Where did all the public bathrooms go? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#671

Post by wildzzz » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

ebbi wrote: post #294

xyzelement wrote: post #85

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 th…

I don't think I quite agree with that. Virtually all offices I've worked in, the bathrooms have been less than ideally used by colleagues. The people you'd class as 'commons' may not be having public sex, shooting up drugs, but many can be dirty and/or selfish. And this is in an office where cleaners regularly clean the facilities (I'd hazard more frequently than public toilets are cleaned). There's always be pee on…

For several months, we had someone pissing on the floor of the men's room. I work at an engineering firm in the suburbs, these people all make $100k+ and most are senior professionals. I don't know if they found him by figuring out badge swipes (he hit a lot of bathrooms) or if he just stopped on his own.

It's also entirely possible it was mass hysteria. Sometimes people miss the urinal and maybe some did it to be funny after the signs went up.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#672

Post by teddyh » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

The article does not even begin to answer the question of the title.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#673

Post by diogenescynic » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

alt227 wrote: post #578

diogenescynic wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The toilets you cleaned in 1996 were no where near as disgusting/dangerous as what the public toilets look like now from fentanyl zombies and meth heads. I doubt you had to worry about pricking yourself on a recently used needle ever. Those people simply didn't exist on this level back then and there were more options. Please stop with the 'I hiked uphill both ways' routine... life is worse now than in 1996 in almost…

Meth and heroin were massive problems in the 80s and 90s. Go and watch Trainspotting which was literally made in the year you mentioned and then come back and defend your point about public toilets in the 90s not being drug litter riddled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB6rig1lYTc

Yes, they existed, but definitively not in the same potency (i.e. fentanyl) or volume and were more expensive and harder to get. Not every public toilet in the 80s/90s was completely taken over by deranged homeless drug addicts like it is now. The problem is much more difficult. It's not the same at all.

When I was a kid growing up in the 80s/90s, you rarely saw homeless camps like they are now where they openly use drugs. You never saw public restrooms that were completely disgusting. Fast food bathrooms were clean back then.. now they are horrible. Things are not the same... The worst bathrooms back then were at the public parks where they were covered in pee and not cleaned well, but weren't destroyed by drug usage like they are now. I don't remember seeing piles of needles (or even one needle) like you do now.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#674

Post by cucumber3732842 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #276

throwawayffffas wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it became unfashionable to put mentally ill people in asylums. The additional fashion of "giving local people a voice" in construction projects planning did not help either.

The problem regarding putting mentally ill people in asylums is who gets to decide who is mentally ill? I mean that's literally incarcerating people for thoughtcrime. If people have committed no crime, how can we justify taking away their freedom?

Well, historically we did this by hand waving away all that and just letting some evil system take care of it out of sight out of mind, who cares how the sausage is made if you never see the factory.

That's not really an option now since the last people to blindly believe in institutions to that extent are the boomers and it'd be a tough sell to even them.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#675

Post by MisterTea » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #617

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…

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…

Bathrooms aren't always closed because of vandalizing. NYC public schools lacked bathrooms and stall doors -- the various heroin epidemics saw to that. Schools closed boys bathrooms and removed stall doors to discourage drug use.

In 1994 my public HS had ONE boys bathroom with no stall doors across from the lunchroom where a public school guard sat and watched. The girls had one on every floor. Had to take a dump? pray no one was in one of three stalls and put your book bag on your lap. My brother went to Brooklyn Tech and had the same missing stall door issue though had more bathrooms.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#676

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

mapt wrote: post #642

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…

Opsec permitting, how long ago was this? While I'm sure The Youth as a group were never terribly respectful in these countries, social media clout (and the influencer's rise as the only apparently secure profession and for teens the only symbol of a social leadership caste) totally changed the equation regarding motivations. This culminated in the 2021-2022 school year "Devious Licks Challenge", a bathroom destructio…

[deleted]

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#677

Post by cucumber3732842 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

10000truths wrote: post #309

47635274172635 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whatever bad things you can say about China or Taiwan, they both think slavery is wrong and kings are childish. I remember China being pretty racist. A lot of people visiting got a clear message. Not aggressively but quite clear. >The west were slavers. Who sold them the slaves? Did Europeans go hunt for slaves or did they buy them? Who did they buy them from? Also answer this, if Americans wouldn't have bought the…

> Also answer this, if Americans wouldn't have bought the African slaves, all those African-Americans that are now enjoying life in the land of the free, where would they have been born today? Think if they could push a button today to wipe slavery from the past, but that meant they get to spawn back in Africa, they would push it or not? Legitimate question. Because it's not like nothing good came out of it. The reas…

>The reason that Africa is in a poor state of affairs is because of rampant colonization and pillaging by European settlers, of which enslavement was a byproduct.

The colonization mostly happened after slavery.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#678

Post by trllc » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

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…

Xi Jinping being the Toilet King is funny. Love the idea of toilet empowering decrees.

Is it true that there are a ton of paid toilets in the EU? And are those generally nicer than free ones?

If this could be useful, I've been working on a tool to map public restrooms: throneroom.app. Hope is for parents, blue collar folk, but most importantly the IBS community to have a resource where they can vet bathrooms before visiting. Open to any input if this could be helpful to you!

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#679

Post by serf » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #617

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…

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…

I don't disagree with your points, but have you ever considered it strange that you're unable to relate to why someone would want to do something for fun?

you answer your own perplexity by yourself in the same sentence; they do it for fun. I know this because I was a shithead vandal teenager, and I did it for two reasons , 1) fun at the moment and 2) to impress my peers and sex partners.

I think the frustrations of youth are undersold here, and I think the expectation of "You're born, now conform to being a cog in this machine that you had nothing to do with or necessarily any interest in." is also somewhat fundamentally flawed, even if the kids have nice bathrooms due to their own efforts to shit in.

a society that repairs itself and allows a certain level of vandalism is better, I think. It allows for the rebellious youth to get through these psychological phases without much possibility of a misstep that allows them to throw themselves into incarceration for life, it offers leeway for personal growth, and it doesn't pin them into programs that they hate and wouldn't integrate into, anyway.

Tell me, how does the whole 'kids take care of their own bathrooms' thing work out for bullies?

answer: they love it. They don't have to work. Asia hasn't solved the bullying thing yet even with their perceived perfect unitary social one-ness.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#680

Post by gosub100 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

deadbunny wrote: post #187

paulpauper wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, attracts crime, 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?

The point isn't to stop them, it's to prevent them from ruining public places for everyone else. A homeless man pooing/injecting behind a dumpster is way better than the floor of a restaurant bathroom.