The wrestling superfan, Tim Rivera, leads a troupe of performers that cosplay as their childhood heroes in front of unsuspecting subway riders.
For many New Yorkers, the city’s subways are the performance spaces they encounter most often. Everyday, dancers and musicians put on a subterranean revue that uses mass transit as a stage.
In recent years, this moving festival has included “Subway Mania,” an homage to one of professional wrestling’s most popular period: the late 1990s to early 2000. About three times a year, costumed performers take on the snarling, swaggering roles of fan-favorites like Kane, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and the Undertaker and squeeze the rollicking story lines and acrobatic spectacle of wrestling into a single subway car.
On a Sunday evening earlier this year, the cosplay wrestlers gathered at the Lexington Avenue/59th Street station in Manhattan wearing shiny costumes and robes and holding homemade championship belts.
The scene caught the attention of Shyama Venkateswar, 57, who was on her way home to Forest Hills, Queens. Her sons, now young adults, had watched World Wrestling Entertainment shows growing up, she said, so she followed the wrestlers aboard the train and abandoned her trip home.