SEATTLE — Local musician Shelby Betancourt’s homemade N95 face mask, fashioned out of a flyer for an upcoming show, was destroyed yesterday by a passerby who instinctively wadded it up into a ball and tossed it on the ground, socially distant sources confirm.

“Sure, in retrospect it was rude of me to yank her mask off her face and toss it to the ground,” assailant Rayna Farr said. “But I saw the semi-ironically terrible MS Paint art on the flyer and my instincts took control of me. I’ve had show flyers pushed on me so many times as I try to leave a venue, I had to build a defense mechanism to survive. I was like a martial artist getting threatened… except my martial art is avoiding the fuck out of garbage shows.”

Betancourt reportedly spent five hours fashioning the mask out of the flyer she’d also made for a house show/phone bank hybrid event, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She hadn’t been outside for more than 45 seconds before Farr balled it up.

“Goddammit, I worked hard on that shit, and she crinkled it up without even making eye contact in seconds. She didn’t even hold onto it until she passed a trash can on the corner or anything,” Betancourt said while covering her mouth with an old, stained Foo Fighters t-shirt. “I leave my apartment for the first time in a week, and this is what I have to deal with? Also, the show would’ve ruled. We’re actually going to stream it on Instagram Live tonight if you’re interested.”

DIY community members report aggression towards the musician-made masks have been a reoccurring issue, despite the high demand for N95 masks in hospitals.

“The local emo, punk, and drone communities came together to craft masks for hospitals around the city,” musician-activist Pat Higginson said. “We used old flyers, unsold merch, discarded album cover sketches — you name it. We made 10,000 of them, but couldn’t unload them at any hospital no matter how hard we tried. Some of the nurses just booed us. I mean, what’s that about?”

When asked about denying aid from the music communities, doctors averted their eyes and mumbled something about “not having any change on them.”

Stay safe, stay healthy, let us help.

Click here to go to our merch store where we can convert any t-shirt order into a DIY cloth face mask with elastic ear loops. These are not the n95 face masks our hospitals need, so you won’t be taking from any frontline workers. But because there are so many asymptomatic people spreading the virus, if everyone wore a simple cloth mask like this, there would be less community spread of the virus via the droplets caused by talking, coughing, and sneezing.

These masks are not adequate protection against COVID-19. But they can help your community. Social distancing, good hygiene (like washing hands and sanitizing surfaces), and staying home are the best protection.

Making your own mask out of an old t-shirt is easy. You can see a guide here.

This product is us cutting one of our new t-shirts and converting it into a cloth mask for you, so that you have one that looks cool. If you’d like to build your own here is a design from a recent study published in the medical journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.