A national icon, for better or for worse, the Naked Cowboy has come to symbolise the brash and brawn of New York’s Times Square.  He has a guitar. White boots. And, very little else. That said, he’s not to be under-estimated. Harriet Dedman heads to 45th and Broadway to meet a surprisingly sophisticated entertainer – with a vision and a brand.   

Naked Cowboy Economics

New York, Sept.21, 2015 — A new wave of immigration from Greece to the United States is inevitable, insiders say, as millennials no longer see an economic future for themselves in Europe. “More will come,” predicted Nicholas Alexiou, a sociology professor at Queens College, part of the City University of New York. Alexiou knows of what he speaks. He fled to New York in the midst of the Greek political crisis of the 1980s and built a career focusing on the initial wave of Greek-American immigration (between 1890 and 1920). A third wave, he surmises, is on its way.

Sitting under olive trees at Veranda, a Grecian restaurant in Bay Side, Queens, Alexiou recaps the latest news from Greece: the unexpected victory in Greece’s parliamentary elections yesterday — Sept. 20 — with incumbent Prime Minister, Alexi Tsipras, returning to steer Greece through the next chapter of the nation’s economic crisis. Tsipras has a mandate to implement extreme austerity measures throughout the country, subsequent to the European bailout terms, signed last month. Alexiou is pleased with the ratification of Tsipras. “Times are changing across Europe,” he said. “It will get better now, but for the young, the future is still too far.”