Robert Burck, the 55-year-old street performer known as the Naked Cowboy, says he spent 30 minutes being harassed, followed and cursed at by a stranger in Times Square on Thursday, just three days after a random knife attack left a Bank of America executive dead nearby. Burck says the man brandished a scarf like a whip near his face and body, insulted him, and followed him from block to block as onlookers filmed the confrontation.
According to New York Post reporter Doree Lewak, the man wore shorts, a jacket and a backpack, and at one point told Burck, “you ain’t no gangster.” A bystander, alarmed by the man’s behavior, reportedly shouted “get your pills” at him. Burck says he sang love ballads in an attempt to calm the tense situation and told the man that “most people are not going to harm ya,” even as he admitted, “you just hope they don’t kill ya.”
Burck, who has performed in his signature underwear-and-boots getup in Times Square for 27 years, told the outlet he considered whether it would have been justifiable to hit the man, but held back. “I’m shaking in my boots but acting calm,” he said, adding that it took him 30 minutes to regulate his breathing afterward. “You’re always vulnerable in New York,” Burck said, describing the encounter as one that left him genuinely afraid.
A Neighborhood Still Reeling From Monday's Attack
Burck said he was on edge after Monday's fatal Times Square stabbings, which unfolded near West 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue when 49-year-old Pamela Cisneros of Queens randomly attacked two people with kitchen knives pulled from a shopping bag, according to PBS News. NYPD officers fatally shot Cisneros after Taser deployments failed to stop her. The attack killed Erin Piacenti, a 32-year-old Bank of America vice president, and injured a 68-year-old man.
Piacenti, a University of Pennsylvania and Fordham Law School graduate, was a new mother returning to work after maternity leave, per The Daily Pennsylvanian. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has confirmed that Cisneros had two documented mental health-related encounters with police in 2018 and 2019 but no prior arrest record in the city, prompting the New York State Attorney General's Office to open a routine inquiry into the fatal police shooting, the same PBS report noted.
Crime Data Behind the Unease
The fear rippling through Times Square's workers and performers isn't happening in a vacuum. Citywide felony assaults totaled 20,132 complaints through the week ending August 30, while 14,802 complaints in the first half of the year were 48% above pre-pandemic baselines, according to an urban policy analysis of NYPD CompStat data published by Vital City. Even as overall homicide numbers have dropped, that persistent elevation in assaults has kept a sense of vulnerability alive among daily workers and street performers in Midtown.
According to the NYC Mayor's Management Report, almost every major felony crime category saw decreases in Fiscal Year 2025, providing broader crime context for the concerns described in Times Square. Felony assaults also saw a slight increase in 2024.
Times Square's sheer density compounds the challenge. The pedestrian plazas between 42nd and 47th Streets accommodate roughly 200,000 to 250,000 daily pedestrians and log about 206 million automated foot-traffic counts annually, according to the Times Square Alliance. Since 2016, the city has confined tip-soliciting performers like Burck to eight teal-painted Designated Activity Zones — regulations meant to reduce friction between buskers, tourists and passersby, but that do little to prevent an unprovoked confrontation like the one Burck described.
According to the NYC Department of Transportation's NYC Streets Plan, the New York City Plaza Program had 49 plazas open as of 2015, with 71 in some phase of development.
A Performer With a Long History of Standing His Ground
Burck, who is based in Times Square, has built his Naked Cowboy persona into a trademarked business over the decades, charging licensed performers $5,000 annually or $500 monthly to don the same underwear-and-boots costume under his Naked Cowboy Enterprises franchise. He has also shown a willingness to fight for his brand in court, including a 2008 trademark lawsuit against Mars, Inc. over a cowboy-like M&M depiction.
Burck's run-ins with authority haven't been limited to New York. In July 2022, the City of Daytona Beach agreed to pay him a $90,000 legal settlement after he was arrested for panhandling during Bike Week in 2021 and successfully challenged the constitutionality of the city's panhandling ordinance, according to WTSP-TV. But this week's confrontation, coming so soon after a killing just blocks from his usual perch, appears to have shaken him in a way his past legal battles never did.
