'Snowboarding With the NYPD': YouTube filmmakers use NYC blizzard shutdown for viral video

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
The blizzard provided filmmakers a rare opportunity. (Casey Neistat/YouTube)
The blizzard provided filmmakers a rare opportunity. (Casey Neistat/YouTube)

A pair of enterprising if law-bending filmmakers used the weekend blizzard that shut down New York City to produce a soon-to-be-viral video showing them skiing and snowboarding through Manhattan's near-empty streets — and right through Times Square.

Casey Neistat and Jesse Wellens, both popular YouTube video producers, and a small team set out from their studio in a Jeep Wrangler on Saturday, armed with several cameras, a GoPro and a drone to capture their blizzard adventure.

The resulting two-and-a-half-minute video shows Neistat, pulled by a rope-tow, carving up the snow-covered streets alongside parked cars, plows and police cruisers as if the Big Apple was his own snowboard park — all of it set to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York."

The storm dumped a total of 26.6 inches of snow in Central Park on Saturday — a single-day record — causing Mayor Bill de Blasio to order a 2:30 p.m. shutdown of New York City's streets.

Most of the footage was captured before the shutdown, though a patrol car did pull the filmmakers over at one point.

"Someone complained about you, so we're going to act like we're talking to you," an unidentified officer can be heard telling renegade filmmakers.

"You guys are awesome," Neistat replies.

Neistat's "Snowboarding With the NYPD" has already been viewed more than 500,000 times on his YouTube channel. (Even the nine-minute "behind-the-scenes" footage has already racked up more than 350,000 views.)

And while it will likely go down as the most viewed, the NYC snow stunt wasn't the only blizzard video to make the rounds on the Internet.

In West Virginia, members of the university's swim team didn't let the snow stop them from a chance to practice.


Nor did it stop this high school diver from working on her form.

(Instagram/@courtney_marie_02)
(Instagram/@courtney_marie_02)


In Pennsylvania, the Duquesne men's basketball team used teamwork to push their bus out of the snow after being stranded for 24 hours.


In Washington, D.C., police joined in during a pickup game of snow football — and one officer got a bit aggressive with the stiff-arm.


And over at the National Zoo, Tian Tian, a resident giant panda, was seen reveling in the mounds of snow.