San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#421

Post by indymike » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

stvswn wrote: post #243

cjtrowbridge wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"a right-wing dystopia?" Seems like you'd prefer to redefine what it means to be left or right wing rather than admit that this is the outcome of left-wing governance. The specific issues here are: tight control over building standards leading to red tape; high levels of process to ensure community review and involvement; paying more than market price for labor in order to support unions as a political value; support…

In government, the continuum is not a line, it is a circle. If you go far enough left, or far enough right, you end up at the exact same place.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#422

Post by throwawaytoilet » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #387

throwawaytoilet wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to be a bit desensitized to problems that are visible all over the city (e.g. trash under and along freeways etc) for that to not be the memory that sticks rather than the beauty. It is like SF needs a “clean up the city volunteer day” once a month that is broadly attended.

Hmm, having just visited SF and then spent a week in New Haven and Hartford in CT, I can't agree. What American city doesn't have trash? I can't think of a city I have visited in the world that meets that standard. I haven't been, but maybe Singapore? The homeless problem is very bad in California and SF in particular, and it is very concentrated in a small area to the east that looks positively dystopian. But that d…

FWIW, I visit golden gate twice a week in average.

I guess I’m saying something a bit different. When people visit SF from SFO they get on the 101 and within 2 hours they have a feeling of things are broken and that memory sticks. I’m desensitized to those problems so I mostly see the beauty.

If people land at SFO and took 380 onto 280 thn straight to golden gate perhaps their impressions would be different.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#423

Post by jquery » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #342

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the real SF experience? Or is it media hype? I’m completely unfamiliar with the city. My only experience of America is staying in Atlanta for 6 months during an exchange program, but that was years back. Some of the stories of bureaucratic meddling and political corruption sound like something I’d see back home in India. Always had this impression that America was above that.

> sound like something I’d see back home in India I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system to work. Trying to go through all of the legal rigamarole of the Indian regulatory process would mean nothing ever gets done.

Allowing bribery and corruption only ensures that whatever system you end up with requires bribery and corruption to work.

Better to let the system freeze up entirely and remove the unnecessary bureaucracy than monkey-patch the bad system with bribery.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#424

Post by collegeburner » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

jesuscript wrote: post #379

collegeburner wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similarly, NYC decided to pay McKinsey $4mm to answer the question of whether large, stinky festering piles of trashbags would be better in containers.

Source, my dear friend. The world is just too weird for me delineate between real and unreal at this point.

i know its hard to believe but https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-orders-4-million-mckinsey-stu...

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#425

Post by 1024core » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

It's simple. It's not their money. When you ask any SF Department to give you a budget for something, they will just hallucinate a number and pull it out of their ass.

Matt Haney (the State Senator) asked the Parks & Rec Department for an estimate of what would it cost to build the toilet (given that the hookups are already in place). They shrugged and pulled a figure of $1.7M out of their ass. And he just accepted that! Any normal person would have alarm bells go off in their head about such a large amount. Imagine you walk up to a street vendor and ask about a hot dog, and he responds with $1000. You'll laugh at his face and walk away. But the politicians in SF thought this was perfectly normal, and were getting ready to celebrate this event (until the Chronicle published the article that went viral). Kudos to Heather Knight... but it shouldn't have come this far!

Building a whole house costs $1.7M. A public toilet? Definitely not even close.

But hey, it's not their money, so who gives a shit, right?

When I read cases like these, I feel like maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#426

Post by hunglee2 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

how do we maintain local community consultation without it becoming a 'vetocracy'?

Seems to me that this is a problem that may be ameliorated with some form quadratic voting

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#427

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #342

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the real SF experience? Or is it media hype? I’m completely unfamiliar with the city. My only experience of America is staying in Atlanta for 6 months during an exchange program, but that was years back. Some of the stories of bureaucratic meddling and political corruption sound like something I’d see back home in India. Always had this impression that America was above that.

> sound like something I’d see back home in India I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system to work. Trying to go through all of the legal rigamarole of the Indian regulatory process would mean nothing ever gets done.

> I have started appreciating bribery and corruption as a necessary lubrication for any excessively bureaucratic system to work.

I feel similarly, when it comes to pork. We tried to eliminate that from congress, calling it wasteful and corrupting. And perhaps at some level that is accurate. But when we took it away, now all we have is naked ideology. It's not clear to me that this is an improvement, in fact I think it is the opposite.

Bring back the pork.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#428

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:11 PM UTC

stephencoyner wrote: post #340

hot_gril wrote: post #228

I've lived and worked in SF. Thankful that I'll probably never have another work-related reason to go back. SF is marked deprecated in my eyes.

It’s easy to pile onto articles that highlight some of the city’s mismanagement, but San Francisco is one of the most naturally beautiful places in the country. If you’re out on the west side by Golden Gate Park, Baker Beach or the Presidio it feels like you’re in a nature movie. Even with all of its problems, I will always love that city.

Golden Gate Recreation is working to mess all that up.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#429

Post by notch656a » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

hexator wrote: post #248

eweise wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good laborers are union workers, which drives the cost up significantly.

The actual labor costs for the workers are not the issue, they already don't make a lot and wages have stagnated for decades while costs have soared. Also, there's plenty of non-union areas that STILL have incredible costs. Profiteering from subcontractors and suppliers is the issue. All of these bids are public, this isn't exactly forbidden knowledge.

So underbid them. You just found a golden goose.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#430

Post by jquery » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

aliqot wrote: post #82

michaelscott wrote: post #49

> San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public toilets. The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to such a degree in SF that (a) securing bu…

Red tape and nimbyism is hard to imagine from what I see of SFO in books, it seems like the most anti-diversity thing you can do. Can anybody from SFO relate their experience? Hard to tell these days what is editorial bias or sensationalism and what is true.

This is largely editorial bias and sensationalism. The original article was clickbait, $1.7m is merely the going rate for a public restroom (think of the big installations with women, men, and family rooms plus a janitor room). It is not what SF spent on a single commode.

Keep a skeptical eye whenever you see an article trashing SF. We are the boogeyman city for right wing demagogues in the USA.

Edit: Responding to a sibling comment:

> No public restrooms, no chairs in Starbucks, covers on everything in Walgreens, ID requirements to enter stuff, you get the idea. There's no obvious solution to that.

Lest people think the whole city is like this, this kind of thing is limited to a few square blocks inside the downtown area. As a gone-native SFer, I would have no problem finding public restrooms anywhere in the city, or a coffee shop with comfy couches soft enough to nap in.