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No, I didn't make a mistake typing the title. It is not "improve".
Do you remember the comedian who lived at Ikea and who also visited all Manhatten Starbucks shops? If you chuckled about him, then this is something for you:
There is a group called "Improv Everywhere". There official description is:
Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created
in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 70
missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New
York City.
The stuff they do is simple, but often hillarious. And
the good thing about it is that it is not designed to harm anybody or to cause
damage.
One famous mission was "Frozen Grand Central":
On a cold
Saturday in New York City over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at
the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central
Station. Over 500,000 people rush through Grand Central every day, but that day
things slowed down just a bit as commuters and tourists alike stopped to notice
what was happening around them.
Another mission was to send 111 shirtless
men of all shapes and sizes in the NYC Abercrombie and Fitch store. Abercrombie
and Fitch is known for their ads with shirtless men, and shirtless men are
displayed in various places in the NCY store.
A mission I liked even
more was sending a large group of Agents in royal blue polo shirts, khakis and
belts into the Manhatten Best Buy and just stand around at the end of the
aisles. Besides the missing logo on their shirts, they looked exactly like
employees.
You can look up all their missions on their website of
course.
Let me mention just two more that stood out:
They sent in 120 Agents in the Strand Book Store Manhatten to put their backpacks in the bag
check (and all the backpacks had a cell phone inside).
Before pouring into the book store, they had divided the Agents
into their cellphone brands and all cell phones of one brand were tuned to the
same ringtone.
After all the Agents had checked their bags and were inside
the store, a mass of calls was send off simoultaneously to the checked
cellphones.
And the most recent misison: Three agents brought in their
desktop computer and monitor into a Starbucks, bought coffee and worked there with their big set up like others do with their laptops.
So watch out if you are in Manhatten
... or any big city, since Improv Everywhere is already operating in other locations and even other countries
now.
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