“I got on a train and I sneezed and everybody ran away from me like I had it,” — Diquan Taylor, 26, West Philadelphia
“I had COVID and it was during Thanksgiving and my boyfriend’s mom dropped off Thanksgiving dinner on the street outside of our house and we waved to each other.” — Lindsay Braddy, 35, Rittenhouse
“SEPTA. If there’s one person at a bus stop without a mask and there’s 15 people at that stop, they will ride by you. SEPTA’s getting out of hand, is real crazy. There was one time my mask popped on me, it was like 2 in the morning there’s no places that sold masks.” — McKinley Johnson, North Philadelphia, 52
“I was on a plane on my way to Florida and me and my boyfriend, we was under the influence and we was coughing. And it’s a packed plane and there wasn’t really no other open seats, and the lady sitting near the window completely did a whole 90-degree turn to face the window so that she didn’t look at us the whole plane ride.” — Melicia Lassend, 19, West Philadelphia
“I was working as a cook or whatever and this girl comes in and she doesn’t have her mask on, right? And she’s like, you know, we tell her, ‘You’ve gotta put your mask on’ and she’s in a fit, whatever, right? And everything’s cool I walk away from everybody and I sneeze, right, I pull my mask down a little bit to sneeze and I’m not even done sneezing and she’s like, ‘He doesn’t have his mask on.’ and I’m like, ‘What you want me to do, sneeze in my mask?’ But she was so salty and it was so obvious.” — Ramses Montes, 21, Kensington
“I just went back to the PMA a couple weeks ago and it was a Friday night so everyone else might have been doing something else but it was completely empty. The main hall was, it was eerily quiet and completely deserted. It was just so bizarre, kind of almost post-apocalyptic. Everything’s been kind of post-apocalyptic for a long time and I’ve gotten used to it and I don’t know how I feel.” —Tali Shorr, 20, University City
Photographed by Emma Padner
