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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#751

Post by alistairSH »

markdown wrote: post #154
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.

That appeared to be the norm in Italy when we visited earlier this summer. Most of the main towns in Puglia seemed to have at least one pay-per-use toilet.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#752

Post by latexr »

latexr wrote: post #581
snvzz wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The worst 10% In reality, about 2% or even less. We could live in paradise if we just removed them from society. Put them in a box.

You’re suggesting imprisoning over 160 million people. That’s orders of magnitude higher than even the largest Holocaust estimates. It’s more than the population of Russia.

HN is getting insane. One person is suggesting “removing from society” 2% of people, the other is outright explicitly calling for their deaths, and the comment on the insanity and scale of it all is the one getting downvoted.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#753

Post by CWuestefeld »

nine_k wrote: post #240
lotsofpulp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Given enough money, there would be people willing to do all that, buy proper gear and disinfectants, etc. But that would cost so much that most municipalities or businesses would not afford that. Some places, of course, do afford that; they are relatively few, as one might expect. Especially as people become more wealthy and the cost of their work grows.

As I asked elsewhere, why is it infeasible for government to do this, but Buc-ee's can have sparklingly clean facilities while still turning a profit?

This might tell us something about the nature of government management or employment.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#754

Post by m4rtink »

Aachen wrote: post #681
freetime2 wrote: post #149

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…

Do they cost money in Japan, typically?

I don't think I ever saw paid toilet in Japan.

A paid toilet was actually one of the gotchas of "oh, right, we are back home". :)

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#756

Post by mrguyorama »

embedding-shape wrote: post #548
mns wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this some sort of psy-op here against EU, this isn't the first message like this where someone is praising China and accusing EU, as if it's a unitary entity, about being a "horror show". If only we would have some dictators or extremist parties back in power to break up the EU and take our countries back to the good old days. I'm finding it harder and harder to come back to Hn with all of this stuff.

> Is this some sort of psy-op here against EU No, commonly here on HN it is American commentators who've visited like Italy or Greece or France once, then they extrapolate their experience in a tourist-heavy city, looking/behaving as an American, over the entire continent. Happens almost every day here. Any comment mentioning EU/Europe here has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Usually it turns out they've visit…

This is even true of Americans in America!

Someone from bumbfuck nowhere visits one big city and generalizes their experience, good or bad.

Or how all of HN is constantly convinced that the entire US is only SV or NYC, which is why they continually praise how Uber broke the "Taxi Cartel" that didn't exist anywhere else.

Or how much of the country only knows of cities from the propaganda they were fed by Fox News, which is why my brother told my mom that Portland Maine was a war zone back during the BLM marches, because 20 kids were laying down in front of the police department, which was a nothing burger and cops weren't even bothered, more like amused.

But the city is somehow not a warzone when ICE abducts 100 people off the street and kills at least one.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#757

Post by parineum »

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…

> EU/US just think that's dumb thing to teach because "eww collectivism" and even the weird conservative people going on about rules usually don't even want that.

It's interesting to me to call out conservatives here as they are typically the ones touting community responsibilities through social norms. Despite the socialism (non-derogotarily) lean of the left, I would still consider them more individualistic, socially.

The two groups differ in their enforcement of collectivism (socially or legally) not their aversion/inclination to it. We are a social species, after all.

I think you'd find less graffiti in a rural bathroom than a large city bathroom.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#758

Post by lotsofpulp »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #750
mrngld wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't do your homework for you but there's people that have done the work of reporting out the numbers it takes to operate a clean government bathroom. It's not just "reasonable wage" territory. It's "civilization can't afford this" level expensive, the type of problem you can't throw money at because it's so bad it's obvious that the real problem and solution exists elsewhere. And it's only in the West that public…

Why is it so infeasible for government to keep their facilities clean, while Buc-ee's can have sparkling clean facilities and still turn a profit?

Infeasible for a government would mean it is sufficiently expensive that it is not politically popular to spend that much money on public bathrooms.

Also, Buc-ees does not offer free bathrooms in urban, dense areas with higher proportions of mentally ill and drug addicted populations, so that comparison makes no sense.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#759

Post by lovich »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #732
lovich wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it is infeasible because I saw restrooms become less numerous and more restricted over the past 4 decades. Cool. My point was that I was a minimum wage worker and still cleaning toilets. Did it for minimum wage. There were many other coworkers doing the same. You said > 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 i…

No, I am writing that supply and demand curves can shift such that the job you used to for minimum wage is no longer a job one can expect to hire for minimum wage in Aug 2026. >Its literally one of the lowest paid jobs there is. Today, real life says that is not sufficient pay if we want more public bathrooms (in the places lacking them, such as urban, high density areas). My conclusions are not based on my feelings…

ah I see. Anything that is currently not being done is infeasible.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#760

Post by ethbr1 »

meric_ wrote: post #703
lux-lux-lux wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC ended up spending $1,440 per dollar in fares recovered on stopping fare jumpers, which is probably why the decree came about in the first place. Is there a particular reason why you think setting gargantuan amounts of money on fire over trivial offenses makes sense?

Because those trivial offences are a nuisance. BART spent millions implementing fare gates which so far, is at a huge loss, but it's dramatically lowered maintenance cost and crime on the transit. Similarly stores with loss prevention guards are probably losing money, but I'd much rather that than having to click a button to unlock items, etc.

Loss prevention in retail is absolutely tailored to the store, in the US. Essentially, the corporate dept has a bucket of funding and chooses where / how to deploy it. So when you see {insert LP device}, there's metrics to back it up. And specifically, worse metrics than the same chain stores that don't have that device.
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