February 21, 2006
ImprovEverywhere Punks the Strand
Oh, Charlie Todd, we love you and your thousands of nameless improv slaves! In this weeks prank, Charlie organized a group of 120 agents, and devised a plan to play a cell-phone symphony in the checked-bag area of the Strand Bookstore. This meant working in teams of two, where one person smuggled in the phone, and one person called (the callers were placed well out of the way in Union Square, to avoid suspicion.) Amazing fun-- and unlike last month's No Pants ride, no one got arrested! Well done, buddy!
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Ahhhh, no video on the front page, please! Can you just post a link, instead?
Hah, funny idea. I wish they could have snuck the camera into the strand better and maybe picked up some more sound though. Overall bravo though
WOW! Congrats! Truly a magnificient accomplishment. The look on that bag checkers face was absolutely priceless! A feature film should be made out of these innovative and remarkable feats. Kudos to all the people that spent countless minutes of their lives conjuring up such a ruse! I mean really bravo, BRAVO!
This is one of my favorite ones they've done.. ahh.. another reason I love people in this city
I love the Strand. AND i love this prank! Hilarious!
I always hate it when people move here yet still keep their old "845" numbers. They probably still have their old, outdated ID, too.
Damn security guards and bag-check workers. Always taking your bags while they sit on their asses raking in minimum wage. That'll show them! And those stupid book-readers browsing around Strand quietly. Heh. Let them try to read their stupid books with all that noise around them!
Really, who knew cell phones could be annoying before this prank? Geniuses, the lot of 'em.
Next stop..how about a grand central station..so you can get an echo effect..
stranded - i'm in your boat. We're probably the only ones rowing it, however.
Oh happy day. These guys really outdid themselves this time!
Sticking it to that ornery clerk that takes their bags so they don't have to deal with it.
Count one for the legion of white privilidged idiots with cell phones for sticking it to that gray haired black asshole!
Great job Biff and Muffy! Thank god mommy and daddy paid the cell phone bill this month.
Come on anonymous haters directly above this post. I don't think this is really a case of sticking it to anyone. just a wacky little experiment. you can't possibly be such humorless blowhards as to take the whole privilege white people angle here. you don't have to think it's hilarious or even particularly clever, but i just don't see the point in taking the whole "racist/classist" angle. not when nothing was done maliciously.
as long as it wasn't a sound of a ticking bomb, no one gets hurt anyway, or no law is broken.
that said, i don't like having to check my bags anywhere. the only good thing about it is you're less likely to be clipped by someone else's in the aisles there.
the people who are complaining have never worked in retail. it is such a boring, monotonous job that it is a joy to have SOMETHING interesting going on besides putting bags in a cubby or hitting "enter" on the register for the thousandth time.
Moe-
I don't think it was racist or classist or malicious or illegal, and I never said so. But it was damned stupid and unclever. And it was a prank, and every prank needs a target, and the targets of the prank were those two bag-check workers - not the public at large.
Seriously, what was the point? To humiliate the workers? (Judging from the video clips of their faces, that was at least part of it.) To prove that cellphones going off in bags are annoying? To protest having to check bags at bookstores (which Strand has been doing for years and years)? Or cleverness for cleverness' sake? (In which case, you need to be a lot more clever, and a lot more funny).
It was pointless, yet was being presented as ingeniously clever. That was my beef.
Of course, Gothamist plays this up with their normal James Lipton reverential style. Improv Everywhere could take a collective dump on a pensioner's rug and they would hype it to no end. Remember their description of 9/11 WTC photos as "beautiful”?
Granted some of Improv Everywhere’s bits are clever, but this isn’t even funny. Call this for what it is...an asinine prank at the expense of one of the city's true institutions, the Strand bookstore. Why wouldn't a manager get upset? They're screwing with his business. A bookstore is supposed to be a refuge and from what I understand they’re not an easy business to turn a profit in.
It just rings - pun intended - stupid. The constant din of cell phones is that everyone is forced to deal with 24/7 is annoying. A “symphony” of them is just more so.
What's next, a symphony at the Met, St. Patrick's Cathedral, or a hospital? In all honesty, why not target some truly corporate place? Or better yet, they should get out of their comfort zone and try the same thing up in the South Bronx, Harlem, or East New York. Aren't they Improv Everywhere?
The sad thing is that we'll have scads of footage from these precious hipsters – they’re preparing a DVD - and relatively little of the important NYC stuff, i.e. early graffiti and hip hop, 1970s East Village punk and new wave bands, and the Paradise Garage scene.
It is too bad that you can't focus this teamwork and energy into doing something that actually helps people or improves their lives.
how dare you "pranksters"... do you know the affliction books have gone through for thousands of years, and for you and your legions of warthog haters to come up with a "prank" that pokes fun at those poor defenseless books, well that is just not right. Did you know that during the salem witch trials some of these books where burned... huh "Prankers"... take your unamed army and do something good with your time... Why dont you fight with our troops in Iraq, fight for the freedom that is written about in these sweet, non violent, sexy, sexy, loving books. Then, and only then you can show me a life altering improv experiance... You should be ashamed... all of you... anyone of you who helped this "prank" out... I hope your children grow up to be illetrate.
Do the people hating on this "prank" for the way it unfairly targets those poor, poor Strand workers realize the idea was suggested by a Strand employee?
Also, they don't make you check your bags to make *your* life easier, they check them so that you won't use them to steal their books. Not criticizing that logic, just pointing out that it's not a *service* they provide.
and why were all the books near the prank BLACK!!!
It's freakin' black history month "pranksters"!