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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#661

Post by rykelchen »

yipinwong wrote: post #658
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…

Sounds like you live in top 1% area in China. That's def not true that toilets are readily available in China. As non-chinese citizen, I veered off place I cannot go without the passport, I see crappy areas without toilets everywhere (though I was stopped by police from wondering around). You only see where you are allowed to see. Rest of those area has no toilet, and people crap/pee everywhere.

In China, you rarely see people defecating or urinating anywhere without proper sanitation facilities, except in the wild.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#663

Post by Otterly99 »

yboris wrote: post #246

They're all in Tokyo ;) My all-time-favorite film is Perfect Days depicting days in the life of a sanitation worker overseeing toilets around Tokyo. A must-watch film! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days

I also was thinking of this film, however I found it really dull.

What did you like about it?

I'm not trying to diss you, I usually like contemplative movies but this one was just too repetitive for my taste.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#664

Post by yipinwong »

rykelchen wrote: post #661
yipinwong wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you live in top 1% area in China. That's def not true that toilets are readily available in China. As non-chinese citizen, I veered off place I cannot go without the passport, I see crappy areas without toilets everywhere (though I was stopped by police from wondering around). You only see where you are allowed to see. Rest of those area has no toilet, and people crap/pee everywhere.

In China, you rarely see people defecating or urinating anywhere without proper sanitation facilities, except in the wild.

The "wild" makes up for the 99% of China.

Even in cities, why do I have to take a dump without doors?

Why do I see mom's letting kids take a dump and pee in the streets whiloe they are wearing pants that have no coverage in the bottom area? wtf is that.

---

And out of 100s of comments, how did you spot my comment so quick? and it is the first comment right after you joined? You replied within minutes of my posting,

@TRACK: rykelchen

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#665

Post by s1artibartfast »

account42 wrote: post #635
s1artibartfast wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws are enforced harshly and consistently, so people follow them. As a result, you have low crime and low total incarceration. Take auto theft. In California, we have 1 auto theft arrest per 15 stolen cars. Incarceration rate is 1 in 5 of those arrested, so 1 per 75 stolen cars. Japan has 1 arrest for every 2 stolen cars - A much higher rate of getting caught. Japan has about 5,000 stolen vehicles nationally per…

Be careful comparing such statistics between countries as the defintions of what counts at every step will be different and there are always contributing factors that skew the statistics.

I think I took appropriate caution. Do you have a specific concern?

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#666

Post by enaaem »

mancerayder wrote: post #638
NalNezumi wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU(or US) can't have public toilets because it's gonna get vandalized. For fun. One thing that perplexed me endlessly during my youth living in Sweden was seeing drunk teenagers go around vandalize things for... Fun. Breaking the glass at the buss station (designed to shatter in to million pieces so you don't hurt yourself), friends enjoying graffiti, littering, throwing beer bottles on the street for fun.... During…

How is that not connected to police enforcement, though? In Europe and now the US the new generations are anti-police, anti-enforcement and generally consider authority and rules to be proof of an unjust society (X group is N percent more likely to receive a criminal summons when ..). In the US in slow motion we could see a world in which you could go to a big chain pharmacy and retrieve your own toothpaste and shamp…

I cannot speak for the US, but having been in Europe and Asian countries like Japan and Korea, the simplest explanation is the difference in tolerance for petty crime, vandalism and litter. Is related to the broken window theory.

The thing is that European cities have always been kinda dirty and crime infested, and it has little to do with American culture war. I do not have an explanation for this, because you will need dig deep into history for that, but the good news is that things are overall improving. Overall crime is overall trending down. For example, the inner city of Amsterdam used to be full of junkies and now that has been almost completely cleaned up. And football Hooligans used to be a much bigger problem than they are now.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#667

Post by matheusmoreira »

baublet wrote: post #585
phendrenad2 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The replies here really exemplify the core reason we have this problem - about 50% of the population (on HN, probably more outside of HN) doesn't understand that everything has an economic cost, and cleaning hepititis-infected needles and excrement smears up all day is an extremely costly activity, not just because no one wants to do it, but because if someone gets sick they'll sue the city for tens millions of dolla…

This thread is more a reminder of how easy it will be to find people to man the gas chambers when Republicans turn their sights on the homeless. Some wretched dehumanizing of people here.

Is it really so surprising?

There's a reason why people lock themselves up in gated communities as soon as they can afford to. People want nice things, and out there they can't have nice things. Society sucks. Everything public sucks. Better to create your own little oasis of goodness in private property so that those who would ruin it literally cannot enter.

Elitism is the private solution. Public spaces are still unsolved. You'd do well to present a solution. Ignoring it and then accusing society of "dehumanization" is not gonna solve anything. There's a limit to the general suckiness people are willing to tolerate before they radicalize and vote for the guy promising to clean it all up.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#668

Post by oogali »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #660
NalNezumi wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU(or US) can't have public toilets because it's gonna get vandalized. For fun. One thing that perplexed me endlessly during my youth living in Sweden was seeing drunk teenagers go around vandalize things for... Fun. Breaking the glass at the buss station (designed to shatter in to million pieces so you don't hurt yourself), friends enjoying graffiti, littering, throwing beer bottles on the street for fun.... During…

It's not collectivism, it's the "no consequences" thing. "back in my time" in what used to be yugoslavia, it was perfectly acceptable for an adult to slap/hit a kid who caused problem or was destroying stuff, if a dad had to come to school because the kid did something bad, that was a horrible punishment, plus no leaving the room after, no toys, no bike, no outside play, no nothing for some time. Now? Parents protect…

I remember this “time” in my US classroom where we were all punished with if one person damaged classroom property (or worse, school property) but no one was willing to speak up and tell on the offender.

I have similar stories from our local neighborhoods where another parent might yell at you but the tales of your exploits made it home before you did. And there consequences waiting for you.

It’s a matter of timeline, not country.

By the late 1990s, I started to see said teachers pushing kids along as to 1) not deal with them again, and 2) pressure from district/state to not have as many failing students a.k.a. optimizing for the metric.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#669

Post by devilbunny »

justin66 wrote: post #257
talon8635 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 populati…

> 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. What a weird way of stating the problem. There is too large a population of homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicts wandering the streets. We didn't surrender anything, at least not during the last half century in the United States. We did as littl…

Whatever other issues they may have, they are overwhelmingly mentally ill, largely schizophrenic, and the surrender in the US happened just outside your fifty-year window when the Supreme Court decided that it should be much harder to institutionalize someone against their will. The timing was similar in the UK, from what I have read. Don’t know about the EU.

The problem with severe schizophrenics is that they don’t like and won’t take their meds if left to their own devices [EDIT: regardless of how much social support you provide, even though we certainly didn’t provide enough]. Institutions are in no way perfect, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not a documentary.

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