Robert Burck, the street performer known as the Naked Cowboy, says he spent half an hour trying to regulate his breathing after a deranged man stalked and lunged at him in Times Square.
Burck, 55, told The Post the confrontation stretched across roughly 30 minutes on Thursday as the agitator followed him from block to block while he attempted to escape. The barely-dressed guitarist, who has performed at the Crossroads of the World for 27 years, deliberately belted out love ballads to keep the situation from boiling over.
“You just hope they don’t kill ya,” Burck said after the unnerving encounter. “I’m shaking in my boots but acting calm.”
The disheveled man, who wore shorts, a jacket and a backpack, brandished a scarf as a weapon according to the performer. “Like it’s a whip … like you do with a shower towel,” Burck described. “Taunting me by whipping it as close to my face and body as he could.”
The whole time, Burck’s mind raced through the possibilities. “I’m thinking, ‘He didn’t hit me yet,’ but it got real close. Your heart is beating,” he said. “The whole time, I’m thinking, ‘He didn’t hit me yet,’ but it got real close. Your heart is beating,” he said.
At one point a bystander shouted “Get your pills” toward the agitator, who also spewed insults including “You ain’t no gangster.'” Most onlookers simply gawked and filmed rather than intervening.
Burck admitted the fear lingered well after the man finally left him alone. “It took a half hour to regulate my breathing,” he said. “When you’re scared, you do the things you gotta do.”
The encounter came just days after a fatal double stabbing blocks away in Times Square that left 32-year-old Bank of America executive and new mother Erin Piacenti dead. That attack, carried out by what Burck described as “a deranged person,” has put the performer on edge about his own vulnerability in the tourist hub.
“Most people are not going to harm ya. But obviously with the stabbing and all of that, you think anything can happen,” Burck said. He found himself weighing whether physical self-defense would have been warranted. “In light of the circumstances that someone was just killed by a deranged person, I was thinking, ‘is it justifiable to hit him?'”
Despite the heightened anxiety, Burck has tried to avoid spiraling into worst-case thinking. “You’re always vulnerable in New York,” he noted.