The motion blur effect was added later with gimp using this tutorial. I used a horizontal motion blur instead of a zoom blur and reversed the layer order, with unblurred on top, set the mode to "overlay" and then applied the mask and gradient to it. This is why I appear a bit shimmery, "overlay" basically brightens the bright and darkens the dark colours.
It might have been possible to get a similar effect using slow sync flash and slightly moving the camera from left to right when taking the picture, but I was being the model so I could not test this theory.

I did make a motion blur picture using shutter speed of 1/4 sec, aperture of 1/125 and iso 200, moving the camera slowly from left to right:


And a zoom blur (zooming out) at the same setting:


My dream now is to go back to Times Square with a willing model and a tripod...