Times Square hoverboarder reveals himself as brilliant engineer
He’s a fly-by-night kind of guy.
The mysterious man seen zooming about 30 feet above Times Square over the weekend to stunned onlookers has revealed himself as hoverboard developer Hunter Kowald.
“It’s everybody’s childhood dream to fly,” Kowald, 28, told The Post.
On Tuesday, he published footage of the stunt paired to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” in what’s probably the coolest video you’ll see this week.
Donning all black, the tech maestro soared on what looked like a souped-up drone of his own design — dubbed the “SkySurfer” — during the brief flight over Broadway.
Kowald, an engineer, called it “the world’s most powerful and solid hoverboard aircraft.”
The board was put together by hand — propellers, rotors and all.
“It contains about as much power as eight to 10 average houses all at the same time,” he said.
Just over a month ago, Kowald, who earned a mechanical engineering degree at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, put the finishing touches on the yearslong SkySurfer project. Since then, he’s been “playing around” with some video content near his Los Angeles home.
Some of those viral clips include him delivering food from a McDonald’s rooftop on SkySurfer and racing a Lamborghini on the hoverboard on a closed course.
Kowald posted that he had been in New York to film a music video with J Balvin and Skrillex, but the Times Square flight only happened because “the opportunity came up,” he said.
Manhattan airspace is one of the most heavily regulated areas and NYC has its own rules on drones, parachutes, balloons and other flying devices.
“We checked with the police and everything was OK to do a little quick demonstration,” Kowald said. (The NYPD told The Post: “We are aware of the video and are looking into it.”)
Even though the area was filled with spectators, the entrepreneur insisted the flight wasn’t risky.
“The aircraft is designed to be extremely safe; I can have two rotors fail and still land safely,” he said.
Kowald first dreamed up his craft as a 10-year-old, but only recently has technology caught up with his concept.
Now, the Green Goblin-esque pilot — who adapted his own Lexus SUV to have self-driving capabilities over a year ago — sees hoverboarding as “the future of transportation,” he said.
As Kowald captioned a recent Instagram video: “People told me you can’t break the laws of physics … After a global effort of custom part manufacturing and plenty [of] spontaneous fires [and] explosions… watch me dance.”