LONDON, May 31 -- Pete Duffell stood on the subway platform late Saturday, swigging a cold beer and ready to party.
Duffell, 24, a professional scuba diver from Kent, and two buddies -- one with his hair dyed green for the occasion -- hauled three plastic bags filled with beer and wine onto a Circle Line subway train.
At midnight Saturday, drinking on London's Tube would suddenly be banned for the first time in the storied history of the world's oldest underground train system. Duffell and thousands of others, many wearing tuxedos, Mexican sombreros and Darth Vader masks, decided to hold one last public guzzle-a-thon to mark the moment.
So in super-octane parties organized largely on the social networking Web site Facebook, thousands of raucous revelers transformed the Tube into a huge, sweaty party all Saturday evening. They sang, hooted, ripped off their shirts in the swampy heat and consumed massive amounts of alcohol -- some through funnels -- as if there were no tomorrow, which, in the case of drinking on the Tube, there wasn't.
"I am not in favor of anarchy, I am not trying to cause harm; we are just here to have a laugh," said Duffell, who said he started his "Tube crawl" at 2 p.m. and planned to go until the last legal second.
