The Annual No Pants Subway Ride

January 11^th, 2015, was the day of the annual No Pants Subway Ride. This novel event, started for the first time in 2002 with just seven participants in New York City, has grown to incorporate more than sixty cities worldwide.

The premise of the event is that transit passengers ride trains without wearing anything but undies on their lower halves. The top half must be as if they were going about their normal day. No acknowledgement of pantslessness is to be made.

Growing over four years from seven riders to one hundred and fifty in New York City in 2006, but 2013 sixty cities had people coordinating the event.

The event was the brainchild of Improv Everywhere, which is a New York prank collective, whose motto is “We Cause Scenes”.  Their aim is to create joyful chaos in public places. The fact that many participating cities are shivering through winter does not dampen enthusiasm!

This year, tens of thousands of people participated worldwide – with four thousand in New York City alone. The oldest registered participant was eighty four years young, and the youngest was just seven months old. Other cities which participated include Chicago, Tokyo, Bangalore, Madrid, Copenhagen, London, Jerusalem, Hamburg, and even a pantsless ride on a ski gondola in Fukushima, Japan.

Even Australians jumped on this bandwagon (and let’s face it, our climate is much more conducive at this time of year!) Trains and trams from Bondi to Adelaide had pantsless riders.

The founder of the event, Charlie Todd, has stated that the event is now an “international celebration of silliness”.

Missed The No Pants Subway Ride for 2015? Don’t despair. World No Pants Day is still to come – held in numerous nations of the world on the first Friday in May. This previously informal, college event became official in 2000, and has been embraced in colleges and universities in the US, Canada, Sweden, Finland, the UK and Australia.

Best get some nice undies!