Backstage at Miss Subways, a vintage pageant reckons with a changing city

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Last Friday night at the Sideshows by the Seashore on Coney Island, a 70-year-old contortionist folded herself into a pretzel to the tune of "Take the A Train;" an Australian in gold tulle and a rat mask performed her remix of "Rapper’s Delight" and a mermaid opera singer belted an aria about reading smut on public transit.

This could only be Miss Subways, the homegrown New York City competition unlike any other. Almost 85 years after its start in 1941 as an ad campaign, it’s taken on different forms in its various iterations, but still highlights the best of New York since the City Reliquary revived it in 2017. And despite the commercial roots, Miss Subways has a historic legacy: it was the first racially integrated beauty contest in the world, crowning the first Black Miss Subways in 1947.  

This year’s contestants were mostly full-time performers, a shift from the early days, when organizers sought "subway-riding everygirls from all boroughs: secretaries, servicewomen, sales clerks"  according to a 1971 piece in the Times, which also called the contest winner “a queen whose realm is a hole in the ground."

Accessibility was the point: anyone could win (though not without organizing, more on that later). It’s still technically true that anyone can run for Miss Subways, but the vibe now tilts toward showmanship. I overheard one audience member saying, “Do they love New York, or do they love performance and they’re using this as an outlet for their performance?”