Bash Compactor: Drop ’Em

“If you didn’t come to take your pants off, you do not belong here.” Such was the refrain Agent Alex crowed through the megaphone this past Sunday as one of the “captains” at the Bushwick kickoff to Improv Everywhere’s No Pants Subway Ride. Going for nine years running and spanning 42 cities in 15 different countries, the ride has become a cherished tradition for urbanites undeterred by those somewhat related bogeymen of cold temperatures and cruel, cruel mockery. As Alex stated through the megaphone, “It’s not a secret prank anymore... it’s a parade at this point.” Don’t tell that to the cops.

Following a brief debriefing in Bushwick Park (just one of many jump-off points around the city), the crowd marched towards the DeKalb L station. “We do culture jamming,” explained one Improv-er as he walked, “pushing convention and mashing up performance art with everyday reality. I don’t usually wear underwear; I had to put it on for this.” He strongly suggested I take my pants off to get the full participatory experience.

The attendees were surprisingly diverse; in addition to the prerequisite theater kids (dressed, for the most part, how a 20-yearold McKibben lofts resident imagines grownups with real jobs might dress), there were some older folks and a decent scattering of regs looking to do something “wacky.” “I wanted to participate in a trademark New York event,” one norm-ish fellow said. You hear that, culture-jammers? Trademark.

Once onboard, the “agents” de-pantsed in groups and continued to ride like everything was normal, reading, staring into space and ignoring the man with a stump for an arm begging for change. Like real actors, some weren’t too natural, bopping along to their headphones a shade too hard or flipping through their newspapers too emphatically. Though the occasional rider shielded his eyes from all that hairy man-leg or switched cars only to find more of the same, most ignored them completely.

Once all the rides had converged in Union Square, a pantsless powwow ensued. People sang songs, did the conga, and cheered at random intervals. An Andrew W.K. doppelganger climbed the George Washington statue to much applause. A group of missionaries passed out pro-pants literature, while some Pantsentologists hawked “Free Pants Tests.” “Who is not wearing pants who needs pants?” asked one. “Not the girls!” a male bystander replied. I haven’t seen a group of people this psyched about not wearing pants since the last time I went to Van Dam.

A group of pantsless teens made me suddenly concerned there might be perverts about. Did their parents know what they were doing? “They said if I was getting arrested, this is the one thing I could get arrested for,” a floppy-haired boy replied. But wasn’t he afraid of catching cold? “Sometimes it gets hotter when you take your pants off... it’s the excitement!” Back underground, the pantsless crowded the station in unbelievable numbers. A cop posed for a picture with two panty-clad ladies.Was everything going OK? “So far, so good,” he grinned. The leader of a drowned-out jazz band was less enthused, summing up the event’s main idea as he grumbled, “Maybe if we took our pants off, we’d get more attention.”