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Where did all the public bathrooms go?

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Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#351

Post by defrost »

xienze wrote: post #117
deepsun wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong about syringe disposal? A significant portion of population has diabetes. And even if a drug addict uses it, still better than throwing to the trash, similar to how cigarette disposals are mandatory in typical airplanes.

> What's wrong about syringe disposal? A significant portion of population has diabetes. Ask yourself if that's truly what motivated those being installed... > And even if a drug addict uses it, still better than throwing to the trash The problem is they still throw their needles all over the ground. As is typical, the intentions are noble, but what ends up happening is people who can't even be bothered to not shoot…

> The problem is they still throw their needles all over the ground.

Yeah, well, that's your culture and a direct end result of how people are treated and made to feel part of or outside of it.

In Australia there are diabetics and drug addicts as much as anywhere, but rarely problems with sharps on the ground or littering in general- go figure .

Drug use: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-15/australian-drug-use-w...

  Australians have consumed 22.2 tonnes of methylamphetamine (meth), cocaine, heroin and MDMA in a year, according to the latest wastewater survey.
That's about a gram each over the year, or rather many people don't use, a few use a lot.

Diabetics, sharp disposal: https://www.diabetesaustralia.com.au/resources/safe-sharps/

Drug users, sharps: https://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/U_Z/Where-to-find-n...

At the suburban council level: https://cosp.t1cloud.com/apps/KnowledgeBase/mySouthPerth/art...

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#352

Post by grogenaut »

many of the comments below talk about the death of society, respect, mental illness, etc... but I mean some of this is just high use. most port-a-potties are a shit show (literally). go to a festival, it's people waiting in line and having doing the drunk peepee dance and trying not to explode when they get in there. I can name a few port-a-potties that were nice, there's one in the park by my suburban house. it gets like no use (looking at the chart), it's pretty clean. but also a ton of these things are getting a cleaning every 2 weeks min.

like do you want to pick up that piece of toilet paper you dropped on the ground in that thing with nothing to clean your hands other than sanitizer?

funny enough, I find many public campground vault toilets to be pretty clean, because the camp hosts clean them daily. theworste one I've ever seen is the first bathroom into yosemite from sf. it's not because the homeless are coming from SF to shit there. It's because a) that's the first place you can panic dump, b) there's a line, c) that's where the tourists go. it's also the most graffitied one by far.

if you don't give people a way to clean up easily... then you're dependent on the official service interval. shits gonna happen.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#354

Post by bellowsgulch »

Someone1234 wrote: post #335
beebmam wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has very little to do with public amenities. It has everything to do with toleration of homelessness and drug use. I don't understand why the west tolerates it at all.

I'm genuinely concerned to ask what you're proposing? Drug use is already unlawful, and the homeless are routinely criminalized for existing - so if that is "tolerate" then what proposals are you trying to promote?

You think we don't tolerate the homeless in the West? Man oh man, some traveling would do you good.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#355

Post by simoncion »

why_at wrote: post #205
etc-hosts wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haul my garbage home in my backpack like a good little global citizen but the lack of trash cans in San Francisco is crazy https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-Trash-c...

I feel like there are plenty personally. I usually don't have to walk more than a block or two to find one. That article is from 20 years ago by the way

> I usually don't have to walk more than a block or two to find one.

That is not the situation in most of the city, whether it be "nice" parts or "nasty" parts. Restaurant districts tend to have more trash cans than anywhere else, but the presence of a restaurant district is no guarantee of good trash can coverage. Source: I've walked around so much of San Francisco in my ~fifteen years here.

In the places I frequent that have reasonable trash can coverage, I've found that trash cans are very slowly disappearing and never coming back. Maybe they get fucked up beyond usefulness and don't get replaced? I really have no idea.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#356

Post by fzeroracer »

nradov wrote: post #319
fzeroracer wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Seattle, people focus a lot on the homeless because it's an obvious problem. The guy screaming at the corner, or the people sleeping on the sidewalk. But I personally think people miss that its a symptom of greater social rot. I've had more issues with antisocial car drivers than any homeless individual. People screaming profanities because I'm crossing the street with the walk signal active, people narrowl…

In a lot of large cities, local governments reacted to the 2020-2023 protests against police brutality by drastically reducing traffic enforcement. Aggressive drivers can get away with a lot more bad behavior now and have little fear of consequences. When voters elect leaders like Katie Wilson this is one of the inevitable consequences.

This is just false, considering I've lived across the US. My experience has been pretty universally the same whether or not I lived in Texas, Virginia or Washington. People that are incredibly sheltered like to believe that it's unique to their city, or the result of partisan politics but the reality is that the rot is deeper than that. One of the most famous examples was in deep red Texas: Ethan Couch.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#357

Post by geysersam »

socalgal2 wrote: post #348
justin66 wrote: post #257

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. 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…

> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't solve the problem because the problem is not money

The problem is money, but for preventing homelessness and mental illness in the first place.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#358

Post by alwa »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #151
mym1990 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn’t literally every bathroom need someone to clean up body fluids and odors from time to time? At the last gas station, big box hardware store, and McDonalds I visited in the West, log sheets hung inside the bathrooms indicating they’re supposedly cleaned as often as hourly.

It doesn’t really bother me. At many of the places I work and volunteer, our norm is to establish a rota, so as not to shove the job onto whoever’s lowest paid, least experienced, or most willing to be bullied into it.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#359

Post by helloplanets »

cube00 wrote: post #17

Strange "For the Classroom" question. Men seeking same-sex encounters transformed the pissoir into something its planners never intended. Who ultimately determines the meaning of a public space: its designers, authorities, or the people who use it? The law determines that public space can't be used for any sexual activity. I'm not sure what constructive classroom discussion you can have when the example is based on t…

Playing the devil's advocate: The law also determined that any space, public or private, can't be used for same-sex sexual activity. So that was a driving force for people seeking completely anonymous encounters, in spaces that aren't linked to either person.

Re: Where did all the public bathrooms go?

#360

Post by sroussey »

socalgal2 wrote: post #348
justin66 wrote: post #257

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. 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…

> We did as little as possible to deal with homelessness and mental illness SF would beg to differ. They have a budget of $100k per homeless person. They can't solve the problem because the problem is not money

And still once I was ina small restaurant that let a homeless guy use the toilet and they forced the door open after hearing crashing sounds, and he had painted the walls with his poop and jumped up and down on the sink until it broke off.

Days later I saw a sign in their window saying the bathroom was for customers only.

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