No Pants Day

According to the prank cooperative “Improveverywhere,”:

The No Pants Subway Ride is an annual event staged by Improv Everywhere every January in New York City. The mission started as a small prank with seven guys and has grown into an international celebration of silliness, with dozens of cities around the world participating each year. The idea behind No Pants is simple: Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants do not behave as if they know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.

The article goes on to applaud the increase in diversity over the years:

We dropped the “pants seller” bit this year after too many people lost their pants in 2006. Instead, participants hid their pants in a backpack. This was the first year No Pants really started becoming diverse, with people of all colors, shapes, sizes, and ages participating.

You see, up until then this organized silliness was almost exclusively a white thing. I don’t think this has changed much. A look at international participation tends to confirm our already established notions about race, ethnicity and religion. No Pants participants were arrested in Istanbul. The stunt is quite popular in the Far East – but unknown in black Africa. Here’s a list of participating cities as of this year:
– Adelaide
– Amsterdam
– Atlanta
– Austin
– Bangalore
– Barcelona
– Basel
– Beijing
– Berlin
– Boston
– Brisbane
– Brussels
– Budapest
– Buenos Aires
– Cairo
– Calgary
– Cape Town
– Charlotte
– Chicago
– Cleveland
– Copenhagen
– Dallas
– Delhi
– Hamburg
– Hong Kong
– Jerusalem
– Johannesburg
– Kyiv
– Lille
– Lisbon
– London
– Los Angeles
– Madrid
– Melbourne
– Mexico City
– Miami
– Milan
– Minneapolis
– Montreal
– Munich
– Nantucket
– Naples (Italy)
– New Orleans
– New York
– Paris
– Philadephia
– Phoenix
– Portland
– Prague
– Salt Lake City
– San Francisco
– Seattle
– Sofia
– St. Louis
– Stockholm
– Stuttgart
– Sydney
– Toronto
– Vancouver
– Vienna
– Warsaw
– Washington DC
A glance at the photos from Cape Town reveals that almost all the participants were white. Johannesburg shows a handful of blacks.
The freedom to be silly in public is a hallmark of civilized society. If we were to rate societies by their participation in No Pants Day, whites definitely come out on top. Asian participation seems to be anemic, probably partly due to fear of police intervention and partly due to the intense cold of Northeast Asia this time of year (though this hasn’t stopped New York participants). While blacks will participate as individuals, not very many blacks (even in majority black cities such as Atlanta, Philadelphia or St. Louis) seem to have participated. It probably wouldn’t be very smart to perform a stunt like this in the ghetto, and we’re not likely to see significant participation in places like Monrovia, Liberia or Brazzaville, Congo – even though the climate in those places is perfect.
I was thinking about suggesting that the upcoming American Renaissance conference be a No Pants event (we could still wear our ties). That way, nobody could dispute our superiority.