An "RIP Taylor Swift" mural in lower Manhattan protests gentrification efforts in the city's neighborhoods and is part of the local backlash after pop singer Taylor Swift being was named as the city's "Global Welcome Ambassador."
Swift, who has a new album "1989," will participate in a campaign promoting the city, that will include videos and performing in Times Square on New Year's Eve,
according to the Huffington Post.
La Petite Mort, located in the Kosher Corset area, hired graffiti artist Chico to paint its outer gate with the Swift mural, and the owners explained their reasoning in a lengthy statement on their
Instagram page with a photo of the finished product.
"We here at LPM have nothing but love for Taylor Swift," began the La Petite Mort caption. "Rather, our comment is on the whitewashing and gentrification of New York. While we realize and appreciate that New York is ever changing, when a starving artist once representative of the New York spirit is replaced by the modern 19 million dollar condo owner who drinks lattes we have to shake our heads."
"While Taylor Swift is alive and well, and we wish her no harm, she did kill off yet another piece of that broken New York spirit. The idea of her being our spokesperson is DEAD and we expressed that through a ny artist."
Linda Stasi of the
New York Daily News wrote that she was sympathetic to the store's feelings in a tongue-in-cheek endorsement of Swift as New York City's welcome ambassador.
"Get over it. Newbie New Yorker Taylor Swift's appointment as NYC's Global Welcome Ambassador is actually a perfect fit," Stasi wrote. "She is the new New York; a Disney-fied city in which the only young people who can now settle here are the kids of moguls, oligarchs, soulless corporate raiders and non-threatening, corporate-approved artists."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.