Public toilets are one thing that I really appreciate about living in Japan. It seems like you're never too far away from a toilet - whether it be in a neighborhood park, a roadside parking area, train station, convenience store, etc. And they tend to be pretty clean (at least as far as public restooms go), not something that I dread using like I do many public restrooms in the US.
Japan seems to be just about a best-case scenario, due to the ubiquity of convenience stores, the government's seemingly high prioritization of building and maintaining public toilets, and a culture which places a high value on cleanliness.
It seems like it would be hard to replicate in countries that lack clean and plentiful public toilets without changing the culture first. But reading another comment it sounds like China has made great strides in improving the state of their public toilets due to a strong push from leadership. So it is possible, but again it would start with actually wanting to improve things.
Don't know where they went, but here they are :
https://cartes.app/?cat=toilettes&perspective=non#14.58/48.8...
The article claims that "Meanwhile, as Prohibition played out, the project of constructing public bathrooms slowed to a trickle, and the few that had been built began to fall into disrepair."
If that were the story, why was there a lobby in the 1970s to remove pay toilets?
The Committee to End Pay Toilets in America, or CEPTIA, was a 1970s grass-roots political organization which was one of the main forces behind the elimination of pay toilets in many American cities and states.
According to The Wall Street Journal, there were, in 1974, at least 50,000 pay toilets in America, mostly made by the Nik-O-Lok Company. Despite this flourishing commerce, CEPTIA was successful over the next few years in obtaining bans in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, California, Florida, and Ohio.
One advanced civilization has tens of thousand of free public toilets.
https://lazyholidayplanner.com/essential-tools/japan-toilet-...
https://www.cnn.com/travel/gallery/japanese-public-toilet-ph...
https://www.toilet-map-jp.com/en
https://toiletrix.org/toilets/japan
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_toilets_i...
Sperry Rand building, 14th floor, Morgan Apparel. Mention my name- they'll give you the key.
Jim Crow
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1248664709
Well-meaning activists lobbied to make toilets free, but they didn't build a base to support the continued use and maintenance of those now-free toilets.
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Just switch to porta-potties.
Funny how the answer is yet again more tech: bathroomaccess.com - add one when you find it.
Same place free trash pickup went, gov do not want the expense of public bathrooms.
Here in the US, where I am all public restrooms were gone by the late 80s.
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Friends were just in Australia and were immensely impressed by not only the ubiquitous public bathrooms, but also how well maintained and clean they are.
Tons of free to use BBQs too.
When there's no public bathrooms, everything is a "public bathroom'.
Just 2 weeks ago, saw people pissing/shitting at a pull-over in Iceland. Laws explicitly forbid that... But when you gotta go, you go.
And Iceland also hits people with NO public restrooms at all, and pay restrooms to boot. I saw upwards of $1.50 for bathroom usage.
And in the USA, bathrooms are free, but almost always exclusively corporate funded, and usually "customers only". And in my local city, there's a few real city public restrooms. They naturally lock themselves after 11pm. Yeah, it's anti-homeless shit.
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"Closed due to COVID-19"
Interesting. And quite sad - we definitely should invest in things that make people lives better all around.
There are countries were public bathrooms are everywhere - New Zealand is a good example. As a tourist, you're never too far from one. Which is good, since quite often that may be the only human made thing, surrounded by beautiful nature.
I visited Hollywood Boulevard once. That was nuts. No public toilets anywhere, in one of the most famous tourist attractions in the country. Worse, food establishments won't let you use the restroom, claiming they have none.
Thankfully I found one in a cinema.
> Who ultimately determines the meaning of a public space: its designers, authorities, or the people who use it?
Restrooms are unique in that they are available to the public but, due to their inherently private nature, are a place where it is difficult to enforce social norms. Because of this, within the confines of the restroom itself, the authorities are all but irrelevant.
I was scrolling through the addictive and easy to stumble into YouTube reels feature and came upon a livestream of a gentleman having some sort of 'public restroom party' in a stall. By this, I mean he had collected every roll of toilet paper available, shredded them into confetti, and was throwing the confetti up into the air while blasting music at full volume out of his bluetooth speaker. He had a few thousand viewers and people appeared to be donating money for supercomments. I didn't stay to watch the end of the livestream, but I don't imagine he cleaned up.
By the time the private-but-livestreamed confetti party is over, the damage is done. You can try to anticipate every single unwanted activity in a restroom and try to prevent it beforehand (e.g. tinted lights to prevent IV drug use), but someone, somewhere will find a way to creatively make the owners decide a few frustrated customers who are told "no public restroom" is a small price to pay for the alternative.
You just charge for it. A dollar per entry should be enough for someone to come by and clean it twice a day, such that it doesn't matter what shenanigans antisocial people get up to in there. No mess will last longer than a few hours.
Useful app to have installed for those couple times a year you need one and cannot remember what was the name of that thing you saw 6 months ago...
LavSeeker - shows toilets listed in OpenStreetMap.
seeing the commons get worse in your lifetime, span of 10-15 years, if we're really precise about it, really is quite a trip.
A pissoir is of little comfort when you badly need a shittoir.
Here in the SoCal area the homeless were taking over bathrooms to live in.
there's a market for a gig-economy app where someone brings a toilet to you.
Yes, where are you going to take a bath, in public.
It's interesting that this subject is awash with euphemisms. At least pissoir is properly descriptive.
This seems to be happening in public parks also. I visit two cities literally half way across the country from one another, and have visited them for decades. All of the public restrooms in the public city parks (which are quite popular with locals and tourists) are gone. First they closed them, then they tore down the buildings. Locals thought "oh, must be putting in new ones", but no, they were torn down and never replaced.
Around where I live, they first shut down during covid with the excuse of preventing transmission. Of course they just never opened up again. Ditto water fountains.
> Notably, they were only intended for use by men.
this complicates public bathrooms quite a bit, and ADA requirements do too... once you've got a place to sit and doors on rooms you've got the vagrancy and drug use problem
though China does ok with the model of a big room with holes in the ground and almost no dividers or affordances at all (everyone brings their own toilet paper, old people bring their own chairs)... they have public workers to hose them out
Sounds like the Romans had it better than your description of the Chinese, though I am sure in the modern world someone would be stealing the sponges for unfathomable reasons.
They all look like lovely "cottages".
Hence one of the activities they are best known for - "cottaging".
This is why anyone from Eastern PA knows Wawa is considered essential public infrastructure.
In the UK, it's a big pub chain called Wetherspoons. City centres often have multiple of them too. I don't think any of the toilets need an access code, unlike a lot of other places.
You can get a £2 pint of cider or ~£1.80 half-decent coffee while you're there too
Then you need another piss
People don't want to “abuse” commons like public restrooms, parks, buses, and so on. They do so because they have no choice, having been displaced out of having a private place to do the things they're now forced to do in public places. This is all just an outcropping of the housing crisis, which is itself an outcropping of the billionaire crisis. End billionaires, and we have the resources to de-gild this age.
I disagree. A lot of people do not care about public facilities. They do not believe in leaving things better than they found them. You've seen these people around, you know who they are. These are the same people that don't rerack weights at the gym or don't put the cart back at the supermarket. That attitude has nothing to do with income, housing, race, or activity they are interested in. It's simply a result of narcissism. The only way is stopping excuses and enforcing the public etiquette. The world will be much better off.
Sure, and thankfully there aren't nearly as many of them out and about abusing more things if they have a private place always available to spend their time. Conscientiousness is one of the handful of measurable personality traits, and there's a scale to it because some people have more of it than others. That's not going to change. What we can change is the degree to which less conscientious people are forced to lean on the conscientiousness of others around them in order to live every moment of their lives. The collapse of social safety net—pilfered in order to pay for mega yachts and renting entire cities for a wedding receiption—in the West and particularly the US pushes those less conscientious people out into the world all the time.
They were lost due to the tender ministrations of the bottom quintile.
You're blaming ... the poor?
No, the antisocial.
One of the first lessons I learned as a homeless person is that restroom access is one of the most vital things for survival and staying out of jail.
I am not sure of the real-world risk, but to hear Internet commenters, if you are a man and you urinate in public, you may be on a fast path to being a registered sex-offender for no other reason. That is an obviously sad consequence that no homeless guy wants to be burdened with.
The first time I needed to go and I was out on the streets, I veered into the nearest resort hotel downtown, figuring I'd just be lost in the crowd of tourists there. It was night but not particularly late. As soon as I got inside the men's room and in front of a urinal, a security guard was on my case. He said restrooms were for hotel guests only. I was very apologetic, but at least he let me finish and let me get away peacefully.
For all y'all complaining how the public libraries and other facilities are infested with smelly homeless, those are the ones who try to live honestly and stay near sanitation facilities. The libraries saved my bacon when I was on the streets. They were a quiet refuge during the day. I didn't make trouble; I just needed to stay in the A/C and stay clean and have a bathroom nearby.
People complain about poo in the streets of major cities, but the reality is, if a person cannot afford a restaurant, a coffeehouse, a motel, or whatever else, they will not have access to restroom facilities, and we all poop sometime. So the lack of those public restroom facilities in urban centers is just one more inhumane, hostile environment that tells us to pay up or GTFO of polite society.
This is true, and an understated consequence of homelessness. My city is working on deploying portapotties for the homeless for this reason.
IMO each city should have space dedicated for homeless camping with 24h running water and easy to clean stainless steel bathroom facilities. Do any cities do this, especially cities where weather is mild? Would homeless actually use it in favor of streets if available?
Also why didn't you use shelter facilities, were they too crowded, unsafe, or had onerous rules?
city where I live does have that. And there are also homeless shelters that you're allowed to use for three months of the year. And the homeless spend every November/December trying to figure out when are you going to check into that homeless shelter for your three months so you can be off the streets when it is deathly cold outside.
Most of the homeless have significant issues and are not going to get off the street. In better cases a messy divorce is at fault and they could hold a job but they refuse because it would not help their life.
There's also one rich person in my city who chooses to live in a tent year round. When you have a ton of money, being homeless is actually freedom because you can afford a nice warm sleeping bag and a nice tent. It makes a huge difference. This is one person out of, I don't know how many, but hundreds at least. Mostly I bring this man up because it messes up everyone's expectation of how you should deal with the homeless.
> Also why didn't you use shelter facilities, were they too crowded, unsafe, or had onerous rules?
Yes, thank you for asking!
Before arriving in the Phoenix area, I had been homeless in San Diego. Most of that time I lived in Father Joe's Villages. That was a very well-run, clean and strict shelter. They had wraparound services, with a cafeteria, job-search space, etc. They did turn us out on the streets during the daylight hours. I must say that I almost enjoyed my stay there, and in fact I made friends, and I felt very safe under their roof.
Contrast with Tempe, Arizona: Tempe, in 2000, did not allow any homeless shelters within the city limits. They also prohibited "soup kitchens" or any church or facility from feeding hungry people. However, Tempe has a larger population of drifters and street people, due to the college-town, party atmosphere, especially downtown.
In contrast, Phoenix has a very large St. Vincent de Paul facility, which doles out supplies and serves meals, and which is several miles south of downtown, in an industrial zone. The main homeless shelter campus provides a SVdP cafeteria, job services, and all that, but when I arrived there in 2000, it was very scary, bad neighborhood, very bad experience, and I basically could not stay there in good conscience. I did not feel safe inside, nor walking around the environs.
Therefore I split the difference, and stayed on the streets of Tempe. It was libraries during the day, and 24-hour diners at night, as much as possible. I napped on benches that were not in parks. (The city park facilities closed at midnight at the latest; they had Park Rangers serious about sweeping them out; the sprinklers would drench you if you were anywhere near the grass parts!)
Being that I was in "The System" and confidently on a waiting list for housing, it was not difficult to slip through the shadows for a couple of years until that housing promise became reality.
I am going to start calling the reduction or removal of minor things that helped society "micro regressions".
Is tragedy of the commons overused?
Enpissification?
Micro-regressions will largely be in the realm of charity and hospitality as society has aggressively embodied capitalism's cost and benefit analysis.
Don't forget privacy
Feels like tons of micro regressions around our expectations of privacy these days
I’m not sure it’s a regression really
If you look at a graph of the world population it’s seems clear to me that freely available common resources are just going to continue to get overused and ruined as we continue to add people to the equation
Surely bathrooms are something we can produce faster than the rate at which population increases.
but wouldn't that also follow... more people can create and maintain more common resources?
tbh I think this falls into a more familiar pattern with a coincidentally fitting name: enshittification
no one makes money off of public toilets, so they don't exist anymore
It probably isn't as much about population growth as the increasing wealth gap. My hypothesis would be that a society where people don't feel fair distribution of wealth is more prone to this 'abuse' that you call 'overuse'.
I think it's mostly drug addicts.
San Francisco has few (French JC Decaux) public toilets (pit stop, etc.), but some are inside other public properties that are not open 24/7 (e.g. rec centers). https://data.sfgov.org/City-Infrastructure/Map-of-Public-Bat...
Similarly, free public bath/shower disappeared in SF. Some wealthy person (forgot his name) built some free public showers in the 1900, but they eventually got all closed. Paris still have about ~20 free public bath/shower running. Wondering if we should also bring those back. This is a basic human need (after restrooms and food).
Yeah. Once in SF I was rejected by 5 businesses in a row to use their restrooms. The nearest public park had its restroom locked. I, a non-homeless person, was forced by nature to pee behind a building in a parking lot.
I had no choice. The businesses had a choice. The parks manager had a choice.
And now I understand why SF stinks.
SF is still the only place I worked where I walked out to my car parked on the street and a homeless person was openly peeing on my tire as people walked by.
Fun that this article concentrates on gay sex restrictions and pressure by temperance advocates - two "enemies" that conveniently serve a certain social agenda - while public toilets, at least in Europe, died because of heroin users in the 70s and 80s (they used bathrooms to inject, often leaving their syringes behind, and that became a real problem and society-wide panic during the AIDS boom) and because of the increasing number of homeless people later - who used to clean themselves in public toilets with a sink and more often than not left them in terrible conditions.
drug users ruin everything. it's why we cant have nice things anymore
I used one these things in Portugal a few years ago.
They are definitely not thought for women.
But I have to say that if you have a very cheap solution for 25% of your use cases you should definitely use it.
What you can't do is neglect the other 75%.
I want to know where the public water fountains went. Those are arguably a safety feature.
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At least in my area, a lot of folks didn't trust the tap water, and more didn't trust the fountain to not be super germy, so fountains just didn't end up used. I noticed many shuttered during COVID then they never got turned back on, then eventually got removed.
I have seen indoor fountains gradually being replaced with water bottle filler stations, but I personally wonder how often those filters get replaced.
We'll spend a trillion dollars bombing people halfway around the world that never meant us any harm, but paying a custodian to clean a public toilet (and providing help for those that might misuse it) is a bridge too far.
> We'll spend a trillion dollars bombing people halfway around the world that never meant us any harm
While I'm sure the US has bombed a significant number of such people, I wouldn't call Iran as 'never meant us any harm' (though I'll still say the current war is a stupid mistake).
And then we'll brand anyone who dares to go to the bathroom a sex offender or other huge penalties. That is the paradox of a country that is so wealthy yet low trust. Public infrastructure is the first to go unless legally mandated( sufficient public bathrooms does not fall under this apparently).
We brand men masquerading as women to enter the women's restroom as sex offenders, not just anyone.
Strange "For the Classroom" question.
Men seeking same-sex encounters transformed the pissoir into something its planners never intended. Who ultimately determines the meaning of a public space: its designers, authorities, or the people who use it?
The law determines that public space can't be used for any sexual activity.
I'm not sure what constructive classroom discussion you can have when the example is based on the law being broken.
They're probably talking about the sociological functions of the facility, not the set of legally permissible uses of it. (There's a pretty famous book on this particular application, Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex In Public Places.)
It sounds like, of the three options given, you are squarely in the “authorities” camp (although it seems to me that you interpret the question as asking what you believe should happen, whereas it appears to be asking what happens in practice). Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear the other points of view?
That didn't stop... a lot of people.
Surely there are all kinds of interesting and constructive classroom discussions to be had about lawbreaking.
Classrooms teach about reality (among other things) and there are many things in reality that don't involve obedience to the law, as it exists at a particular time and place.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
> The law determines that public space can't be used for any sexual activity.
Follow-up question: Does an enclosed stall count as "public space"?
the pissoir . . . the greatest concession most of them made to privacy was a little iron screen separating the user from the street.
Look at the photos in the article, they weren't enclosed stalls. Its elegant in a way, just a couple feet of opaque material that wraps the beltline of a central aiming point. Basically as good as going on a tree but without people getting uptight.
If I'm about to step into it 5 seconds after you leave, yes it does.
And yet when I want to do some photography, as is my right in public spaces, everyone gets all indignant.
Another example of completely counterproductive interference in the free market, this time eliminating public toilets more or less entirely because you can't make money from them and the state is too incompetent to provide them.
Fascinating stuff. And what a logo.
> Starting a national crusade to cast away coin-operated commodes, Gessel told newsmen, "You can have a fifty-dollar bill, but if you don't have a dime, that metal box is between you and relief."
I'm sympathetic to this argument. Carrying around loose change with US-style billfold wallets has never been convenient, and back in the day you'd often find yourself without change for a bus fare or a pay phone and so on in a critical moment.
Today, though, almost everyone carries either a contactless credit card or a phone with an NFC wallet. I would pay $0.25 for access to a clean public toilet if I could swipe one of those instead of having to carry change.
LA Metro has these restroom facilities at their rail stations, which are free for a 10 minute visit but require an access code on your phone or a standalone entry pass. I've never used one, but heard great things. https://thronelabs.co/
> Today, though, almost everyone carries either a contactless credit card or a phone with an NFC wallet. I would pay $0.25 for access to a clean public toilet if I could swipe one of those instead of having to carry change.
Nowadays it'd be $5.25 per use, plus tip (22% or more).
> Today, though, almost everyone carries either a contactless credit card or a phone with an NFC wallet. I would pay $0.25 for access to a clean public toilet if I could swipe one of those instead of having to carry change.
This is one of those things that gets ruined by credit card transaction fees though, right?
It is kinda depressing that after all these fintech companies and society's ~decade long scam-filled obsession with cryptocurrency, we still don't really have a good solution for microtransactions. Credit card companies still take that fixed fee everywhere, right?
It gets ruined by the government choosing to not operate an electronic money transfer system as infrastructure similar to cash.
This really hits home. As a person with IBS I basically cannot peacefully go outside in EU. I lived for many years in China and Thailand, and toilets are free, clean, and plentiful there, and you can easily ask any place to use their toilet - there's no stigma. I even had to run into a police station in rural China once. They were 100% chill about it, though they had to unlock a gate for me.
Xi Jinping really will be remembered as the Toilet King, he did issue a few decrees early on, and now in every Tier-88 rural Chinese village road you can find a modern toilet (yes, squat), clean, with water. Paper is hit and miss still though. Cross to Hong Kong and it's the same, but paper is reliable. Hong Kong is definitely richer.
Then take any shopping mall in Bangkok, that's an absolutely next level experience, clean, smells good, relaxing music. Mmm...
And EU is a freaking horror show. In many public toilets there's a used syringe compartment as well. Truly a 5-star service.
> Then take any shopping mall in Bangkok
That is an extremely small subset of Thailand. I wouldn’t surprised if high end malls in any western capital city also had good toilets.
Most toilets outside of malls in Thailand were bring your own soap and toilet paper and covered in water from the bum guns.
Weird. When I was living in Beijing, I made a mental map of all my bathroom choices when I wasn't at a luxury shopping mall, because they just weren't that convenient and available. This includes squats, which I included since sit down toilets were often hogged by some guy on the phone doing a long smoking session (squats never were, which is great when you absolutely need to go!).
But this was in the time when Xi had just taken office, so it is probably better now. I didn't see any issues on my trip to Chengdu this summer. I have a lot bigger problems in downtown Seattle today, which is just really bad (either the toilets don't exist, or there is some homeless guy doing drugs in the only stall they have). Sigh.
"EU" is too broad of a term to describe cultural/social/political norms such as public toilets. There are places in the EU with fairly decent toilets, and others with almost none. In some you have to pay in many public toilets, in others they are free. The best bet in most places are public buildings such as libraries. And very often cafes etc allow you use a toilet, esp if you have health reasons and ask them nicely, though ymmv. The biggest issue as others said is vandalism, so in (richer) countries where public toilets are cleaned more often the toilets are much better.
I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. Not the worst thing in the world, but I do find it frustrating often to not have a bathroom available nearby (small bladder)
But, while the toilets aren’t the worst sacrifice, the cumulative sacrifices made on the alter of our huge antisocial populations are profound
I was picking up some lumber today (USA) and they were blaring some country song about "Try that in a small town" which was basically a gun owner's fantasy about shooting people. One of the lines was something like "we look out for our own". And that right there describes half the USA: outsiders not welcomed. ingroup/outgroup is nothing new, and its not like any country has really fixed it, and the countries that have seemed to "figure it out" are wildly racist (Nordic countries, Japan, etc.) or authoritarian (China), but that's that underlying attitude: it an outsider's fault. And even IF you are "one of their own" and you fall off the wagon, you find yourself with a bus ticket to a Blue State sanctuary city courtesy of your local Red Leaders.
I live in a city that is a dumping ground where Red States have bussed the homeless populations -- out of sight out of mind -- and even before this, homelessness was a growing due to skyrocketing rents, medical costs, and simply falling behind the treadmill. And now gave crazy new drugs, crazy new inflation, and even more unchecked greed, there's really no stopping this so called "antisocial" behavior.
Why care about a society when it doesn't give a fuck about you>?
Then again, when I was in college in the mid-80s, Freshman year a bunch of young white engineering boys in my dorm were laughing about how they smeared shit all over the bathroom walls of a McDonalds. So, it's been going on forever, but now the scale is massive. I include "white" because a lot of people think this is a non-white, non-rich, non-christian problem.
> massive population of antisocial people
'Social' isn't 'nobody annoys me'; it's empathy for, caring about, and helping others, especially those you don't like - otherwise it means nothing.
I'm in the West, and I support liberty - the defining feature of the West - uber alles; it's their right. I'm not threatening others' freedom so you can feel more at ease. (You are more of a problem for them - they can't have you locked up.)
There has to be a line draw somewhere. Generally people who say this don't actually have regular interactions with aggressive, hostile, homeless. Or are you just really cool with going to a coffee shop and have someone screaming in a pile of their own feces 20 or so feet away?
Yet another consequence of no longer living in a high-trust society.
In China, it has more to do with putting drug users into labor camps: https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/10/25/punish-and-cure-fo...
What I want to know is if anyone can identify when exactly the homeless issue became so bad. It was already a problem when I lived in the Bay, and when I moved back to the East Coast it had been 10 years in the making (conveniently when I was away). Clearly there a some sharp lines that can be drawn somewhere. But it's hard to get some actual answers.
Edit: rough clauding indicates it was when fentanyl took off, but idk, that doesn't seem wholly accurate.
California is a garden of eden, a paradise to live in or see.. but believe it or not you won't find it so hot if you ain't got that do(ough)-re-mi.
> I lived for many years in China and Thailand, and toilets are free, clean, and plentiful there
I don't know about China but this was the opposite of my experience in Thailand. The majority of public toilets I encountered had an attendant you had to pay for access. Shopping malls / hotels / other places were you were already paying to be there were the exception of course.
In Japan, I've seen attendants looking for some payment to use bathrooms in hotels.
> China
> toilets are... clean
Okay I'm going to have to say that this _really_ depends on where you are. Sometimes, yes, especially newer buildings, but man I have seen some horrors there in the past few years when it comes to bathrooms in terms of cleanliness and smell (the frequent smoking in a lot of bathrooms doesn't help). This is coming from someone primarily experiencing Canadian and American bathrooms, for reference, and a lot of those are pretty nasty. I think it's getting better at least...
Just to be clear though I agree generally, at least from my experience with East Asia. Hong Kong often has really good bathrooms now IMO (I feel like it improved a lot between 2018 to 2023?). Japan is also really good from my experience (fancy-ass bidets). Taiwan was fine too from my recollection.
> _really_ depends on where you are
That kinda applies to anywhere in the world. On the average, I've seen much cleaner toilets in first-tier China cities than first-tier US cities.
And much more accessible as well. Free public toilets literally everywhere. All over the city, in every shopping center, in every coffee shop. And you don't need to buy a coffee and trash it to use them.
> I've seen much cleaner toilets in first-tier China cities than first-tier US cities.
That definitely tracks. LA has a massive unhoused person issue, many of whom with severe mental disorders. You feel a lot that in the commons, especially as you get near DTLA. New York is shabby and dirty in general. More so than a big city usually is. And it's not really a charming shabbiness from an extreme subtropical climate as you get in Taiwan.
The relationship China has with its tier 1 cities is more similar to other Asian countries, like Japan and Korea, than it is to the US.
The worst toilet I ever saw was in China, but at 5000 meters in Sichuan, it was two slippery two by fours that you had to straddle on over a big open pit (don't slip or lose balance!).
That was such an awesome trip circa 2005.
Well the worst one I ever saw was in New York City, of all places.
My favorite was a place in Chinatown with a curtain for privacy. Outside a couple of guys where killing a seemingly limitless collection of lives chickens.
What's wrong about syringe disposal? A significant portion of population has diabetes. And even if a drug addict uses it, still better than throwing to the trash, similar to how cigarette disposals are mandatory in typical airplanes.
Some measures that mitigate a problem are associated with places where said problem is a frequent occurrence.
If a place has tornado drills and tornado shelters, it's a safe bet that tornados are at least somewhat likely.
Some safety and security measures have the effect of making a place feel unsafe and insecure, for this reason.
> What's wrong about syringe disposal? A significant portion of population has diabetes.
Ask yourself if that's truly what motivated those being installed...
> And even if a drug addict uses it, still better than throwing to the trash
The problem is they still throw their needles all over the ground. As is typical, the intentions are noble, but what ends up happening is people who can't even be bothered to not shoot up their gutter heroin in public are given society's tacit approval to do what they're doing, thus accelerating the societal rot.
> Ask yourself if that's truly what motivated those being installed...
What motivates this infrastructure is the danger to workers if syringes are just thrown into the trash.
My dad had type one diabetes with a type A personality, and was very particular about making sure that syringes were disposed of properly. Not everyone is this careful, and they put others at risk.
I looked into this a while back and it basically broke down like this: diabetics outnumber injectable drug users two to one but not all diabetics use injectable insulin and the ones that do are more likely to do so at home. Drug users, however, have less compunction about sticking themselves in a public space, particular the homeless. Best guess based on these numbers is that it's a 50-50 split between these populations as to who's using public sharps containers.
> society's tacit approval to do what they're doing, thus accelerating the societal rot.
This argument could be made about providing drugs themselves but fails under the faintest scrutiny for sharps containers because said containers have wide uses beyond shooting up heroin.
Homeless heroin addicts who inject themselves in public are not uniformly distributed. Thus while in some places you would expect some such injectable drug use in a public toilet (though I doubt most would bother to go find a toilet for that anyway), that is unlikely for the majority of toilets in a country that contain syringe disposers. On the other hand, one would expect that diabetics who inject insulin would be closer to be uniformly distributed (conditional to the population distribution).
If one could find syringe disposers only in areas where public heroin use commonly takes place that would be believable, but it is not the case.
In contrast, there are actual, real programs and places in many countries to manage issues arising with syringe use, trying to reduce syringe sharing to reduce blood-transmissible diseases etc.
> not all diabetics use injectable insulin and the ones that do are more likely to do so at home.
I'd love to hear the citation for this one, as people using injectable insulin generally need to do in conjunction with eating, and I can't think of where you'd get the idea that T1 diabetics who use injectable insulin avoid eating outside the home as a general rule.
Granted, nowadays plenty of people are using insulin pumps which decimates disposable syringe use, but I'm really puzzled where you picked up that in-home/away-from-home impression from.
oook, so if according to your message, the disposals are mostly used by diabetics, then again, what's wrong with them?
It's like how immigrants are treated in the US. There's nothing wrong with them. They're in fact very beneficial. But since half of the dominant political ideology in the region cannot exist without a boogeyman, they get attacked anyway because they make a convenient boogeyman.
They weren't saying there is anything wrong with the syringe disposal per se, but instead that it's indicative of the people who use those facilities and the priorities of the authorities that manage them.
It is observed that you have junkies shooting up in bathrooms, evidenced by needles strewn on the ground. So the solution from the authorities is to install syringe disposal containers.
> So the solution from the authorities is to install syringe disposal containers.
Given the cost vs the benefits, why not? A box mounted to a wall is a pittance.
Feel free to elaborate your plan for the junkies that would be both cost effective, practical and ethical.
I think it stopped once public bathrooms became used for things other than taking a whizz
the public bathroom should be redesigned so that one can do only the thing it is designed for - and maybe it needs to be a single-user design.
Almost like an airline bathroom size - might be a bit claustrophobic but these are for emergencies and space saving would be big.
the doors could be wired to sensors that are connected to a central network that shows in real-time the availability and also some alarms if something is out of the ordinary etc.
How do you accommodate ADA requirements?
Yeah you have to actually hire people to clean them and patrol for homeless weirdos. Which is why in my country they cost money.
I never really understood the economics of public restrooms in America. Who pays for them?
> I never really understood the economics of public restrooms in America. Who pays for them?
Local sales, income, and/or property taxes.
Municipalities, counties, state, and the federal government all have the power of taxation in the US.
> Who pays for them?
Americans. The same population as most of the beneficiaries.
The public pays for them via taxes.
We all pay for it. We do this whether publicly-accessible restrooms exist or do not exist.
Everybody poops; shit happens. The only real question is: Where does this shit happen?
The problem with homeless is also what do you do with them when you find them?
Several bathrooms at the openings to hiking trails near me had been smeared with feces. The local newspaper reported someone was caught and taken to a homeless shelter. I remain suspicious that simply resulted in the shelter's bathroom meeting the same fate.
I don't think I've seen a public bathroom in America in my lifetime. They're all privately owned, usually required through regulation.
But to answer your question, public things are paid for by the public.
Never been to a public park with a bathroom, or a state provided highway rest stop?
Many transit centers are owned and operated by a municipal transit agency and typically have restrooms, especially large airports and train stations.
We've got a ton of actually-public restrooms in my neck of the woods (in Ohio).
Public rest areas are pretty common along major highways and these include restrooms.
Publicly-owned parks usually provide a place to poop, too: Sometimes it's an installation with composting toilets, sometimes it's just a seat over a septic pit that needs pumped out periodically. Sometimes, it's fancy with flushing toilets and sinks for handwashing. Other times, it's just a rented portajohn (that may be full of spiders and smell like death, or be very tidy). And sometimes, they're locked at night when the park is closed. But -- usually -- public parks of any substance offer something for facilities.
Just last week, I worked next to a public park in a very small town (population ~2,000) with some well-maintained basketball and tennis courts. There were a couple of portajohns present. (I did not investigate them further.)
And when there's a major events that draw crowds, like our very public fireworks displays in downtown areas: Temporary restroom facilities are provided.
What we don't have very much of here are permanent, literal-public restrooms in the denser parts of cities. That is very problematic, but it is slowly improving[1].
[1]: https://downtownservices.org/news-article/three-public-restr...
> I don't think I've seen a public bathroom in America in my lifetime.
You've never been to the beach, a city park (or state or national park), a highway rest stop, or any of the thousands of other places public restrooms exist?
What a weird take...
We thought it was mean to homeless people to make them pay for bathrooms and made it illegal to charge. Then once bathrooms because a massive cost center, we closed all the public restrooms and made it a sex offense to piss outside. So now instead of making homeless people pay $1 for a toilet, we throw them in jail at a cost of $100k/yr.
Thank these folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i... - the road to hell is paved with good intentions I suppose.
Where are we throwing homeless people in jail for pissing outside?
Having lived in SF, LA and NYC, I find it very hard to believe that the homeless or the addicts roaming the streets in big cities are being thrown into jail for much of anything short of overt violent behavior. You can see people drop a deuce in the middle of Mission St any day of the week and nobody bats an eye. As people say, "it's just a normal part of life in a big city".
We're not throwing the homeless in jail here, but all the streets smell like urine and you have to watch your step on the sidewalk.
A few years ago I visited downtown SF for a convention at Moscone center. I remember walking along St Patrick’s thinking this is a beautiful place but , my God, the entire area stinks of urine.
Lack of bathrooms has been called tragedy of the commons in this thread, but it's not the "commons" that are the problem.
The worst 10% of society determine what we can and can't have. The "commons" aren't having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying the bathrooms with lack of... etiquette. The commons are victimized when these things happen and then there's eventually no choice but to shut them down unless there's willingness to crack down on the explicit problematic behavior.
We are experiencing "changing consumer habits"
And people with means, move from common to private spaces. Others will not have the same choice and things become more stratified, because a subset of society decided to cede public spaces.
I tried to find a good term for this trend and the best I could do is "defining deviancy down" defined as "the tendency of societies to respond to destructive behaviors by lowering standards for what is permissible."
It's like a behavioral Overton window that grows downwards.
Ten percent is way too optimistic, I'd say 20% are destroying everything for the majority.
We are all at the mercy of the bottom quintile. The rules you follow (or are expected to follow) are based on the behavior of the bottom quintile, the taxes you pay are to support the bottom quintile, the greatest risks to your life and property come from the bottom quintile, the dearth of comfortable public spaces is because you have to allow the bottom quintile to be there, and our zoning laws (in the US) are developed for fear of the bottom quintile.
Homelessness and the post-2008 wave of poverty ruined it. A few people who need to use a public bathroom everyday is fine, but when you have 100x of ppl who are desuetude, on drugs, mentally ill etc. emptying their medications and needles and so on it becomes a public health hazard and overwhelms staff.. better to just shut it down altogether or limit to staff only. .
Good thing that stops the "destitute, on drugs, mentally ill etc" from doing this simply by removing the public toilets right?
Well it becomes someone else's problem, right? That kind of short-term thinking is in vogue at the moment.
You're right about who is causing the damage etc. but the 'commons' does not refer to the people; it refers to the shared resource. So a public park is the commons. And when it gets polluted with plastic rubbish etc. because externalities are not internalized that's a tragedy of the commons.
Thanks for both teaching me and not losing the forest for the trees of my point.
The fallacy in "the tragedy of the commons" is that there's something inherent in having a shared resource that dooms the shared resource. At least this is the popular understanding. And I'll add that if we look at shared resources both with more breadth -- e.g. across history and cultures -- and in more depth -- e.g. cross-analysis, they come out looking much more successful than you'd think.
A reduction of public restrooms didn't stop the worst 10% of society from having public sex, shooting up drugs, or destroying an area with their lack of defacatory etiquette -- did it?
In places where these things were problems with public restrooms, they remain problems without public restrooms.
The 10%'ers are still doing their dastardly things. The remaining 90% of society still has the same messes to clean up (or to willfully ignore).
Nothing has been improved in this process.
A friend owns pizza restaurants. They leapt at the opportunity during covid to shut their bathrooms to the public, and have continued to (illegally) keep the bathrooms closed as much as possible.
People made horrific messes in them. Employees and/or owners had to clean them. They don't wish to do so. Public messes; private employees and/or owners being made to clean them is pretty much the story.
This is wrong and you both know it.
Grow up.
Agreed. However it becomes unstable and a massive liability for society to maintain public restrooms.
So yes the 10% fuck it up for everyone unless cracked down on.
The same liability exists without them.
The problem was not eliminated. If anything, the effects were amplified.
It just moved the poop mess and dirty needles from one defined space back to everywhere else. In this way, they're easier to accidentally encounter while out-and-about, and yet simultaneously harder to intentionally find and clean up.
I think this kind of result has strong resemblance to what is colloquially known as a footgun.
How is maintaining public restrooms a "massive liability"? Surely its an inconvenience but massive liability seems a bit of a hyperbole.
Try hiring someone for a job where the job could sometimes be cleaning up bodily fluids and odors in a bathroom. Even the government deems it infeasible.
Or, think about how much someone would have to pay you to do that job.
Also: the liability of getting stuck with a needle.
Was a cart pusher at target and was frequently shanghaid into cleaning toilets.
I think you might be giving away the class you were raised in if you think it’s infeasible to pay people to clean toilets.
My first job was "stockboy" at Kmart in 1996, at 1996 American minimum wage, and part of the job involved cleaning toilets.
And, honestly? If more people had to clean toilets in use by other people, maybe we wouldn't have so many folks expecting other people to clean up after them. I see countless posts in my Facebook group about trash on the street. In the time it took to take a photo and post it to social media, they could have picked up the trash and taken it to a nearby bin.
But I suppose that experience goes two ways. Some people think they're above the human condition, to the point where they won't even clean up after themselves, even in their own homes. And other people recognize that it's actually not that hard to clean things up, if you just do it. We all have good and bad days.
Cleaning up trash, wiping tables, mopping the floor is one thing.
Cleaning up bodily fluids, which likely come from drug users, is a whole other thing.
Yeah, I did this at 16 at a gas station and got paid 8.75 an hour, there are lots of people out there doing this type of work in the private sector. Its not glamorous thats for sure but supply/demand will dictate the labor market. The government doesn't deem it infeasible because hiring is difficult, its because they aren't willing to pay a reasonable wage for the work.
Obviously there exists a price at which people will do it. But if the government isn't willing to pay it, it seems unfair to expect businesses to pay it.
> Even the government deems it infeasible.
Because they are underfunded often.
If the government is underfunded enough to not be able to hire bathroom cleaners, how can anyone expect a barely surviving retail business to afford it?
Funny how the government is "underfunded", yet can spend billions and trillions on plenty of things.
I was in France recently and used a public restroom. It had an attendant, and a fee of €0.50. Charging for the restroom is unfortunate, but this setup is certainly better than eliminating public restrooms entirely.
Would much prefer this than what we have in NYC, which is go into a bar or cafe, buy something small and then use the restroom. Another thing I'll do sometimes is if I see a busy bar where the bartender isn't paying attention you can walk in, pretend you're looking for friends you're meeting, use the toilet and then sneak out.
As the result will be shit and piss elsewhere in the open, a compromise could be having shitty free public toilets and nice toilets where you pay (or maybe not nice, but bearable).
The alternative would be social workers, more psychotherapists, free healthcare, ...
Surely more social workers will stop people from pissing on the floor
Not all people are doomed from the start to become asocial messed up beings. Probably no one is - but they all have a history and their reasons. And even messed up beings who don't mind shitting anywhere - can suddenly get some conscience again, if someone speaks to them in the right words.
Also even the most messed up people would use a urinal, if avaiable.
The 50 cents is dual purpose, the one is obvious in that it pays for the attendant and them keeping it clean, but the other is like using a coin to unlock a trolley, it cuts back misuse by a lot. Once you've been to free vs 50 cent toilets a few times you'll see (and smell) the difference.
In Australia all toilets are free and they are mostly in great condition. I was surprised visiting Italy and having to pay money for some of the worst maintained toilets I’d seen.
The trolley analogy doesn't really hold up in this context, does it?
The incentive to do the right thing that a coin-deposit shopping cart ("trolley") adds is the ultimate return of that coin. It's not much money, but it is nonetheless returned when the cart is put back where it belongs.
If a cart always costs 50 cents and there is no hope of ever getting that money back, then: The monetary incentive to return the cart doesn't exist.
> If a cart always costs 50 cents and there is no hope of ever getting that money back, then: The monetary incentive to return the cart doesn't exist
The grandparent post is just talking about incentives.
I guess what you're saying is that if you pay 50 cents for the bathroom then there's no actual incentive to keep it clean because the 50 cents is gone either way, unlike a cart deposit?
You're probably right about that, but I also don't think most people actually need an incentive not to make a huge mess. I would put money that most messes in public bathrooms are caused by the people that the 50 cent charge filters out. The rest experience some social pressure from the attendant to keep things clean. If all else fails, the attendant can clean up a mess before the next person uses it
Well, even if you don’t get your 50 cents back you usually have an incentive to leave the restroom when you’re done.
Does stretching the analogy help to ameliorate the difference betwixt a payment and a returnable deposit?
Be...twixt?
That practically ensures that some people who have to go really badly, and for whom €0.50 is a big deal, will just drop their business on the sidewalk.
Somehow that seems ensured regardless.
It also makes it more likely that hobos and drug addicts don't soil and destroy the public bathrooms.
> but this setup is certainly better than eliminating public restrooms entirely.
how is that different from what they'd do if the pay toilet didn't exist?
The only place in France I have seen this happen was Paris and public toilets are free there. I haven't seen paid toilets at all in France for a long time, actually. Maybe in train stations though.
[delayed]
Yes; the inverse is not true; making it free won't ensure that it won't happen.
This was a year ago in Nice for reference.
I was in Nice as well and found one place that had a public urinal(my back was literally to people walking around). It was a bit odd...but I really had to go.
Oh I don't doubt you, I was just reflecting that I think that paid toilets have largely been made free in the last 10 years or so.
But I'm sure there still exist quite a few, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were especially found in right-wing cities like Nice.
I went to Paris a month ago and saw paid public toilets. Those enclosed things on the sidewalk.
I was just in Paris and I never had to pay for the public sidewalk toilets. Where did you see paid ones? I didn't get to all the arrondisements, so I'm curious.
I don't remember actually. I was staying in Montparnasse so the 14th. Was 1 Euro wherever it was. Might've been this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/5vPoD7jM3ELyP6gL7
And it's not this other one on the same street, cause this was free https://maps.app.goo.gl/Firjcsabthu8DHtQ6
Something else I've noticed, garbage cans are disappearing.
I had some trash in my car I needed to get rid of: McDonalds? None outside, Tacobell? none outside, CVS? none outside OR inside, The entire rest of that shopping center? nope.
Luckily gas stations still have them but its sad to see these community service type things disappear.
One of the primary goals of the pandemic and lockdowns was to eliminate cost centers for every business.
If you notice how courtesy services disappeared, and many facilities were closed, because of a lack of staff or funds to clean them and maintain them.
It has actually been difficult to get into a restroom at certain restaurants, even now; sometimes I will find a handwritten sign there like “Employees Only” which is against health codes.
I rode a scooter to a “Drive-In” burger restaurant last month. Not a drive-thru, mind you, but a place where folks pulled up in cars and carhops served them, and they ate while parked. And this place had picnic tables, so I ordered a burger combo and tried to wash my hands.
There was no restroom available, and I contacted the order-taker guy and asked to confirm, and then I asked to cancel my order. He said “Your order is ready!” and I said hell naw, if you don’t have a restroom then you’re not serving anyone, so I got my refund...
This reminds me of a story I heard (read?) a long time ago. At Disney World they had a rule about a garbage can being within a 10 foot distance of basically anywhere in the park. The logic was that when a garbage can is nearby, there is additional social pressure not to litter, and the result was that they were able to save money on park cleanup because people used the cans.
When I see lone overflowing garbage cans in big cities I think about this.
Blame the raccoons!
> I had some trash in my car I needed to get rid of
Bring it home and use your own trash can? I don’t really understand why you need to immediately get rid of it.
I haul my garbage home in my backpack like a good little global citizen but the lack of trash cans in San Francisco is crazy
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-Trash-c...
I feel like there are plenty personally. I usually don't have to walk more than a block or two to find one.
That article is from 20 years ago by the way
In city centers it's usually counter-terrorism: it's easy to throw a timed bomb in a metal garbage can and flee the scene, so they got rid of them (London did because of IRA, and of course now they have Islamic terrorism). Outside of city centers it's about (lack of) recycling: it's easier to check if you're recycling correctly in your home bin than public bins.
Explosion resistant trash receptacles do exist but they’re pricey so it makes sense London didn’t replace theirs. The most common place to see them is in airports.
Why would you throw a bomb into a garbage can? Who loiters next to one?
100% just drop it behind you as you exit the tram. Way better metal container for blasting.
"Counter-terrorism" just means nobody thought about it more than 2 seconds or else they'd have a more specific reason.
It was pretty common with the IRA, apparently. They hid bombs in metal garbage cans and used the shrapnel as a damage multiplier. I think they did that at a commercial center and killed several people. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23695239
You would think it's in the interest of whoever is responsible for keeping those areas clean to offer garbage cans.
I live by a park. These places don't care for the same reason the park doesn't care: the wind blows it all in my yard, not their problem anymore.
It would be, if the responsible parties were making rational decisions.
It is unlikely the low-ranked employees responsible for cleaning up garbage are making decisions on whether to construct or retain garbage cans.
Agreed. It was never my intent to suggest that they would be doing so.
So move up the management ladder, if you will, until a party that is responsible for making this kind of decision is reached. That's the class of party of which I was speaking, and where I suggested that irrational decisions are being made.
Someone -- at some point -- did make a decision to eliminate outdoor trash cans at these establishments. They used to be present and no longer are, and they didn't disappear on their own.
> So move up the management ladder, if you will, until a party that is responsible for making this kind of decision is reached. That's the class of party of which I was speaking, and where I suggested that irrational decisions are being made.
No matter what, big or small, it's always a Republican's fault, huh.
I'm not sure that anyone in the management ladder is affected. People don't generally choose a fast food restaurant or convenience store based on the cleanliness of their parking lots, so sales isn't going to be affected. Nor is staff, already cut to minimal levels, going to be given additional hours to keep the parking lots clean.
There even might be a disincentive to have garbage cans if they can't be maintained. People who don't litter will either take the extra step of going indoors, or they might leave it in their own car to throw out later. Whereas people who do litter will do so regardless of when there are trash cans. By removing outdoor trash cans, you've "saved" the staff the time to monitor and clear out those trash cans.
People do chose fast food by the neighborhood. When I was at McDonald's - 30 years ago so this may have changed - corporate policy was you would clean your parking lot and everyone for one block. We were encouraged to paint any abandoned building in the one block range at our expense just to ensure the area looked nice.
If that's really your take on this then I have no option but to accept it.
Let's move forward.
What incentivized them to provide the trash cans to begin with, might you suppose? They aren't cheap to buy, or to maintain, or to keep emptied daily (or as they fill up, or whatever). But yet: They were things that existed, and their existence was definitely deliberate.
What motivates companies that still provide outdoor trash cans to continue to do so?