New York is Dead Campaign
January 2021
The “New York is Dead” installation took place across NY, Miami, and LA in January 2021. This campaign was a commentary on those who fled the city, taking their fortunes elsewhere, abandoning small businesses when the city needed them most. Working with OOH and non-traditional mediums from tow banners in the sky to guerilla poster campaigns in the streets of New York, this campaign was picked up by the NY Post, Daily Mail, NBC, Fox News (to name a few) and discussed all over the world on social media, magazines and national news. Photographs from this installation were shown in the June gallery show “New York is Dead.”
Johnnie Walker teamed up with the Locker Room to create a follow up to the original campaign in June of 2021. This series was on bus posters all over the city as well as on the jumbotron in Madison Square Park.
“The partners, who opened their gallery in the middle of the pandemic in August, want to be a part of fostering the arts in NYC right now when hardship and change are challenging the creative community more than ever. They firmly believe there's a "tidal wave" of creativity that is springing from this difficult period in NYC and they want to support it.” – Time Out Magazine, Shaye Weaver
“‘New York’s not dead. It’s just underground,’ reads a poster at the Bowery stop for the J train. You might catch a glimpse of it while waiting for the subway. Or you might happen to glimpse another bit of guerrilla messaging, wheat-pasted across a downtown wall, ‘No Broadway. Still plenty of character.’ The signs, found all over the city, make up the second phase of a “New York is Dead” campaign by Brooklyn-based creative house The Locker Room, a celebration of the city’s artistic pulse.
‘I think part of what makes New York magical is that it’s so hard here,’ says Samara Bliss, the founder of the female owned and operated Locker Room. ‘If you really want to be here, then you make it work.’”
– Brooklyn Mag, Anna Rahmanan
“Many had left New York for second homes already during the first wave of the pandemic and now winter was pushing more and more people to warmer places with less restrictions. The recurring phrase was ‘New York is dead.’ But from the observatory of The Locker Room, the city didn't look dead at all, if anything in transition to a new life. So the two launched a provocation aimed at those who had left the city: ‘New York is dead, don't come back,’ a message that they made appear on a huge billboard on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and on a banner attached to a plane that flew over the beaches of Miami, two of the cities where fleeing New Yorkers had taken refuge.”
– Artribune, Maurita Cardone
Artribune, “The Underground Renaissance of New York,” Maurita Cardone
Time Out, ”New York is Dead”
Time Out, “NYC artists launch a full-scale creative response to "New York is Dead," Shaye Weaver
NBC, “‘New York Is Dead. Don't Come Back': Billboard Rips Those Who Fled NYC Amid Pandemic,” Idea Siegal
Fox News, “LA billboard tells transplants that 'New York is Dead. Don't Come Back.'”
NY Post, “Billboard in Los Angeles tells transplants that ‘New York is Dead. Don’t Come Back.” Tamar Lapin
Brooklyn Magazine, “You Think New York is Dead? These Artist Are Betting Everything It Isn’t,” Anna Rahmanan
Secret NYC, “Artist Tells People Who Abandoned NYC Not To Return With Massive New Billboard,” Claire Leaden
CT Post, “'New York Is Dead' billboard takes aim at those who fled city,” Andrew DaRosa
