shitty assholes in the garden shop … shitty assholes with ice cream … wat virus?

“From the be­gin­ning, there were those who re­fused to don masks, and many oth­ers wore them im­prop­er­ly. Soon San Fran­cis­cans aban­doned their masks … By the time the epi­dem­ic came to an end that spring, 45,000 San Fran­cis­cans were sick­ened and 3,000 died over the course of these two waves of the [1918] in­fluen­za pan­dem­ic, re­sult­ing in one of the high­est death rates in the country.”
—Nan­cy Bris­tow, TIME

“The mod­el, from the In­sti­tute for Health Met­rics and Eval­u­a­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, now fore­casts 137,000 deaths in the Unit­ed States by Au­gust [2020], up from an ear­li­er pre­dic­tion of about 134,000.”
—Christi­na Max­ouris and Hol­ly Yan, CNN

 

I went to a gar­den cen­ter on Sunday.

I wore my mask. I tried to keep at least six feet away from people.

I felt like I was dart­ing through a haunt­ed house be­cause peo­ple kept get­ting clos­er and clos­er to me even if I moved.

It was a shit show! Half the peo­ple weren’t wear­ing masks. They brought their ba­bies and kids and let them run around. Most of the oth­er peo­ple wear­ing masks were pulling them down or didn’t have them over their noses.

I re­al­ly re­gret go­ing out.

I feel stu­pid for do­ing it. I gave peo­ple way too much credit.

I left af­ter less than ten min­utes be­cause I just didn’t feel safe and I wasn’t en­joy­ing my­self. I’m prob­a­bly fine, but I’m still worried.

Aaron sug­gest­ed go­ing Fri­day morn­ing. I might.

But hon­est­ly I’m so turned off by it now and the busi­ness ab­solute­ly could be do­ing bet­ter. They could be lim­it­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who come in and turn­ing away fam­i­lies with kids. They could be re­quir­ing masks. They didn’t even have san­i­ta­tion sta­tions for their gar­den carts. Now I’m just pissed and I don’t even want to give them my business.

There are waaaayyyyy too many peo­ple walk­ing around in pub­lic hang­ing out in large groups. No masks. Clos­er than six feet.

I want to sup­port lo­cal busi­ness­es, but I just can’t. Un­less it’s a pick up or­der with­in a mile of my house (Dillinger’s, Grand Vin, Left Bank) I won’t be go­ing anywhere.

It’s go­ing to have to be all de­liv­ery and mail order.

TJ Maxx to­day in North Cen­tral Arkansas
What’s your im­pres­sion? pic.twitter.com/czQWmdXi6F

— chick­mom (@Marsha34) May 9, 2020

Busi­ness­es have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to mit­i­gate the risks of this dis­ease and when they don’t, they’re con­tribut­ing to and en­cour­ag­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble behavior.

Every­one thinks this is a free for all now and it’s gonna blow up.

Truth is that all the peo­ple who are act­ing like this were nev­er re­spect­ful or cour­te­ous in the first place.

They just didn’t pre­vi­ous­ly en­counter any bar­ri­ers to con­ve­nience or consumption.

Ser­vice in­dus­try work­ers were al­ways dirt un­der their boots but now that they’re be­ing told they have to wait or fol­low cer­tain SIM­PLE FUCK­ING RE­QUESTS they’re show­ing all their cards.

These ass­holes are nev­er go­ing to learn un­til they’re strug­gling in a hos­pi­tal bed or watch­ing some­one close to them die from it.

I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but is this what it’s go­ing to take?

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2020 Emi­ly Duchaine. Pic­tured: Ernst Lud­wig Kirch­n­er, Berlin Street Scene (de­tail), 1913, source.

please support flomm

FLOMM

promotes learning  +  education worldwide

drawing attention to works by nü  +  upcoming artists,

designers, writers, musicians  +  MOR


OUR INVOLVEMENT

- – — however — – -

is mostly paid for out of pocket or in trade


IF YOU ENJOY

wat  FLOMM  is doing here, please consider


1.   A DONATION  :
large or small, use our tip jar whenever the mood hits




2.   BUY OUR SWAG  :
our approach is semi-green —

                all our  FLOMMHAUS  merch is made to order




3.   HELP US OUT  :
use our hashtags  

#flommist  #flommists  #galleryshownüartwerks

when posting on ur socials – —

or drop us a note and offer to help in some way

everything we do is on a volunteer basis – —

             when we say

             YOU CAN BE A FLOMMIST TOO

             this is wat we mean



THANK YOU

your support helps our continuing efforts across numerous platforms