think its just pages that don’t allow you to send messages?
Working with the page we made regular status updates leading up to the event and encouraging our fans to use the ‘share’ function to spread the word.
Around 25 people for the first time ever in Porto, Portugal. 15º C , beautiful sunny day:) We started on 6 different stations on 2 different lines, then all converged around the same time on the same station and crossed D Luis bridge on the same train.
After party on the very uptight and traditional “Café Guarany”, with great understanding from the staff and the other clients.
Lots of fun on a very different afternoon!
We made the national TV news, as well as all the major newspapers:
check us on TV
Reporting in from San Francisco!
Pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/captin_nod/sets/72157628787493089/
We started out in the early afternoon departing from various stations on the BART network and converged at Montgomery station around 13:20. Trickling out of the station, we walked through the Financial District towards Levi Plaza. Arriving at the plaza, we gathered and were shunted back and forth Battery St as security from the nearby buildings were confused by our presence. We eventually left when they thought we were some sort of ‘naked protest group’ and it became far too difficult to explain that we’d all simply just forgot our trousers.
Nevermind :)
Chicago’s No Pants Subway Ride video w/ getting kicked off by the police – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzfRSMYNp4k
Adam reporting in from Brisbane (Australia) here..
We had another successful one, this was our third one. We were down on numbers this year, 18 in total (vs our 59 last year) but i suspect that might be due to the fact that we had the police called on us last year and people may have been a bit hesitant. It was a beautiful sunny day with temps of 29C.
Some youtube footage is here:
http://youtu.be/dz1YY-NeYok
http://youtu.be/OC8edUhvDlc
This year, we had the green light from Queensland Police and QueenslandRail authorities, which helped to prevent them getting an unnecessary callout (which i think they respected and were grateful of the fact that i notified them a few days prior to the event).
We had a few international visitors who even joined in and played the part perfectly – one quote to note was from a canadian girl who, when asked why she was only wearing underwear, said “i thought this is how you aussies dressed on hot days?”. ;)
We timed out trains to get maximum impact. Initially catching the Caboolture train to Bowen Hills, changing for a Cleveland train to South Bank (South Bank was the busiest station we stopped at, getting the most reactions), then changing for the Gold Coast to Brisbane Airport train getting off at Roma Street (this was our busiest train, as all the people travelling from the Gold Coast to Brisbane, or to the Brisbane Airport were on this train), then from Roma Street to Fortitude Valley where we finished the ride.
We actually lost a couple of riders on our first change because of a signage fault on the platform, but luckily they caught up by catching the next train anyway.
All in all, a successful ride from Brisbane, and hoping to get the numbers back up next year!
Sorry, forgot the link to the photos..
http://photobucket.com/npsr_brisbane_2012
Well done on representing London
Here’s my blog post of the event http://london-underground.blogspot.com/2012/01/photos-no-trousers-on-tube-ride-2012.html with some more photos & a great video from You & I Films
Third Stockholm No Pants had:
41 participants including our first ever 2 kids!
-6 degrees with only little snow.
we used about 40 trains altogether.
visited 14 stations.
had 5 freelance photographers following us, much more discretely than last year and our own great filmmakers and photograpers.
we also got several sponatanoius participants along the ride, among them one man who simply unzipped his pants, dropped them around his shoes and with a deep sigh enjoyed the freedom of being pantless, as he put it.
We were happy to be able to share the joy of freedom with other subway riders!
Some of the pantless guys got nicely grabbed in the butt by women who couldn’t resist and I imagine everybody enjoyed it.
We ended the trip at a bar where most of us stayed without pants until we left the place.
photos in our No Pants Stockholm 2012 Album.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150459895752344.357513.249528637343&type=3
Thanx for the ride!
I just posted photos and a run down of what happened on Sunday’s No pants subway ride on my blog. http://joshapalooza.blogspot.com
It was a crazy night. Our photos were deleted because we’re not allowed to take photos in the metros apparently. Turkish friends confirmed there IS a law against this. However, for those that had their photos deleted you can easily get them back by searching for a data recovery program that will retrieve any data deleted.
I counted more than a dozen undercover police that met us at the meeting point, not just 4. They saved us from a bunch of men when we were being held in the metro as well. That’s when they let us go. But they still followed us for a while.
A Facebook page have been created for the Improv Everywhere fans in Paris in order to make it easier to gather for the next events:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Improv-Everywhere-Fans-Paris/297738770272401
For some reason my previous report about Porto does not appear. Tried to send again and get an “you already wrote that” error …
So here is a video of us in Porto yesterday-
And we made national tv news – http://tv1.rtp.pt/noticias/?t=Dia-sem-calcas-no-Metro-do-Porto.rtp&headline=20&visual=9&article=516503&tm=8
And a bunch of newspapers today
Great weather, around 25 people participating, and a lot of fun!
No Pants Light Rail Ride Seattle was successful! 50 degrees and fairly clear (rare for winter), beautiful sunset on Rainier and the Olympic mountains on the trip back (the south end has a great view). About 250 said they were attending on Facebook, and we got a good sized group. The sight of us milling around and getting Starbucks at Sea-Tac Airport was the best part. All those dumbstruck people pulling their luggage. I hope we brightened their day because air travel sucks. Friends were made, drinks were raised afterwards. I’ve never felt so free, haha. I hope next year is bigger!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meh5wDKmyF8 —>Polish edition in Warsaw !!
Minneapolis had 64+ people (I say + because some joined us at various stops).. We had news coverage from WCCO, K-Twin 96.3, and The CityPages. Some video by a local vlogger who just happened to be headed home when he discovered us on the train and rode along. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z52F4MtEPWI and a group shot at the end of the Light Rail in Downtown Minneapolis. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3055292543969&set=o.185021168257340&type=1&ref=nf
I was at the Buenos Aires event yesterday and I can say we were around 100 people. It was my first time and I can hardly wait to be there next year! We had a lot of fun, I went with a couple of friends but it was filled with awesome and welcoming people. There are some pics here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/bsasflashmob/photos/
No Pants Santiago, Chile
For the first time in Santiago
600+ guest on Facebook event
50 participants on a sunny day (34ºC)
Extensive media coverage
Success!!
TV
http://www.meganoticias.cl/nacional/metropolitana/jovenes-sorprendieron-a-pasajeros-de-metro-viajando-en-ropa-interior.html
Press
http://www.emol.com/MundoGrafico/index.asp?G_ID=20911
http://www.lun.com/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?dt=2012-01-09&PaginaId=18&bodyid=0
Gallery
http://retratochile.cl/blog/metrosinpantalones/
Another great turnout for Phoenix’s No Pants Light Rail Ride – about 250 people rode the train down to Arizona State University where we had a few drinks, made new friends, and then rode back from whence we came.
Just like every year, a few people whine how cold it was. I point out it’s a lot tougher to do this in New York or Chicago, and that usually shuts them up. We’re working on our blog and video, but we have a bunch of No Pants ride pictures here.
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1470020_passengers-in-their-pants-travel-on-manchester-metrolink-for-no-trousers-day
An intimate group of six of us in Manchester!
Madrid for the 3º year in a Road got involved in the Global Flashmob of The “NPSR”, started with 7 agents the first year, grew up to 45 last year and this year we got to be 70 going up from the nort Station of Plaza Castilla heading downtown to the Heart of the City at “Sol”.
After some inconvinience with metro security stuff that happily were solved with no further problems the groups arrive in to Sol after a 40 minutes Metro trip, and making stations connections.
The response of the people was great, some amused faces, lots of laught, someone got bother but at the end 7 persons along the trip decided to join the flashmob. Here is a link to a facebook album with the recopilation of pictures taken by the agents that were keeping track of the groups and a video from one of the agents.
Photos: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151135267150261.787018.875840260&type=3
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VZ1UYS99h4o
Let´s get ready for the NPSR 2013….Yeah Madrid!!!!
The full story of Istanbul’s first No Pants Subway Ride. Read a story of undercover police, subway security, hardline gangs and Improv Everywhere agents being detained!
Full report is now available complete with photos and videos:
In London we were split into 7 groups for the journey from Charring Cross to Paddington, where we all met up again. We then headed off on different journeys around the capital. I accidentally joined a different group, so many bare legs, it was confusing, but a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Here is my video of the day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5x6bbhitgI&feature=g-upl&context=G208b593AUAAAAAAAAAA
We had only 12 people in Kaohsiung, Taiwan…But it’s the first time, hopefully next year will be more…
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=337716029580409&set=p.337716029580409&type=1&ref=nf
Whoa! I had no idea you did one in Taiwan. Next year use the registration form so I can promote you guys on the site!
It was our 5th year running the event in Adelaide, South Australia. After temperatures in the low 40’s (Celsius) the weekend before we were unlucky to have a cold and rainy day on the 8th and had a pretty poor turnout of 8 for our ride. Still, it was great fun as always and we got some good reactions.
For the second leg of our ride (riding from the beach back into the city) we did our variation on the standard ride, dubbed ‘Pants for Peace.’ Basically we have the participants spread throughout the tram and about halfway through the ride, one person starts walking through and telling people she is collecting pants for a charity, called ‘pants for peace,’ to give to the homeless. She asks various random people on the tram who, of course, don’t give up their pants until she comes to one of the participants who ponders for a minute then says ‘why they hell not’ and takes off and hands over their pants to much gasping and even cheering from the rest of the tram. The pants collector continues down the tram and collects pants from each of our participants who ride out the ride of the journey pantsless.
This idea gets a great reaction as well and is something different to do on the way back.
It was a one-(wo)man-show in Miami! Our weather was fabulous (mid 70’s? forgot to check), so it’s a shame more people didn’t come out to play.
I’ve posted pictures and details on my blog: http://www.commanderclaudia.blogspot.com/2012/01/riding-rails-sans-pants.html
The weather in Washington DC was unseasonably warm, so there were many people in the Metro system of the Panted and Pantless variety. We had the usual reactions from the Panted, wondering what the Pantless were up to. Most people smiled, others were confused. I told one woman who really wanted a reason for pantlessness that the Pantless got to ride for free. That seemed to make her happy, and told her friends to drop their pants so they could ride for free.
This was my third year photographing this event. You can see my pictures on Flickr here.
The Washington DC Flickr Group is
The DC Capitol Improv web site is