Just before shit went sideways, a friend of mine loaned me his road bike, to try and coax me into yet another expensive hobby, and I had started riding a little more frequently, and farther afield. So naturally, when the lockdown started, knowing that there wouldn't be any traffic, I decided to bike into Manhattan to get some exercise.
I've lived in Brooklyn for 24 years. Up until the last 2 of those, I commuted into Manhattan for work every week. Nothing - not even seeing other people's videos or photos of it - could have prepared me for the sensation of being in The City during those early days of the initial shelter in place orders; of being in Chinatown, or in front of City Hall, or on the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway by myself. It was shocking, saddening, depressing, scary, surreal - it was like the desolation that Will Smith's character in I Am Legend lived in, before the plants and deer (and zombies) took over.
And yet, it was kind of exciting. I felt like I was experiencing something exclusive; I felt possessive and selfish of that experience, and I also felt a little sad that I knew the emptiness and quiet was going to go away, and that I'd probably - hopefully - never see the city that way again. It was deeply conflicting, and I felt somewhat guilty about it. But I got to make some photographs I could never have made in any other circumstance, and I'm grateful, too.
Aside from that, once we realized that face coverings were easy and smart to wear (and asinine to make part of the culture war), my wife busted out her sewing machine, and after a few practice runs, she made our first cloth masks from some patterns she found online.