Another Year, Another ‘No Pants Subway Ride’
Photo by Brian Walters/BrianWaltersPhoto.com
Boston: you have one month to get a tan on those pasty winter legs of yours, because the “No Pants Subway Ride” is returning to the MBTA for the eighth year in a row.
If it’s anything like the events of years past, on January 11, hundreds of people will congregate at an undisclosed location in Boston, strip down to their underwear, and board various T trains along the Red, Orange, Blue, and Green Lines, legally exposing their flesh to unsuspecting passengers.
The event—meet-up times and locations are still being ironed out, so don’t get your undies in a bunch—is hosted annually by members of BostonSOS, a fringe group of free-fun revelers that look for ways to unite the community through flashmobs and pranks. The group was inspired by the work of New York City-based guerrilla-performance crew Improv Everywhere, who first started the “No Pants” tradition on public transit more than a decade ago. It now takes place in cities all over the world.
“As we’ve grown, we’ve taken in the philosophies from a number of other underground urban movements that share three common goals: meet new people, have fun purely for the sake of having fun, and make the community a more interesting place to be,” according to BostonSOS’s mission statement.
The 2012 “No Pants Ride” drew close to 300 participants who filled four train cars with their bare legs. Each year that number has increased significantly as more people have put aside their worries about what other people think, along with their pants.
After freaking out fellow T-riders, pantsless participants will meet for an after-party, where covering your thighs is still not a requirement while you mingle with like-minded strangers.
Keep checking BostonSOS’s Facebook page for updates, as it gets closer to the day of the event. And if you can’t wait to see riders in their underwear, just check out these photos from the 2013 and 2014 “No Pants Subway Ride” series.
