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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#151

Post by lotsofpulp »

mym1990 wrote: post #113
xyzelement wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#152

Post by xienze »

ssl-3 wrote: post #95
jerlam wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The…

> 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.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#153

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mstaoru wrote: post #94

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…

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.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#154

Post by markdown »

jeffnash wrote: post #79

> 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 an…

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.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#155

Post by ux266478 »

qurren wrote: post #142
pyreko wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

> _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.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#156

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pyreko wrote: post #133
mstaoru wrote: post #94

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…

> 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 r…

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.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#158

Post by lukan »

brap wrote: post #145
lukan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#159

Post by obelos »

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.
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