I’m not quite sure what to call this. It’s too long to be an essay and far too short to be a book. I guess it’s more like my Covid Diary…WITH COMMENTARY. Let’s just clear something up quick. If you don’t like my jokes or my opinions or my writing style/lack-there-of as it is, save yourself the time and stop reading. Fascinating concept, that is. I did this for me during Covid to remember the little things I came across that ultimately I knew I would forget when people asked, “How have you been?” Or start off with, “Well, we made it”. Or a hearty, “I mean…we’re alive!” Those last two are a sure sign that the conversation is going to go nowhere other than talking about covid. It seems people have forgotten how to communicate effectively or, in some instances, at all with one another.
Fuck.
What started as just a picture gallery of my self-proclaimed “best shots” I took during Coronavirus from March 2020-October 2021 has evolved into something else. I started with about 50 curated photos that I spent hours combing over to select what I wanted to represent as my experience during this time. As someone who thinks he’s extremely funny when left alone for 18 months, I was proving myself right. I was working away creating titles for my photos at a level on par with a character like David from Schit’s Creek. Dry, punchy, witty. Between that and the captions that were pouring out of me for my website, I couldn’t stop writing. As I continued to adjust the order of the gallery I would also go about adjusting the captions. Soon I found myself offering up more and more detail about what was happening in the photos or bridging the gaps between different photos either because of a time lapse or jump in focus. It wasn’t something I planned, nor that I really wanted to share. This was just supposed to be what I used to relaunch my updated portfolio website (which at the time of this writing is still not done. I know.) but it turned out to be something much more important to me than I knew going into it.
What we just went through as a collective human race was almost unfathomable to most people. Granted, there was a Netflix documentary out about a year before coronavirus that basically predicted all this shit, but still unfathomable to watch play out in real time with real lives at stake including your own. So when you look through this keep in mind that my experience may not have been the same as yours and my perspective may be different from yours. However, one thing we will always have in common until the day we die, is that for some reason we survived something that over 4.5 million other people in this world could not. Like it or not, that connects us.
Captains Log:
The week before New York State, the City, much of the northeast, and subsequently we would learn the whole world was placed on PAUSE. Being someone who frequents public transportation, seeing 50th St station empty at 4PM on a weekday was the first moment I started to get worried about how serious this was about to become. Few things in this city are a definite. Crowds of people which are ever amassing and constant, are one of those things. I thought.
Being able to go from the back of a crowd of people walking in the same direction to the front all while dodging and weaving is truly a New Yorker thing. Making slight movements with your shoulders to slide between someone before another oncoming someone cuts off your exit strategy or tucking your messenger bag just a little further behind your back to make sure you don't even as much as brush the person you are passing. Set to the right soundtrack, it's nearly a work of art and is something that I love about this city. If you get it, you get it.
Anyway, I walked into the station at 50th street that normally connects residents and tourists alike going to all parts of the city: Upper Manhattan, La Guardia, Financial District, Brooklyn. All these places directly accessible from this one station in Hell’s Kitchen suddenly empty during the start of rush hour on a weekday. It’s not like I was living under a rock. I knew what was going on, but when you see something that qualifies all the crazy shit you’ve been listening to on the news for days on end, it legitimately stopped me in my tracks.
NOT SO MUCH TRANSIT AS IT WAS HOUSING
The homeless had started to stake their claim in the spaces that they wanted to call their own. Together, with all of their belongings they slowly started to take over what are essentially public spaces. Sidewalks, street corners, subway trains and subway stations with less tourists and residents meant there were obviously less standard police patrols. Naturally I feel as an instinct of survival and as a conditioned response to their systemic abuse, the homeless congregate where the police are not. As the city struggled to define what “essential workers” meant for every Tom, Dick, and Jane in the city, our unhoused Manhattanites of the street jumped at the chance to get a warm seat and a place to sleep at night. Limited spaces in shelters for those that wanted them and an already overpriced “affordable” housing market are mere slivers of bigger problem pie. You see, in my opinion homeless people are very perceptive to trends and predictions of future human behavior because they are the literal front lines of everything that happens on the street. They were able to have the wherewithal to know that there was about to be an explosion of new homelessness on the streets of New York City when inmates were released or maybe some recipients of ‘funemployment’ that got paid more to not work than to go in every day decided to try out the big apple with their new career path. Whoever was coming, those already here needed to find a habitat for free in a city where every square-foot has potential dollar signs dripping all over it.
Broadway went dark on March 12, 2020 at 5PM for what everyone thought was going to be 32 days. At the time it was unprecedented for all of Broadway to shut down for that many days. That’s 32 days of performances or roughly 32 performances on an 8 show/week contract. There were, I think, 27 separate shows “On Broadway” at the time of the shutdown. In the last “busy season” week before the pandemic that ended 12/29/19 (I use that timeframe for illustrative purposes) many of the shows pull in over $1 million a week in gross ticket sales, some pull in $2 million. The top outliers took in over $3.6, $3.4, and $3.2 million for Hamilton, Lion King and Wicked respectively that week. With 4 weeks of performances cancelled, you can only assume the amount of money lost by the entertainment and tourist industries here in NYC alone. Which also directly correlates to the income of performers obviously and even more so for those who may have negotiated profit sharing into their contracts.
We all know now that this 32 day timeframe was a mere pipe dream. Broadway didn’t even begin to reopen until May 2021 more than a year later. Do that math. That’s an essential fuck-ton of money first of all. As of October 2021 Broadway still isn’t fully reopened. Some shows didn’t survive the pandemic. Some found new life by mounting or continuing national tours. Still, shows like the extremely successful and long running Phantom of the Opera, Dear Evan Hansen and Harry Potter have yet to reopen.
The followIng is an audio recording. Volume up.
You can make out parts of it as I was sprawled outside of someone’s window on their fire escape trying to capture what I was hearing. It was almost like we were in the beginning of a really bad (as in not entertaining) horror movie. A car was driving around with a prerecorded message reminding everyone to be socially distant.
March 28, 2020
Here in NYC we had the luxury of utilizing Amazon’s delivery services to order same day or next day grocery delivery. In a timeframe of what felt like overnight, suddenly every single delivery time slot was taken. For days in advance. They didn’t even have a way that we could submit an order because they didn’t have the infrastructure in place yet to handle the amount of orders they were getting. This went on for a couple of weeks. I remember going on Mommy Facebook groups looking for clues as to when Amazon would be releasing the next batch of time slots available for grocery delivery and getting a little anxious because nobody had an answer.
Well ok then. Suck it up buttercup.
And off to the store I went. My first time out was comical now looking back. Suddenly these people I’ve lived in my community with for the previous 6 years were looking at their neighbors like at any moment they could go all zombie apocalypse and eat each others faces off if one of us so much as sniffled near them. When you live literally on top of eachother your dynamic and tolerance for shit goes way up. Now, again seemingly overnight, it was every-man-for-themselves. Everyone was just trying to protect themselves and we learned we can only rely on ourselves to do so.
Getting Around
Something people forget about a LOT is that there are many of us that don’t have the luxury or the necessity to have a car in New York City. It wasn’t until public transit started to shut down every night at 1:00 AM for cleaning all subway trains thoroughly inside-and-out did I realize how much I took our MTA service for granted. I mean…they still wholeheartedly suck, but suddenly I felt trapped.
I felt like my parents just found out I put a tampon in some girls milkshake in high school (sigh…true story) and I was grounded. Sure, this was the way it was supposed to be for the greater good, but you’re removing any ability for a New Yorker (and a night owl) to move around the city without paying $75 to go 15 blocks in an Uber. We will suck up our pride and make some modes of transportation suddenly cool.
Well, They Can't ALL Be Cool.
Even the fastest man in the world Usain Bolt saw that something was happening in the world of personal mobility and started a company aptly following his lead on the name BOLT well before the pandemic was in the picture. HOWEVER.... this chariot was just that. I felt like I was about to ride into an ancient Roman battle in a horse drawn chariot the 1 single ride I took. As soon as I got it home I emailed customer service and told them they could come pick it up whenever they wanted. I would not be seen riding this thing ever again.
In Some Cases They Were Pretty Cool
Enter: Revel. An electric moped you could basically park anywhere their little map told you you could. It was new and shiny and faster than anything else you can get on this sharing model. You find a scooter and control all aspects of your ride all from their app. Except the driving. Still gotta do that, for now. That is, until people started dying on them. Granted, if they followed the rules they may still be here today. Between the safety factor and those SWEATY ass helmets you had to wear though? You know the ones that made you feel like a bobble head since your neck probably wasn't accustomed to the weight of a full helmet?
So, with no surprise really, Revel pulled their scooters to rework the program and their approach which has been rereleased. However, well before all that I thought best to maybe seek out something a little more ‘Least-likely-to-be-covered-in-Coronavirus’ and a little less ‘Typhoid Mary’ in the pandemic superlatives.
And Then I Found This Bitch
I bought it at a camera store of all places. You see, some retailers saw this coming or they jumped on the opportunity when they saw that there was a serious bike shortage in New York City. At one point there wasn’t a single bike shop in the city that I could find that had ANY bike in stock. Not even a damn fixie. Anything to get my ass from A to B that didn’t cost $150 a day at that point was sounding appealing. Everyone was searching for autonomy. The subway, when running, was being stressed to be used by essential workers. Uber was borderline price gouging. The ability to still be able to move directly from Front Door to Destination Door Step but not have to be crammed into a confined enclosed space was suddenly obsessively appealing.
I’d also be lying if I didn’t touch on the feelings of FOMO I would get whenever I would be on a citi bike or worse, walking, and just have some guy non-chalantly roll by with 0 effort expended and be gone in seconds. Once I get that FOMO sense it’s a wrap for me. I become obsessed in my mind about whatever it is. I coded a database (more to just see if I could do it) that listed all my choices for scooters I had started to look at. As I would discover a fun feature or a ‘need-to-have’ I would add the whole scooter to the database broken down as far as the data would possibly let me. With some crunching and mostly some finger crossing and hoping for the best, I impulse bought and am so happy I did.
We've seen some things, her and I, to say the least. We logged over 850 miles in 19 or so months. And she took November 2020 to March 2021 off. Don’t let the feminine pronouns fool you. While I could have gotten a bike eventually, that would have required more exercise than I was ready to commit to. I already sweat when the temperature is over 60 just breathing. I'll get a Citibike if I feel the need to grace everyone with my ability to perspire.
For you numbers people: An Uber to go 5 miles from midtown to my apartment was roughly $25 each way so you could hypothetically say that’s $5/mile. $4250 would be the hypothetical cost of Ubers for 850 miles at the rate I was generally paying for the routes I was generally riding. Also, sans any UWS dumb bitch episodes or Harlem Illegal U-Turn fuck faces that made me eat pavement twice, I would normally arrive faster than had I taken a car.
Take a look at some of our rides:
Don’t Laugh
Keepin' It Real
All the while, I felt almost obsessively hyper aware of my own body. As humans, generally, we know when we are getting sick. I mean, in my experience with what my immune system has gone through, my body tells me ‘What’s up’ which is awesome, but it’s not proof that you’re sick until you either show physical symptoms or have a positive test result.
Except, what happens if my body comes across this new virus and doesn't tell me until it's too late? Will I die? I'm in the "young-enough-to-make-it" category, but does my pre-existing condition and weakened immune system put me at that much of a greater risk? How much? Quantify it. I need to see charts and numbers and proof. For 3 months I took my temperature every time I left my apartment. Why? It came down to 2 reasons.
- I didn't want to get to wherever I was going, have a temperature check happen and not be able to get into wherever I was going. Completely self-serving but also touches on my fear of public humiliation.
- Also, to protect my community. If I were to have a fever once I got somewhere I could have then been carrying the virus and would have selfishly been around other people thereby potentially exposing others to it.
At this point, I think we all know the science. I believe in the science. I believe in the evidence. I believe in facts over feelings and I believe in what Ive seen. I don’t care that you can’t “see” this virus, you can’t “see” any other virus either, you asshole. Your belief that if I have faith in a higher power that I will be saved at the end of all this is just that, your belief. Your “conversations” you’ve had with your god don’t serve anyone but yourself. How long are we all going sit around and wait for this undeniable proof that a higher power exists and move on from organized religion? I’m not going down that path right now.
We went through the (what I view as) worst part of the pandemic in New York City with a less virulent virus and we were able to flatten the curve with just social distancing, PPE, and trust in thy neighbor that they were doing what they could to limit exposing their neighbor’s (ie: me) to the virus at the same time. At the beginning of this thing, when we were doing things like cheering on our frontline workers EVERY single night it felt like, “Ya…we were in this together and we were going to get through this.”
And yet somehow despite all of our hard work and sacrifice we made at the beginning of this thing, the god fearing crowd suddenly wanted to meet their maker or something. It was as if they all drank the koolaid at the same damn time. One after the next decided to come out against masking as a form of anarchy against their government. They were protesting doctors and nurses who were the only ones that gave them a snowflakes chance in hell at surviving this fight that so many of them didn’t know they were about to have. And so, 1-by-1 they started dying. Along with others who were unfortunately taken too soon by those who chose to ignore the science in front of them. They believed conspiracy theories and the words from false prophets over experts in the medical field because they had google and suddenly that qualified them to do clinical research. I’m sorry but no where in the constitution does it say that your beliefs are allowed to potentially kill me. When you start to ignore the people around you and their well being in your community, you are no longer allowed to claim a part of “We, the people.” Or did you forget that’s how it started? Have you ever actually read and comprehended the entirety of the constitution before you so unwaveringly decided to die on this hill?
doubt it.
George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor.
"I remember walking through Bed, Bath, and Beyond when they were having a clearance sale at the beginning of October 2020. As I walked around it quickly became apparent that it was a liquidation sale and despite their best efforts to make everyone believe that they would be back to their Chelsea location, the feeling I had when I left that day wasn't reassuring."
Bed, Bath and Beyond announced they would be closing on October 15, 2020. Fortunately they following day they backtracked and advised despite the fact that they were laying off those employed in Chelsea they were closing to remodel and they would reopen.
They did eventually reopen, but I will never shake the feeling I got that day watching 2 grown men fight over a pack of fucking Bic Disposable razors that were 90% off retail. This is our new normal ‘Clearance Sale’?
And sometimes a bitch just needs to get the fuck-outta-dodge.
I did my first gay pilgrimage to gay “Mecca” aka Fire Island. It’s just NYC on a less connected, smaller island. I will be back post Covid to retest that theory. I did try twice with the second time having me go solo instead of playing ‘winging-it Tour Guide’ for the linebacker of a ’buddy’ I had to teach the entire 3 days we were there together. Things like why it was so inappropriate to ‘keep forgetting’ to wear a mask indoors in a place so closely tied to the AIDS epidemic. You know, real life shit. Sometimes, I don’t want to have to tell a grown adult how to act like a grown adult, but I’ll never pass up the chance to put a bitch in their place. I guess this is the new normal for ‘Bromance’.
I wish I could explain why I’ve wanted to end with this photo since I started this project.
- (1) ‘Marshall’s’ price tag
- (1) non-descript hanfull of brown napkins (used)
- (3) torn up white tissue bits
- (1) black sneaker w/ matching laces
Just reminds me of this comic a friend of mine had shown me during the pandemic. In a moment that I was finding happening a lot less than I would wish, while in the presence of great company, a laughing spell so hard it hurt. The comic wasn’t drop dead sexy. His jokes were dripping in misogyny with his set clearly dated based on that alone. Regardless, funny is funny when it is based on real life. When he said the hook for the joke he was setting up in his fake white girl accent I glossed over the perception and focused on the intent and saw the joke for exactly what it was. A tool to provide comedic relief when needed as long as the intent is not that of malice. It was in that moment I had a large lightbulb go off and provide me with my next chapter which I will leave you with:
Your intentions will influence my perceptions of your reality.
Read it again.
Credits:
All photos and media listed on this page was created by me and I reserve all rights where applicable.