Lights Out: The Night New York Went Dark, July 13, 1977

It was already the kind of summer New York doesn't forget. The city had come close to bankruptcy two years earlier, and the cuts that followed thinned out police, firefighters, teachers and sanitation crews. Unemployment sat around 12 percent. The subway fare had just gone from 35 to 50 cents. And the Son of Sam killings had people across the boroughs thinking twice about being out after dark.

Then came the heat. A nine-day heat wave started on Wednesday, July 13, and the temperature would climb past 100 degrees three times before it broke.

At about 8:37 that night, lightning struck high-voltage lines up the Hudson in Westchester County. More strikes followed. Con Edison's system tried to hold, and couldn't. By 9:40 p.m., the lights were out in all five boroughs.

In the city's poorest neighborhoods, frustration that had been building for years boiled over. Looting and fires spread across 31 neighborhoods. On Broadway in Bushwick, 134 stores along a 35-block stretch were looted and 45 of them were set on fire; about 25 fires were still burning the next morning. In Crown Heights, 75 stores on a single five-block stretch were hit.

By the time it was over, 1,616 stores had been damaged, firefighters had answered 1,037 fires, and more than 3,700 people had been arrested. A congressional study later put the damage at a little over $300 million.

Power came back in pieces through Thursday, and the last of the city was lit again late that night.

New York had been through a blackout before. In November 1965, a failure across the Northeast put the city in the dark, and that night is remembered almost fondly, the “where were you when the lights went out” blackout. It hit in the early evening, while shopkeepers were still minding their stores.

In 1977 the lights went out after closing time, in a city that was broke, scared and sweltering. Same darkness. Different city.

Mayor Abe Beame called it a night of terror and accused Con Edison of “gross negligence.” The utility called it an act of God. Washington eventually sent the city more than $11 million to help cover the damage. That September, Beame finished third in the Democratic primary, behind Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo.

The neighborhoods that burned carried the scars for years. The city that came out the other side was tougher, and it remembered.

There's a story still told in the Bronx that the blackout helped build hip-hop. Grandmaster Caz has said he was DJing when the power cut out, the turntables stopped spinning and the amps went dead, and that more turntables and mixers ended up in more hands after that night, which meant more DJs on more corners in the years that followed.

Plenty of the pioneers don't buy it; Afrika Bambaataa has dismissed the idea outright. The truth probably sits where most New York legends do: somewhere between the block and the record.

The New York's New Yorker Blackout 1977 tee isn't a celebration of what burned. It's a marker for a night that showed the city at its most exposed, and for everything New York built back afterward: the blocks, the music, the nerve.

On the back, red BLACKOUT lettering and “Lights Out · July 13, 1977” frame a Manhattan skyline. Up front, our red Culture Limited script sits at the left chest. It's cut from soft-washed, 180 GSM combed ring-spun cotton with a drop shoulder. Wear it with dark denim or under a jacket.

Shop the Blackout 1977 Tee · $54