Slog through the hordes of tourists in Times Square of an evening, and you may find yourself missing the Naked Cowboy.
The Tightie-Whitey Troubadour will likely return now that the weather’s warmed up, but for months the notable figures in the Crossroads of the World have been a far less original — and sometimes outright dangerous — bunch.
On a recent evening, your intrepid correspondent spotted two Smurfs, Elmo, two Mickey Mice (one in Uncle Sam-style red, white and blue), Pooh, Tigger, an Angry Bird, three (!) Statues of Liberty and two gents garbed up as soldiers from the game Halo.
On other nights, the mix includes Buzz Lightyear and Woody, Iron Man, Captain America, Batman, Minnie Mouse and Cookie Monster.
In fact, Cookie (well, one of them) was arrested Sunday for shoving a 2-year-old boy: He was apparently mad that the tot’s mom wouldn’t pony up a few bucks after the monster posed with her child. This was at least the fourth such hustler busted, for one reason or another, in the last year or so.
And it’s pretty obvious that we can thank Mayor Bloomberg’s remake of Times Square for this increasingly predatory plague.
Demanding pay for posing (usually without going berserk) is what all these guys do. It’s hard to blame anyone for working for a living, but this is a pretty low-rent business, adding about as much to the New York experience as, well, the pedicabs that also swarm the square.
After all, it’s not like the city lacks for places and people who’ll make for a memorable souvenir photo.
And the hustling is just about the only thing that’s New York about these characters. Aside from the Ladies Liberty, this crew could be in any city in America.
Sure, Sesame Street’s somewhere in Queens, and Cap and the other Marvel heroes are all New York-based. But (as hundreds of my 3-year-old son’s DVDs attest) Elmo belongs to the children of the world; he’s an international property, and the superheroes are really a Hollywood bunch now.
The Naked Cowboy may be something of a hustler, too — but at least he’s a bizarrely inspired one, an original. (The Naked Cowgirl and the Naked Indian get fewer points for creativity, but some for humor.) He’s even got a philosophy and a self-published book (check out nakedcowboy.com if you doubt).
You don’t even have to spend any time watching him; just walk by and appreciate his oddball contribution to the street life. Pass the Tightie-Whitey Troubadour, and you know you’re in New York.
And there’s only one of him; if he acts up, the NYPD knows where to find him — unlike the hordes of anonymous Elmos.
It’s obvious what draws Cookie Monster & Co. — the Bloomberg pedestrian mall, or rather the tourists who infest it, wandering lost on their way to American Girl or FAO Schwarz.
The whole plaza is an intrusion on the square, a foreign mass between the New York institutions of the TKTS booth and Father Duffy statue to the north, and the Armed Forces Recruiting Station to the south.
It’s not even really a draw for out-of-towners, just a vacuum they’re pulled into — an invitation to spend more time looking at the jumbotrons rather than heading off somewhere to enrich the more legal parts of the local economy.
All that’s really been added, in short, is a venue for the low-rent costumed-character trade. It’s enough to make you miss the Black Israelites.
There are many reasons to hate the Bloomberg/Sadik-Khan rape of Broadway, from the loss of the avenue as a real thoroughfare to the elitist arrogance with which they’ve pushed it through. But worst may be the way the pedestrian plaza sucks the New York magic out of Times Square, leaving it truly pedestrian.
Mark Cunningham is The Post’s oped editor.