Naked Cowgirl Sues NYC

February 25th, 2015. By LucyC

What do you do when the city you love—the city you “rebuilt” arrests you? You sue, of course. Sandy Kane, the Naked Cowgirl of Times Square, is suing the city for wrongful arrest, to the tune of $2 million. Well, that should keep her off the streets for a while.

52-year old Kane is no shrinking violet. A bare-breasted busker, well actually she wears pasties—a cowboy hat and a guitar—or is that gittar—has been working Times Square for seven years. Long enough, she told a judge recently, to have “rebuilt Times Square . . . and made Manhattan and Times Square history.”

“I really feel that if there’s one thing I did in my life, I did that,” she told the New York Post. “All the Elmos and the Sponge Bobs, that wasn’t out there when I first came . . . I put a lot of people to work.” Um. So, what’s the problem? And why was she in court?

She was arrested for having an unattended package. Really. And the “package” was her guitar case. Ah, not my first guess.

Hmm. Kane acted as her own lawyer, and the judge, according to Kane, laughed while dismissing the charges against her. “I feel like I inspired Bloomberg” to turn Times Square into a pedestrian mall, she said. “I gave it to the people. I gave it to the tourists.” That defense would have been worth seeing.

All this took place last year. Cut to 2015 and Sandy is now suing the City of New York for wrongful arrest. It’s not illegal to go topless in New York, apparently, something worth noting if you’re planning on being in the Big Apple in August. So the guitar case does seem like a bit of a ruse, and New York’s finest have apparently been warned about making “controversial” arrests over public nudity. As well, there is no statute outlawing leaving a bag unattended, so, Sandy could have a slam dunk here. Well, I wish her luck and at the very least a new pair of pasties!

This was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2015 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Crazy Sh*t Lawyers See, Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.