The Naked Cowboy, Times Square’s most famous underwear-clad entertainer, was determined not to let one of New York City’s severe blizzards stop him on Monday.
A day earlier, Mayor Zohran Mamdani described the incoming blizzard as having the potential to be one of “the top 10 snowfall events in the history of New York City.” Still, this did not dissuade Big Apple eccentric icon The Naked Cowboy, real name Robert Burck, from strutting his stuff in the near-buff.
“I come out every day because that’s what I f**king do. The worse it is, the better it is,” a confident Burck told amNewYork as he stood in the middle of the roadway on 45th Street and Broadway.
As usual, he wore nothing but his iconic white briefs and strummed his guitar as tourists, intrepid enough themselves to face the blizzard, flocked to his side for memorable photographs. Some literally brought their gloved hands to their mouths and gasped as they saw the near-nude standing tall under the bright lights and heavy snowfall.
“How are you doing this? It’s so cold,” one British tourist asked, gobsmacked.
“I was totally killing it till you told me that,” he joked.
For some 20 minutes, Burck straddled the thin line between entertainment and hypothermia, but he told amNewYork: “I will let you in on a little secret.”
Wading through the freshly fallen blanket and slush left by traffic, he strode into a nearby parking garage and pulled out an insulated jacket. He then began jumping and jogging on the spot by the garage pipes.
“It’s how I warm up,” he said. “It’s hard to warm up. I am cheating.”
Next came the preparation to head back out into the storm. He hyped himself up by lifting weights and performing pushups before checking his reflection in his car window and heading back into the squall for round two.
Again, he was greeted by locals and visitors alike, who were left stunned by his unbothered stance amid the whiteout.
“The temperature is one thing, snow is another thing. It can be 30 degrees up for anything; nothing’s going on. But then all of a sudden it’s snowing. It can be 10. I don’t recognize it,” Burck said. “When it’s freezing balls, but it’s snowing, and I get attention, those things have more qualitative properties than the things you’re paying attention to, like the temperature. I’m alive, bro.”
