By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — A group of cheeky subway riders doffed their drawers for the “No Underwear Subway Ride” last weekend — but it turned out to be an April Fool’s prank with the purportedly pants-less straphangers actually wearing flesh-colored underwear.
The guerrilla comedy troupe Improv Everywhere, which organizes the annual “No Pants Subway Ride,” claimed it had more than 1,000 participants over four different subway lines on March 27 “to surprise and delight everyday New Yorkers riding the train,” the group’s Web site said.
“Our annual No Pants Subway Ride has been a tradition for years, and we decided it was time to up the ante,” a statement from the group read.
But after posting pictures of the event with the riders’ nether regions blurred out, the group admitted the attempt was actually a “fake mission” staged for the hoax-friendly holiday.
“We posted [news of the event] on April 1, fooling thousands of people into thinking we actually rode the subway with exposed genitals,” a follow-up note on the group’s Web site stated. “We pulled this off by wearing skin-colored underwear that would blur in a convincing way.”
Improv Everywhere leader Charlie Todd told the New York Times, which had trouble verifying the veracity of the act, that most people “laughed and covered their eyes” when the riders began disrobing.
“I think the worst thing I saw was people getting up and switching cars,” he added to the Times.
Police and NYC Transit told the newspaper they had no record of the incident and received no complaints of indecent exposure.
