When Grand Central Stood Still

A strange sight at Grand Central. A couple of hundred people, indistinguishable from the 500,000 commuters who pass through the midtown station each day, suddenly freeze. They were part of an improv group which has put on this public event before, but never in such a theatrical space. A cop was asked what was going on: “I have no idea! That is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m a cop!” (Click play to start the clip.)

When Grand Central Stood Still

(thank you hilary)

23 Comments leave a comment below

  2. That was great! Thanks for sharing.

    janne
    Feb 4th, 2008 / 4:09 am

  3. That’s so cool. I love Improv Everywhere.

    Jul
    Feb 4th, 2008 / 9:28 am

  4. WOW, WOW, WOW. I pass through GC twice daily. I think if I had been there when this was going on, I would have been afraid. (Too many zombie movies, maybe…)

    Anna @ D16
    Feb 4th, 2008 / 9:34 am

  5. Love that! Reminds me of the long-exposure photo my brother took of me and his girlfriend at Grand Central. We looked like happy statues while everyone else was a blur. Love the spontaneous applause at the end!

    Jennifer
    Feb 4th, 2008 / 9:56 am

  6. It is too good concept to shock every body

    Maneesh
    Feb 4th, 2008 / 12:43 pm

  7. Yeah I saw this last year. It was so neat, and impressive, and really just such a commentary on our “Busyness”. I loved that the little kids turned back to look at him.

    bombaygirl
    Feb 4th, 2008 / 6:12 pm

  8. sorry…commented on the wrong video! This was neat!

    bombaygirl
    Feb 4th, 2008 / 6:15 pm

  9. Awesome!! I loved it!

    marilyn
    Feb 5th, 2008 / 2:13 pm

  10. wow. LOVED this!

    Andrea
    Feb 6th, 2008 / 2:27 am

  11. amazing idea and just really looked stunning if only they’d do it in London

    Tom Love
    Feb 6th, 2008 / 10:12 am

  12. Oh my god! thanks for sharing this….that poor guy with the cart =( ….so funny though (I wonder how long they did it…if that was in real time)
    – Jessie –

    Jessie Cacciola
    Feb 6th, 2008 / 11:54 am

  13. brilliantly wacky

    poor people

    glad they didn’t really freak out

    chrisfizik
    Feb 6th, 2008 / 10:00 pm

  14. That was great! great!great!great!great!
    Thanks for sharing.

    Yuktikka
    Feb 10th, 2008 / 10:49 am

  16. That was just simply great.

    Woohzal
    Feb 14th, 2008 / 7:38 am

  17. Hopefully no one got pickpocketed while they were still.

    MarkL
    Feb 17th, 2008 / 5:58 pm

  18. I think the people in GS are like that all the time. They only start to move when someone new walks in.
    When I was in NYC I did not go to GS, so they may have been frozen for 4 days.

    mickb
    Feb 19th, 2008 / 3:28 pm

  19. Ok. This just totally kicked!!! Called the wife in to check it out….then everyone clapped. That shows the impact it had!!!

    MikeyP
    Mar 5th, 2008 / 9:23 pm

  20. I believe this group is Improv Everywhere, they do tons of stuff like this. Check out their Best Buy one.

    Alec
    Mar 18th, 2008 / 11:10 pm

  21. This is pretty awesome, we did the same thing at UC Berkeley a month back, I don’t know if the idea was based on this video or not because I hear it happens every year, but it was pretty cool, I did a pose of just about to trow away a newspaper as i picked up my cup of coffee to drink,

    Sprawl
    Apr 12th, 2008 / 6:39 pm

  22. haha, I participated in something like this once. At the exact same moment, everyone dropped to the ground and curled up in a ball. it was really really fun and crazy.

    jenn
    Apr 22nd, 2008 / 9:17 pm

  23. awesome!!!

    micky
    Jul 1st, 2008 / 3:01 pm