I would never step foot into a public SF toliet. Last time I went in there the homeless shit all over the floor and toliet and walls. I went in and nearly threw up. A homeless person pointed and laughed at me. Fuck that.
For years I felt this way. But with a 3 year old child you go into lots of public toilets all over the city. Nearly all toilets near playgrounds for children have been fine. Basic but fine.
Thinking through this more. SF Parks and Recs managed toilets have all been fine from a sample size of about 20 uniques and maybe 80 visits. About 75% of those visits are weekend days in the mornings.
I feel like there are two SF's - the one that other people write about on 6th Street and the tenderloin, and then the one I visit west of that which is one of the most beautiful and vibrant American cities I have ever spent time in.
I think you need to be a bit desensitized to problems that are visible all over the city (e.g. trash under and along freeways etc) for that to not be the memory that sticks rather than the beauty.
It is like SF needs a “clean up the city volunteer day” once a month that is broadly attended.
Hmm, having just visited SF and then spent a week in New Haven and Hartford in CT, I can't agree. What American city doesn't have trash? I can't think of a city I have visited in the world that meets that standard. I haven't been, but maybe Singapore?
The homeless problem is very bad in California and SF in particular, and it is very concentrated in a small area to the east that looks positively dystopian. But that doesn't represent the whole city. If there is a next time you visit, I recommend spending some time in the panhandle, the Haight, the sunset, basically anywhere bordering golden gate park.
FWIW, I visit golden gate twice a week in average.
I guess I’m saying something a bit different. When people visit SF from SFO they get on the 101 and within 2 hours they have a feeling of things are broken and that memory sticks. I’m desensitized to those problems so I mostly see the beauty.
If people land at SFO and took 380 onto 280 thn straight to golden gate perhaps their impressions would be different.
I lived in New Haven for 4 years. The difference in the amount of trash between American cities is vast, compare NYC with Chicago. Or really any city on the east coast with Chicago for that matter.
I'm not sure if you mean that Chicago is clean or dirty? I saw a lot of both last time I visited, it's hard to say. It certainly seemed a lot cleaner than, say, Rochester NY or Philadelphia when I visited, but not sure if that was just the areas I was in.
Of course the difference is vast, I think you could compare one part of NYC with NYC even and end up with vastly different ideas of trash. And that's kinda what I am going on about; the trash under highways in some part of the city is a meaningless metric.
Chicago is a much cleaner city. No comparison with New Haven, NYC (where I used to live), Philly (where I live now) or really anywhere else on the east coast. The culture of throwing trash on the ground is endemic on the east coast.
I was flying from NYC to Denver a few months ago and a Denverite and I struck up a conversation on this very topic after observing multiple people throwing trash on the floor in LGA. Speaking of which, Denver, another city that is much cleaner than anywhere on the east coast.
Chicago also uses cans instead of throwing trash onto the streets. In conjunction with using alleyways I think we have planned structural differences between the two populations. Surely the beginning of an argument for the "cleaner" and "cleaner habits" between the two.
I used to live in the South Bay and go up to San Francisco and Oakland every other weekend. It was bad, but it seems to have completely gone to hell in the last decade.
I would not set foot there unless all of human existence depended on it.
I’ve wanted to leave SF for a few years as I don’t connect as well after having kids. It has slid but it is very easy to avoid the big problem areas and you get desensitized. But there is still lots to love about the city. It soul isn’t crushed yet.
I had Paris syndrome for SF real bad because of how it was described by people and portrayed in movies and when I finally went there it was uhh.. not somewhere I would live forever. I'm sure it's amazing if you live in the rich areas but I got an apartment in the mission which was sold to me by some of my native friends as one of the good semi-affordable areas for young professionals and it was culture shock.
All the novels and biographies I've read that make SF out as a cool bohemian wonderland were all written in the 60s/70s and even then they were lamenting about the good old days being gone. It's remarkable to see a city living so long off a reputation it earned generations ago.
At the last office I worked at, there was someone who did that to our bathroom. Not a homeless person, either, but one of the employees. They never figured out who.
In a public bathroom, I wonder how much of that happens because of mental issues, and how much is a byproduct of the bathroom not getting cleaned often enough.
That doesn't make any sense. Public toilets are for the public. Anyone who finds themselves in a situation where they need a toilet. A tourist, for example. Or maybe just someone who finds nature calling at an inopportune time. I'm sure we've all been there.
Also, even if it WAS for people who have nowhere else, that doesn't mean that it should be covered with shit.
No one is saying it should be covered in shit. I'm just explaining that projects like this in SF are targeting a very specific issue - a large homeless population.
Yes, but San Francisco also has a large tourist population.
Speaking of targeted,
this public project almost feels like it was designed to piss off conservatives. Which is a shame, because older tourists are a big segment of the market there. And foreign toursts. And just like climate change and summer homes on the coast, I hate that there will be ironic endings to this for conservatives.
Obviously, the homeless population and climate challenged have it worse. But we didn't need to make others suffer.
Such a shitty situation. Pin sanitation worker pay to software engineering rates or higher and build some fucking toilets.
Have you ever taken a shit in a public toilet? It is a disgusting, degrading experience. I’m still traumatized from the one time I had no choice, and I said never again.
All the more reason to not dismiss them as for "people with nowhere else to go" and simply make sure that they are well maintained and people aren't using them as their personal poop graffiti space.
All of the public toilets I used as a tourist in Europe cost a euro, bathroom operators have an incentive to keep their bathrooms clean. San Francisco (lived there for 4 years) does not adequately maintain their toilets, echoing other comments in this thread, they're literally the worst I've seen. Even the NYC MTA (i.e. subway) bathrooms were better, bathrooms which tend to be portrayed as being especially dirty
What's different between a traditional public toilet that anyone can use and a homeless toilet? You seem to imply there's a difference that affords extra explanation and justification.
You are arguing an ideal and they are making a point about practice and fact. The practice on the ground and public policy is that certain "public toilets" are for the homeless. This informs government decisions about how they are designed, who has to maintain them, where they are placed, and who uses them.
A public toilet in the tenderloin is a homeless toilet in all but name. A public toilet in Golden Gate Park is actually a public toilet in the sense that you are talking about.
I'm not implying any difference at all. I'm not saying the public can't use the toilet, I'm saying that the main problem that the government is trying to address is one with the homeless population.
I responded to the blanket assertion. I wouldn't want people in civilized places to think that public toilets should only be "for the people who have nowhere else".
It's shocking that this is a normal opinion. Taipei is a much bigger city than SF. There are public restrooms everywhere. Every single metro station has clean, indoor restrooms. Not just "available" restrooms, I mean clean, like cleaner than most gas station restrooms in the US. Parks also have restrooms. Failing that, you can probably find a private one at 7/11.
I really can't believe how shitty major US cities are, nor can I fathom how they got there and how we think it's normal. It can't be just "public funding" because Taiwan isn't exactly a socialist welfare state either, yet the cities are downright urbane.
I'm not saying "every public bathroom is for homeless people". I'm saying in San Francisco that is the problem being addressed. I have traveled to many countries with public toilets that do not have these issues, I am aware of what is possible.
A tiny minority of people ruin things like this for everyone, and the US doesn’t have the political will to deal with them (they likely need involuntary commitment to mental institutions).
When I lived in SF, I couldn’t believe the amount of trash on the street. How can so many people litter so much? Then one day, I happened to witness a homeless guy taking all the trash out of every trash can on the street and just dumping them.
That one guy was undoing a week of effort by thousands of people to keep things clean of litter. That kind of behavior should be considered a serious offense, but no one cares, about either the guy or the trash. Have a paper straw! That will fix it.
> Public toilets aren't really for you, they're for the people who have nowhere else.
This is an incredibly stockholm-syndrome take. If you live in a place that isn't a total failed state, normal people actually can use the public toilets!
honestly though, public toilets are usually so dirty in my area (unless there are entry fees) that I rather use a shop's toilet instead. This is not about failed states, but a large portion of the populace not giving a shit about others... or giving too much shit perhaps =)
