Welcome to Fear City! Our exclusive Fear City t-shirt features a wonderfully creepy grim reaper skull illustration and text from a 1975 pamphlet titled Welcome to Fear City. A Survival Guide for Visitors to the City of New York. The pamphlet was aimed to discourage tourists from visiting New York City. Our Fear City t-shirt is aimed to encourage retrospection.
The Welcome to Fear City pamphlet was published by the Council for Public Safety (a consortium of municipal labor unions at the height of New York’s fiscal crisis. Teachers, police, firemen, and sanitation workers were furloughed, while gangs proliferated, abandoned buildings were set on fire, and garbage piled up on city streets. In response, and as a form of protest, The Council for Public Safety created and distributed one million Fear City “survival guide” pamphlets urging visitors to stay away. This propaganda was possibly one of the boldest public pressure campaigns in the City’s history.
Our Welcome to Fear City t-shirt was produced on the occasion of the exhibition You Should Be Dancing: New York, 1976 and Beyond, on view October 2, 2026 - April 4, 2027.
