I worked at a restaurant in Times Square and people would come in asking to use the bathroom. There are no public bathrooms within miles. I would always say yes and my boss would always give me a hard time about it and I just told him "I am never gonna not treat people like human beings"
I remember living in nyc in 2018 i had an app that people would post toilet locations and directions how to find them. Had to go in times square one day and found a hotel and found the stairs and turns it mentioned, Used their bathroom then left lol. Most restaurants and shops have no public access and thus times square smells awful and every tourist who only visits the tourists traps think the rest of NYC smells like that
The same times square that has the huge McDonald's right by the movie theaters smack dab in the middle of times square? In my 32 years of life as a new Yorker it has never been that difficult to find a bathroom to use if absolutely necessary. Aside from businesses that will let you use their bathroom theres also a McDonald's within walking distance no matter where you are in the city.
@@romanaa7070 I dispute the assertion that there is "always a McDonald's within walking distance". That depends entirely on where one happens to be. That's not the point anyway. The point is that the public shouldn't have to rely on private businesses (who have the right to refuse them) simply to be able to go to the toilet. That's an amenity, like roads and running water, that should be provided by the local authorities for the citizenry.
And you wonder why people complain about cities smelling like piss and crap. There aren't places that are easily accessible to relieve yourself anymore.
If you can't plan a day out in the city without having to shit on the streets you are no better than an animal or an Indian. Not even that, because most dogs can hold it in for the day. Stop making excuses for human filth. Also, there are plenty of toilets everywhere. Unless your day involves loitering around the streets doing nothing, you are bound to enter several buildings with usable toilets.
I’m on two medications that also act as diuretics so I have to use the bathroom a lot. Once I was out with my then boyfriend now husband running around desperately trying to find a bathroom for me to use. He ended up getting an impromptu haircut so a barbershop would let me use their bathroom. Sad it came to that, but very sweet of him ❤
Native New Yorker here. The lack of public restrooms in this city is absurd. I've witnessed people relieving themselves in parks, behind cars, and all sorts of places. And you know what? Im not angry at them. This is the fault of all the politicians and NIMBY folks.
true NYC residents know you don't piss in our beautiful parks or behind someone's car... you do it in the alley next to a business you don't like 🥰 I did it in the alley next to Scientology pretty regularly when I lived there but the area has changed a lot since and I don't think it's possible anymore. I don't even know if that alley still exists or has been blocked off with a fence for private use. Those fences are the real problem!
Cities will have 0 maintenance for public bathrooms then complain about how dirty and filthy they are. Then once again go around and get mad at the citizens when they have no other choice but to relieve themselves at alleyways. It's literally insane. You can't control when you have to go after all.
I had to stop door dashing because everywhere around me stopped letting us use their bathrooms. I don't mean they were for paying customers and dashers and now just paying customers, but that they just closed the bathrooms down entirely. I almost peed myself one too many times and decided my dignity was worth more than that.
Not only go around and get mad, but in some cases people will actually get arrested for going in public. Maybe that's what they want, because then you can fine people and make some money off of them.
I don't have the mental space to explain how this video is important (homeless people, dignity, basic human needs, financial and physical accessibility, the value of maintenance, even monetary, etc). So i'll just say thank you.
Of course today, there are adult diapers that can eliminate the need for public RRs. As every old person knows, it's a great comfort and time saver. I'm peeing right now..............
Janitor here, and you are 100% correct. Cleaning and maintenance is not valued at all in the USA or Canada. I think the root of the problem starts in public schools, where we land up training kids to be litterbugs with no responsibility for their own messes, by demanding adult janitors pick up and clean up after them. Creating not only adults who are complete pigs in public places, but as you said, creating an environment where no one is actually aware of the hard work clean spaces require, or the value of those who do that work.
Honestly its worse than that. The mentality starts at home. Had some teachers that would tell kids who would litter in class, why did you do that, would you do that at home? They'd say yes, their mum would pick it up. I remember hanging with one dude and he kept asking his mum to do basic shit for him like a spoiled brat. Even I called him out and said, no, we can do it ourselves and we can not make a mess. Your mom isn't a janitor and slave. Don't even want to know why it was so common for stay at home moms growing up to allow themselves to be treated that way by their kids.
Exactly. Notice how countries where the students are expected to help clean the classroom at the end of the day have a reputation for cleanliness and respect.
Totally! I think we should learn from schools in Asia, where students are responsible for cleaning their classroom at the end of the day. It's just simple tasks like sweeping the floor, wiping the chalkboard, and taking out the trash, but it would contribute so much to the mentality of cleaning and maintenance as a standard.
i used to clean bathrooms at a store where the majority of the customers were millennial/boomer women. i got called to clean them every 20 minutes because the majority of them would not flush or leave feces/piss on the seats. i truly felt like i was going insane seeing how careless and disgusting people would act in a PUBLIC facility. i still dont understand the mindset that if its not their personal bathroom they leave all manners at the door... i lasted 6 months there and it still haunts me
"I think the US has a pretty flawed relationship with maintenance by not valuing how much money and work and time it takes to keep something nice, by not respecting that role and the effort it takes to do it you're pretending it doesn't need to be done" Preach. I think it happens in a lot of countries. The sense of civic duty is non-existent. People don't value where they live or who maintains it nice for them. There's too much entitlement.
it really is just a lack of care for other people. "i don't care if i leave this mess. it's not my bathroom, i won't see it later, and someone else will clean it for me." on the flip side, businesses think, "surely there's somewhere else nearby they could go. otherwise, if they need to go that badly, it's a small price to pay." every building does have a bathroom, but because of that, people don't think in the larger context of a community and actual accessibility.
Exactly this. People have no courtesy sometimes. I have been professionally cleaning places since June and people are downright nasty if they don't have to permanently live with the mess they make.
I have wondered if in the US in particular this is somewhat related to the fact that we are a lot of years removed from the middle class being capable of employing staff. Cleaning staffs are always employed by either people with money to burn or faceless corporations/organizations: they're often seen as a luxury by the middle class, and as such they're often seen as a budget line to be cut as much as possible by the people making decisions for corporations and organizations. This can create attitudes of bias and elitism towards this kind of work. And I'm not exempting myself from this data: I've had friends suggest hiring someone to help me with household tasks because I homeschool my kids and often don't have time for everything, but I balked - I can't afford the extra labor cost for that. There's a large sector of the middle class in America which cannot afford to maintain both financial stability and regularly employed outsourced labor.
@@YellaSpiceFamily You could have a domestic class were you teach your kids do house chores, so you dont clean alone? Make the kids have more respomsabilites in home give them more tools to be seflsufficient. I have little newphews that bath alone since 4
One thing I never paid attention to until I became a mom recently: what happened to public changing places?? Half the restrooms I go in don’t have a changing table and I have to change my baby in the trunk of my car (which honestly is a lot cleaner)
I'm NYC This is a HUGE issue. As a nanny, daycare worker, and camp counselor this was tough 😮. We carried wipes and such 24/7 to clean tables in there. Same when bathrooms have no hooks or bags for shelves. 😢😮😅
judging by the amount of fail compilations I have seen over the years I am convinced that the changing tables were to pricy to replace after *people started using them as seats while taking bathroom selfies and/or to do the horizontal tango on (which is nasty in an of itself)* though I am convinced/hope that it's the former more so than the latter. still makes me lose faith in people a lot but not in quite the same way...
I mean, have you met an elderly person or disabled person that needs to get changed too? I think it should be able to hold more than just for a baby. Even if people are gonna blink on it, make it sturdier so it'll make it and be used!!
My father taught me this: Save your money, don't go to the show Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh Well I turned around and I said ho, ho And the northern lights commenced to glow And she said, with a tear in her eye Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow
As someone who lives in a mid sized city with a startling lack of public restrooms I appreciate this video. It's an accessibility issue! It's a homelessness issue! It's a I want to spend time outside and exist without having to pay for breathing air issue! Always appreciate your niche videos keep it up
At it's root it really is a homelessness issue. Or rather, an issue with a specific but large demographic within America's homeless population. Well, at least according to my anecdotal observations. Typically where I have lived the "public's" restrooms have been the restrooms of private businesses. Similar to what was described midway through the video. It wasn't/isn't a perfect model, but generally folks would be allowed to use a business's restrooms without the expectation of necessarily being a customer. In return the users are expected to respectfully be as clean and undisruptive as possible. Occasionally the businesses in question would make a couple extra sales anyways from the generated foot traffic and appreciation for the service. Of course, this being open to the public, someone would occasionally make an absolute mess of things for the business to clean up. But those instances were not particularly common, if notable when they did occur. In there absence, general cleaning and maintenance preformed by the business to maintain a bathroom for it's own use was sufficient to provide if not a pristine restroom, a workable one. Broadly it seemed to work. At least in my experience, I never used to struggle to find a restroom to use and I can't think of a time I've ever used a stand alone public restroom other than those of public rest stations on road trips. However, more and more in recent years I have seen these private restrooms being closed and made inaccessible to the public. The reasoning is pretty consistent. Once too often they will be subject to someone who abuses them and either causes significant damage or mess which goes above and beyond what can be expected from general use. More often than not this is caused by the homeless community. Lacking their own facilities, some within this community will use publicly available restrooms to bathe to the extent that they can with a restroom not designed with that intent. This of course generates a significant and inconvenient mess. One which takes time and money to clean up and makes the business look bad to any who witness it. Worse are those who would use the restrooms who are not of sound mind because of underlying mental health problems and/or substance abuse issues. Such people are often a major part of the homeless community. This is of course part of a larger problem and has been analyze by those more knowledgeable on the issue than myself. But in short, such folks often have access to limited services to help them out of their situation and insufficient incentive to take advantage of those which exist. These individuals can participate in the above problems and can cause cause mess and damage which is "less reasonable" because they are not well. Additionally, because of their erratic behavior they can present a perceived and sometimes real danger to themselves, the employees, the customers, and the business itself. Businesses of course do not want to deal with any of the above and have an incentive to close their restrooms to the public to avoid such issues. This is significantly worse in regions which attract the homeless community such as built up urban areas, regions with hospitable weather, and/or regions with policies which attract the homeless community, often without addressing the underlying problems that causes and sustains homelessness.
I was in Korea two years ago and I was so surprised how many bathrooms there were, even in residential areas! It was the first time I ever felt completely safe about having access to a toilet at all times.
Same! I was in Korea during spring of this year. I distinctly remember not having to rush to leave and not hauling my coat and handbag closely to my body while I did my business because everything was so clean that I didn't have to worry about things getting stolen or getting soaked with trash/pee/fecal matters. It made such a huge difference knowing I was safe and anywhere was clean and safe enough to put my belongings down. 🥲
I might be reaching here, but in those cultures they might have greater respect for public amenities. In America I'm often amazed by how poorly public bathrooms are treated by those who use them. It's easier to maintain bathrooms if those that use them treat them with respect. And as I mentioned in the other thread, plumbing is expensive. If you want to blame anyone, blame the people who don't use the bathroom properly.
I don’t remember who i learned this life hack from but in cities i typically find the nearest hotel and use the restroom in their lobby. The front desk receptionist has no idea if you’re a guest or not so they’re not likely to turn you away and as long as you don’t call attention to yourself, you’re golden
About twelve years ago, I said there needs to be an app which shows where to use the bathroom. People laughed at me and said “plan better.” Even now, the businesses in my city are so afraid of people using their bathroom. We have a few more public toilets mind you.
In Australia, we have an online national public toilet map which was launched in 2001 and is maintained by our federal Dept of Health and Aged Care. Can't believe how poor service delivery is in the US for the taxes that people on average income pay.
OpenStreetMap has public toilet data. I have an Android app, Organic Maps, that lets me download OSM data for entire regions and search for toilets/ATMs/parking/food offline. was very helpful while on holiday in Switzerland recently!
We have one in the Netherlands too! It's called 'HogeNood' (literally high need, an expression used when you really need to go). It shows public toilets but also toilets in bars and stores, opening hours, if they're free or not and people can leave reviews!
i feel like this video was made for me. living in the united states with IBS means that i just don’t go to public restrooms anymore. having to constantly adjust my route while on vacation based on “closest CLEAN bathroom” is now like a secondary process that just runs in background. also if anyone is curious the cleanest public restroom i ever went to was a self-cleaning one in a tiny town called cluses in france
I also have IBS (among other problems) and have intense anxiety going pretty much *anywhere* because it’s so difficult to quickly find ANY public bathroom… let alone a clean and accessible one. And god forbid you ever want to use toilet paper that is more than 0.5-ply and doesn’t begin disintegrating the millisecond it touches your ass. Apparently that’s asking for too much.
It’s definitely a bring your own tp world out there and we’re just barely holding it together in it 🧐😔🫸🌎 Eta: if anyone was wondering, the “cluse” is a narrow valley at the centre of which the first village (in the area now known as Cluses) was born
Look into the “just can’t wait” pass/card by the bladder and bowel community and/or ibs network. Not totally foolproof, and it’s not legally recognized in all states, but it’s definitely an accessibility asset!
Was there a brigade of women going around cleaning public bathrooms for free that I’m unaware of? I was under the impression that they’re maintained by the city like every other public facility (even if they’re not kept spotless at all times). Are random women rolling up to the men’s bathroom with rubber gloves and an apron?
Don’t forget about how important public restrooms are for the homeless. Also I love your point on America’s perspective on maintenance. As a country we’re more responsive (although many times not even that) rather than preventative. If measures are taken to prevent a bad thing from happening, we consider it wasted money because “nothing bad has happened yet.”
Not providing public toilets for the homeless is seen as a way of making them go away. Just like park benches with middle railings and concrete with bumps in in: if they have nowhere to sleep maybe they'll leave. No city wants to be the first with toilets for the homeless. The homeless from other cities will come to theirs if they do that
I mean its pretty hard to maintain public toilets when Americans hate service workers so much. Like there's actual vitriol aimed at janitors , restaurant servers etcetera. People will tell you to "get a real job" all while useing the service you provide. They will tell you your job is intended for teenagers, that you don't deserve a living wage and that if you ask for one your stepping out of line.
Hard to maintain public toilets*? But yeah, you’re not kidding when you say people HATE service workers. I’m doubtful that anyone who maintains this resentment ever worked fast food: you gotta cater to the needs of at least 20 people at a time who literally demand their within the time it takes to cook it by board of health standards. And these are NOT people with good bathroom etiquette
@@KRobinson-ko1neamericans don’t respect public property, much less public toilets. No one wants to clean someone else’s shit smeared everywhere. so i’d say pretty hard.
After my husband retired from the Air Force he worked for a computer corporation for quite a long time until they laid off 300 employees and sent the work to China. He was in his 50s at that time. After looking for another job for several months the only one that paid decent money was American Building Maintenance (ABM). It seems if you’re over 50 in this country a lot of places don’t want to hire you, or so was my husband’s experience. He’s a janitor now, and has been for about 13 years, and he’s never had any problems with people talking down to him or threatening him. He’s had the opposite.
One of the things I've learned the hard way when traveling is to always use a public toilet when available, even if i don't feel like I need it, because there's no guarantee one will be available later. (Out in the burbs supermarkets pretty reliably have decent public restrooms, no purchase required.)
I can testify to the reliability of grocery store restrooms around my suburban metro area. They are large and mostly busy businesses-they don’t care, question, or go out of their way to monitor if you enter the store to only use the restroom then immediately leave. They haven’t all been the cleanest but they’re readily accessible and stocked with toilet paper and soap!
I’ll also add that this is a policing issue. Police frequently fine people for “indecent exposure” when people simply needed to use the bathroom and had nowhere to go. I witnessed this happen in the Metro. The transit police accused the person of exposing himself to children when he was all the way on the other end of the platform peeing onto the tracks. He insisted that he has a bladder issue and tried to avoid being seen. I kept yelling at the cops, “Where’s the public bathroom?” Because there were enough people to see this, the cops eventually let him go with a warning. That was three years ago. Now we have a nice accessible public bathroom that very close by. Providing good, accessible, free public bathrooms should be a human right. And it gives less money and abuse of powers to the cops.
I'm really glad how towards the end of this video you speak about how the demise of support for public toilets is really about contempt for the people who would use them. I feel like after the pandemic while stated reasons for closing some public toilets where disease and crime, the real issue was a desire to make the downtown districts less hospitable the homeless and indigent people. The thing is, such individuals continue to exist even in an environment that is not designed to accommodate them.
As an American moving to Europe i got warned a lot about the fact that bathrooms around the city cost money here…the thing is though, there actually *are* bathrooms around the city. Do I wanna pay up to a euro to pee? No. But being able to quickly and easily find a place to pee is pretty cool. Now if only they would stop rejecting my credit card 😭
Are you moving to the Netherlands maybe? Because I went there and I hated that everything was to be paid by card because I was 15 and didn't have one 🥲
@@Taquinqua I'm also German! But that's weird, I mean, I'm from MV and we're always behind, but I've never been somewhere in Germany where they only take card
There are only 2 public restroom moments that really stick out in my mind, both for bad reasons. One is going to the (dirty, dingy) public bathroom in Central Park, pooping, and realizing with horror that there was no toilet paper in my stall. Making the risky move to run to the only other stall before anyone could come in. And realizing that it ALSO had no toilet paper. And there were no hand paper towels. And I had no tissues in my bag. That day has haunted me for a decade and it will continue to haunt me forever. The other is a McDonalds bathroom I went to on the last day of my trip to Finland. I'd just spent the very last of my money (this was before I could use a card internationally), and I needed to go, BADLY. I'd already been having gut troubles on the trip and having to ask my then-bf for coins to use the restroom at the McDonalds (where I had just bought food) was the icing on the cake. I paid my way into the restroom and then pooped a whole lot of blood and cried 🙃 So.... while I do think we need well-maintained public bathrooms everywhere, I'm on the side of not having them be paid. Or, at the very least, no paid restrooms in businesses. When you just don't have the money, you Do Not Have The Money, and not everyone is as lucky as I was. I can only imagine what it must be like to be unhoused and have to scrounge together money to use a toilet on top of everything else. I'd rather have my taxes pay for well-maintained public bathrooms, than for anyone to have to beg for money to use a restroom in an emergency.
pooped blood? were u okay? also agreed, been to nyc a few times and there were either no bathrooms, or most of the existing ones were horrendously dirty..
@@staeriix I was ok! I had been dealing with severe constipation (new place, new diet) and it caused an anal fissure, which sounds terrifying but is very treatable. Obviously it was very fricken scary to see it, though.
I'm very sorry about your experience, but I have to say I'm curious. As a Finn, I don't remember paying for a restroom like.... Ever. Now I have used restrooms where you need to buy something from the business to use the restroom but never have I had to pay to use a restroom when I already spent money. Maybe, hopefully, your story is old, and things have changed- I am quite young so my experiences are from the 2010's and 2020's. In my opinion the public restroom situation here is pretty good now at least in the 2020's and in big cities
@@nobodyelse2938 This was in Tampere in the late 2010s, I think it was the only time I needed a public restroom during the trip so not sure how common it was there!
As someone who went on a two hour rant about a door for how amazing its design was, I understand people's obsession to cover everyday things. When you see a good ergonomical design you have to praise it especially when it is designed so well that most people do not think about it.
Many first world countries do not have school lunches. People who are needy are given the money to feed their children lunch already in the US and elsewhere.
@@paxundpeace9970 yeah, where I'm from originally, we had affordable school lunches (and if you couldn't afford it you could get them for free, no shame), but also we spent less time in schools so there was no huge need for it-you'd have it at home after school. And for bathrooms, I do believe in the system that started for me when I went to university. You stand up and walk out. Maybe you have an urgent call, maybe it's just going to pee. Maybe you are just having a hard time during that lesson. No matter what it is, you are responsible for the things you might've missed. Working with kids I've realized that when they know there will be a test, but it's a test for them, to verify what they know, and the teacher is a person working for a system with them, not against them, they REALLY make sure to pass with flying colors.
When I studied in Paris, I was directed by several people to just piss in the bushes. In the middle of the city. I asked for a toilet and many people said "go in those bushes" and pointed. There were coin public toilets in certain parks, but in many areas there were no toilets anywhere. Businesses didn't have public restrooms. I was shocked. I live in the rural Southern US, people will let you use the toilet in any store or restaurant because of our hospitality culture. When large national chains changed their toilet policies and only allowed customers people were super offended. It was a big deal, elders grumbled and said they would never go to those businesses. It's normal now. And a lot more bushes smell like piss.
Had the same issue studying in Paris. As a result, I have SEEN some stuff. I don't know about the southern US being that much better though, probably heavily depends on where you're at. Southern hospitality is mostly nonsense. People in the south are as rude and unhelpful as anywhere else, if not more so.
This reminds me of when I first went to Paris and my friends and I went to a park and fell asleep (everyone else was napping too). I woke up to the sound of a guy peeing in the bushes, I was surprised with how many people were around.
It is validating to see this because I grew up in NY, I had bladder issues, and practically everyone I know (including me) has some barely-made-it-to-the-bathroom or peed yourself/shat yourself stories because it's sooo hard to find a restroom even in private businesses. I would usually just go to any restroom anytime I saw an open one because of the fear I wouldn't find another later on. I was definitely living less freely because I felt trapped without access to bathrooms. I would put on those thick period pads in case I wouldn't find a bathroom and in case I leaked. :( I moved away 10 yrs ago but whenever I visit, the difficulty to find bathrooms quickly becomes top of mind.
"The public movement to ban pay toilets in America happened because restricting access to bathrooms is a public health and safety issue, but instead of free public toilets, the outcome was significantly fewer public toilets" feels like a pretty accurate summary of politics and economics in a capitalist system.
Public services have nothing to do with the economic system, either voters vote for representatives that will implement them or they don't. NYC has some of the best Rec Centers in America (pools, tennis & basketball courts, gyms, etc...) and it costs $100 a year for most people and are free for anyone under 24, over 62, a veteran, has a disability. These are great public services and are offered at a much better price than most European cities, because the NYC government has heavily subsidized them (this is since the 70s btw, so way after US economic Liberalization) Vote for what you want and let your local officials know what you want. If you don't, you can't be mad that they don't do it. The suburb I used to live in put up an tiny temporary increase in property taxes (0.005% over 30 years) to pay for expanding the HD. It failed 3 F*cking TIMES! and by a under 30 votes every time. Finally a "big election" came along and all the normal people voted on it, passing 65% to 35%. Fight for what you want. If you lived in a communist country and let your representative listen to the old people, you'd have the same sh*t.
I feel this is a similar issue to Garbage collection, and Waste Management. Politicians don't want to be known as the Garbage person, as someone who deals with waste and how we regulate it management, but trash needs to go somewhere. Someone needs to be responsible for landfills and where we make them and how they are filled and maintained. A bathroom is in a similar state, you need them, we all need them. But it's not glamorous to think about them. Everyone needs one.
Idk, if it’s good policy that will improve the lives of my constituents and beyond, I’d happily let people call me the garbage or toilet person. I’d take that, momentarily meme with it then keep fighting for good policy. Like, I’ll be your humble eco-friendly trash queen, b*tches!! A good example is Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz. I suggest reading this 4 minute article: “Opinion | Unfortunately for Trump, ‘Tampon Tim’ is a compliment” by Megha Desai.
It's so bizarre to me that it's more embarrassing to be seen as "the toilet person" or "the garbage person" than it is to be the person in charge of a filthy city because you refuse to acknowledge the need for sanitation work.
All the public toilets in the world have migrated to Australia!😂 We have so many public toilets - all free!!! - and there are constantly more being built. Every tiny town has a public toilet in a park in the middle of town. Even in national parks, in the middle of nowhere, you'll come across a couple of picnic tables and a long-drop toilet. In areas where drug use is a problem they have a sharps container and it means you never see needles left around. The benefits are so obvious it's weird when i travel and realise how hard it is to find a toilet
@@_milkysoup I’m so surprised that other countries don’t have sharps containers in their loos. Some female toilets even have Share the Dignity vending machines in Community Halls, Community Centres and Libraries that dispense free menstruation products.
Lack of public restrooms with two small children, the younger of whom is now potty training, dictates EVERYWHERE we go or don’t go. Most of the playgrounds in our city have no restrooms, or perpetually locked restrooms. The rest have no TP, no changing table, no soap, no towels, and overflowing trash cans, or poo in the bowl. Yet we prioritize these places because they are better than changing a kid after an accident. One reason we moved back to our small city from New York was the lack of access to restrooms. It’s not great here, but it’s a heck of a lot better than risking a UTI walking around Brooklyn full to bursting.
Big cities have this problem for sure, but the most memorable lack of toilet for me was a tourist oriented area in a small town in WA. HOW can you have a cute little shopping/touristy area and virtually NO public restroom??
Im from Wa state and curious to know where this was, and if it was Western or Eastern part of the state? My solution is usually to find a grocery or convenience store. And if im traveling theres pretty much always free bathrooms at any state park here. But ya small towns especially the coastal areas I prepare for the worst lol.
@@sergeantbigmac I'm pretty sure it was La Conner. We were in the area known for tulips. It was a very touristy area, but if memory serves it was a slow time, not many people around. There may have been one set of bathrooms for the area, but I just have this strong memory of not being able to find one. I think we finally ended up in a restaurant for a snack and a bathroom 😆
Are you talking about Pullman/Moscow?? Because I took a trip there for college a year and a half ago, and I experienced a surprising lack of public bathrooms. Lots of bars tho. Ironic; alcohol would make you have to pee.
Just finished a trip to Japan, and public bathrooms are plentiful and well taken care of. There's even sanitizer in the stalls with instructions on cleaning the lid before use. As someone with a bathroom-related chronic condition, this was so, so nice to see. In America, my condition is nearly unmanageable because of the lack of bathrooms. There was an American woman with a similar condition who sht herself in a department store, and from that was able to advocate for a bill that requires (some) states to allow access to employee bathrooms for those who need them
I work in a grocery store in an urban area, and I wish I could show this video to everyone at work suggesting we should close the bathrooms to the public. There have been multiple business closures within a 5 block radius within the past year which has definitely led to an increase in the number of bathroom incidents at our store (people locking themselves in and screaming, smearing their waste on the walls, and scattering wet toilet paper 'snowballs' around the stalls to name a few). However, every time someone suggests that, I say "you see the unhoused people that sit outside our store asking for money for food. do you want to close one of the last few available toilets in the area?" and they still stand firm on closing it. Most places in my city have a big sign on their door that says "no public restrooms" even though they used to have them. It's starting to feel dystopian.
Public toilets and insurance/benefits are public utilities and forcing those responsibilities on private businesses is (until reform takes place) a necessary evil. Ideally, it would not be every businesses responsibility to do the government's job in providing these things.
Yeah I work in retail and sometimes the customers are so awful in the bathrooms I want to lock them But then I think back to the one time I worked at a place that didn't have a public bathroom and how people would just go ahead and pee on the carpet in the dressing room and I change my mind At least the bathroom tiles are easy to clean
The situation is awful for every-day needs, but the problem is made so much more pointed when a city tries to host any sort of event/fair/festival/sports shindig and there's an influx of visitors. Like yeah, maybe on a random Thursday night it feels more achievable to find a bathroom in a bar, but when the city is PACKED for an event and there's a line in every establishment and only one patron can access the bathroom at a time... you end up so unbelievably stressed about making the choice to either try and find something that will be faster or sticking it out and dancing on the spot in line, hoping you don't pee yourself in front of strangers. I did a year in Florence, IT in college and it was common on regular days to see people peeing behind dumpsters, but on holidays or during events/festivals it got downright disgusting. I ended up constantly walking back up to my 5th floor apartment (no elevator, obv) just to go to the bathroom instead of trying to figure out a place to go while out running errands or socializing. White Night was horrific, I feel like every corner you'd turn there'd be someone squatted down behind a dumpster and how can you blame them? The piazzas are filled with food and drink stands, it seems obvious that if you pump people full of wine/alcohol and snacks, that they're gonna need bathrooms. City organizers shouldn't be able to host money-generating events if they can't provide visitors with free bathrooms.
So, I watched Perfect Days a few months ago and I wasn't expecting one of my biggest takeaways from the film to be all of the public restrooms in Tokyo. I was genuinely floored by that as someone who lived in NYC for over 9 years. (It's also a wonderful movie!)
And in LA there are tons of homeless and drug users destroying the bathrooms… make drugs illegal and prosecute crime and it will be significantly cleaner and safer
@@Osterochseexactly!!!! This is the message everyone needs to understand! Everyone, city/county/state officials, “nimby”s (meaning people who say/vote “not-in-my-back-yard”), EVERYONE. This is just another area where we in the US fail to fund public goods and infrastructure and wonder why everything has gone to literal shit!
Indiana resident here, wondering why anyone chooses to live in such a disgusting mess. I had to go to San Francisco for work once. Never again? It was so nasty. Come to Carmel, Indiana! We have beautiful, clean parks, low cost of living, high paying jobs... and roundabouts!
I cut my eye teeth, so to speak, on dirty bathrooms 10 years ago when I was receiving radiation treatments for prostate cancer. The type of radiation I underwent back then was such that it caused painful and frequent urination, as well as frequent and bloody stools. I was driving to different locations every day for my work, and was also taking night classes at a local community college. I have seen some bathrooms with a filthiness I couldn't do justice to by trying to describe. The prostate cancer is gone, but now I've been doing rideshare for a few years or so, and of course bathroom calls are inevitable. I find public parks to be the most consistently easy source of places to relieve myself. They're cleanliness often depends upon the municipality in which they're located, but none are really what I would call clean. There are certain retail outlets which I patronize, and I work them into the mix for use whenever practical. For my part though, I'm thankful to have normal elimination, which goes a long way toward mitigating whatever unpleasant situations I might find myself in.
@@bionodroid547 The radiation in 2014 wasn't as sophisticated. I had to take 43 treatments at 5 per week so it took just over 2 months. They had to put a jointed lead cup over your testicles to protect them. The radiation was beamed into you for 15 to 20 minutes each time. The cancer was destroyed, but came back in 8 years or so. Then I had CyberKnife radiation. There was no cup of any kind and it only took five sessions of 10 to 15 minutes. The cancer was gone immediately. This was in March of 2023. This May I had 20 15 minute sessions of CyberKnife radiation for cancer in my right lung. Now that has side effects, rather severe fatigue that I am now about 80% recovered from. PET CT scan shows the cancer to be in remission.
Have you tried using the restrooms at larger supermarkets or grocery stores? They are my go-to in my suburban metro area, and much cleaner and reliably open (and stocked) in comparison to the public parks in my area.
@@brightsalot I do use grocery stores, but I always buy something regardless. When I'm short on funds once in a while, I find some other place for a bathroom.
I was in New York City recently and a friend needed to use the bathroom and was super worried about finding one. But I knew about the got to go Google map and there was one just a block away. It was so nice. If this had happened in my own City I would have no idea where to go.
“It’s the fault of the person you don’t like who used it.” That is sadly how so many people think! Even some comments here blame the junkies. I’m always saying then we need to come up with places where junkies can do their junk in relative safety away from normies. Why take away something everyone can use like a public restroom because a small percentage of the population has no other place to engage in destructive behaviour? Will taking away a restroom really prevent drug use? Not a chance in hell.
OOOOOR - and hear me out - maybe we could actually enforce our laws and sentence people with efficacy so there's not as many criminals doing the criming 🤔
Changing stations for infants. They should be in Men restrooms too. You know how many women die in childbirth? Or divorced dads? Or the man is being an actual "father" and is spending time with his child?
We lived in the Omaha area when our children were babies (Mid 1990s). There were several places that we went to that had changing stations in the the women's and men's restrooms. I always went out of my way to let the store manager/owner how much that was appreciated.
Definitely. I'm old enough to write letters to the city now, and I wrote one because there was no changing station for my son and nephew at a local park. The dads had to change the boys on the wet floor (Vancouver, BC - it's always some form of wet on the ground, and shoes track all of that into bathrooms).
As a Los Angeles resident for 15 years, I can verify LA is absolutely terrible when it comes to public bathrooms. If I ever take the transit downtown I would have to plan my whole trip around the 3 available restrooms I know are accessible. The city is even revitalizing all its park & none of them are being fitted with even a single bathroom. Because you know children are known for their ability to hold their bladders.
@@greatmolanko union station has bathrooms, and there are free public ones in olvera st, the library, The Last Bookstore, and maybe if ur lucky a mcdonalds before sundown
I have the location of every In N Out in this city memorized and I've still peed outside probably more times than I've used a public restroom. People don't even care anymore. We all know there is no other alternative and nobody is going to walk around in their own waste.
Delightful. This reminds me of a time my husband and I visited Portland and he had need of a restroom. He spotted a Portland Loo in a park, walked over, opened it, and encountered a gentleman with what appeared to be all his possessions. The man said, "sir, this isn't a bathroom, this is my home."
I'm a little old school, but I think they should bring back the bathroom attendant. The bathroom attendant stays in or very near the bathroom at all times ... They clean as necessary and deter vandalism and exaggerated filthiness. It would be another job to the market and should be a good payin job. 😁
I can imagine a lot of people mouthing off at the attendant and some attention-seeking ones creating scenes for social media. It sounds like a job for a really tough and physically imposing person
Unfortunately businesses already refuse to hire more than the leanest skeleton crew possible to operate a business Basically every retail chain in America has replaced all the different jobs with a single "retail associate" who is cashier, stocker, cart attendant, dressing room attendant, janitor, and more and it's absolutely dystopian
A good pay for being a janitor? Let's be real, it should be underpaid because no way that they can earn more than a teacher who needs to have a degree for that job
@@dontmindmefangirling3123 teachers should get paid more too. But yes, janitors should be well paid for doing a job NECESSARY for sanitary and clean spaces. Especially as human bodily fluids can spread disease, and their job involves having to clean up bio messes.
I recently started a job where there's two private individual bathrooms upstairs for just the staff at the clinic tucked away in a hallway away from others' offices. There's public bathrooms down stairs and other staff bathrooms too, but it is honestly feels like such a BLESSING to be able to come to work in the morning and have quiet privateness at any time. No busy bathrooms with stalls that provide no privacy or space to have time for a few minutes to conduct other matters of business. It feels like a luxury.
I live in San Francisco. Those self-cleaning bathrooms are weird and disgusting. It takes forever… after each person uses it, you have to wait for it to close and “self-clean” which appears to be spraying water and cleanser over it and then running a blower to “dry” it, which doesn’t actually dry it. That takes about a minute for each user before the door opens again. The toilet itself is odd and has a razor-edge, so it’s ok for guys, but women have to be able to hold a squat over a wet toilet. It’s just bizarre in there, an odd, oval shaped alternate universe. But I guess at least they exist.
It’s like that “self cleaning toilet seat” from Jackass: there’s a big mound of shit on the seat and the seat rotates and shit is grabbed by a retractable receptacle, which of course streaking the shit on the seat
Love the focus on communal good with this topic. It's been a huge pain for me as a Californian at times to find a restroom when I desperately needed one due to unpleasant... Surprise scenarios. And that's in a state known for lack of walk ability but NY is more designed for pedestrians, it's wild they don't have better restrooms. Every US city needs better public restroom availability though!
There’s restrooms available in NYC, but people don’t think “Let me use this bathroom in the library or Macy’s”. They usually only think of restaurants.
@@Undecided0 Good to know! I imagine people only think of restaurants because it's the only type of establishment that is "required" to have one (most of the time). It is a bit absurd to me that major chains can require people to need to spend money to use the restroom though. I feel for the janitors and employees but my bet is that it's mainly a profit motive.
@@seancutt793Also Starbucks & Chipotle doesn’t require you to purchase anything to use the bathroom. The only thing is that they might have a line of people waiting to use it.
The McDonalds story is surprising to me because i distinctly remember reading years ago that they had made it company policy, as a matter of principle, that restaurant toilets are always freely accessible and that this is even part of the franchising contract. Makes one wonder if they have gone back on that principle or if its just poorly informed staff.
Aaron much as I hate it as well in my city, but you can't blame them. Too many people ruin it for everyone else. I'm sure it's not just the homeless-drug addicts.
I was just thinking about you yesterday and how you're so niche and how weird it is that absolutely get so bonkers excited every time you release a video even though I have no idea what's going to be about but I'm fairly certain that I'm not going to know anything about it. I love this shit.
I too was thinking of her yesterday!! I was going back through a couple videos and I finally noticed her schedule in that list was roughly every month. The last video said “one month ago” so I was like “ohhhhh it must becoming soon then! ☺️☺️” and then- voilà- sure enough, here it is! 😁
Ok. So I was visiting Portland with some friends of mine, an older couple. We found a cool rock shop just as it opened then the guy realized he needed to go, (he has a bit of a restroom problem) They didn't have a public restroom even though we were likely planning on buying something. We were directed to go two blocks to the 'mall'. Well we got to the mall but it wasn't open yet. Fortunately there were some people loading things into one of the stores who let us in. But even in this (not open yet and completely empty) mall there were no proper restroom signs. So me and this almost 70 year old man were running up and down non-working escalators trying to find which floor the dumb bathroom was on. There was a security guy walking around who saw us frantically searching but chose to completely ignore us. Fortunately we finally found it with no accidents. But it was definitely an.....adventure.
As someone with serious digestive issues, what great initiative. I've definitely been doubled over, red-faced, waddling across the street to land in a Trader Joe's bathroom.
There used to be a magazine called "Facility: A Magazine About Bathrooms". I say "used to be" because their website still exists, but they only produced two issues, and the second one was in 2021. Although the title doesn't say it, it focused on public bathrooms.
I started a job where im mainly cleaning the public toilets in a larger hotel, and despite hating having to touch messes (with gloves on ofcourse) I still cant help but enjoy the aspect of cleaning. I think an outdoor public restroom job would be really great for a lot of people, and the sooner people realize how much pride and joy many people take in cleaning, the sooner they will realize how many are truly willing to do these jobs. great video! i wish id found your channel sooner!
Decades ago, when I worked in manhattan, I kept a mental map of bathrooms I could get to. A lot of them are probably gone. But the best were bookstores, libraries, some restaurants, large retail like Macy’s. Grand central and penn station. I think the most of the bookstores are gone. It the libraries are probably still “open” to the public.
In California, all restaurants must give out free water. Water is a human right and therefore part of the cost of operating a restaurant in CA is that anyone can walk in, ask for water and you have to give it to them even if they aren't buying anything else. I love this system and am frustrated at places where this is not the law/norm. I think bathrooms should have the same solution. If you operate a restaurant, you should also be forced to offer a free bathroom If a bathroom requires a fee, then it is not a public bathroom, there are some people who will not be able to pay for it and they will have to go somewhere.
Public restrooms omg sometimes ill just go maps and look for public restrooms just in case, especially places i frequent. A lot of places dont even offer a restroom its quite annoying. Everything you can use, you have to payfor 🙃 My controversial opinion is if public parks and playgrounds didnt exist but were proposed today, they would either not be accepted/built or met with criticism
As someone who works in a park, doing both indoor and outdoor maintenance, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. There's a lot of people and time and money that goes into making something beautiful and functional for the community it serves! This video was super insightful and entertaining, thank you for your research and delivery of this topic. Look forward to seeing the next one from you. ✨
Seattle is HORRIBLE about bathrooms. I haven’t lived in cap hill or had much of a reason to wander around there for over a year, but I do still take transit there when I have errands to run. There aren’t even bathrooms in the train stations here! Every store has “no public bathrooms” scrawled on a piece of printer paper taped to the window. “Restrooms for customers only” it’s all just part of the evolution of criminalizing homelessness and on a broader level criminalizing existing in public without being a customer. It makes everyone’s life worse under the guise of just making it harder for undesirables.
This really ties into accessibility and discrimination issues 💀 It's annoying af to be an able-bodied person trying to find a restroom in a big city. But if you have mobility issues? It's so impossible, you may just not go at all. If you're trans or gender non-conforming, having to ask for a bathroom code can put you at risk of transphobic violence. And, of course, the absolutely cold hearted discrimination against poor and homeless people. They can't win - people complain about them being messy in public restrooms and bar them from entering, people complain about them if they pee on the street (even when they do it discreetly) - but where tf are they supposed to go??? You can't make people disappear by not liking having them around. People are human with bodies, and everyone has to empty theirs at some point. It sucks to clean a public restroom, but whose fault is that really? The person who used it? Or the person/company who understaffs and underpays sanitation employees? Thanks for pointing that out, Kendra. It's so heartening to hear someone talk compassionately about public restrooms & I LOVED learning more about the history of potty policy 💜💜
Trans wheelchair user here. It’s a nightmare, especially when not in a familiar area. Some bathrooms are just straight up not accessible. Some are, theoretically, but of course the actual building to get there isn’t. Then you add on weird looks or worse, it becomes more reason to avoid trying to go out. These days I spend my days at home because going out is too much.
It's both. If my store (which is large and has good sized restrooms with several stalls) wanted to have clean bathrooms all the time, they would need to have maintenance do a full cleaning every half hour at the very least because people are rude and disgusting. The bathroom gets properly cleaned every morning and us employees, who use the same bathrooms as the customers, are expected to quick clean throughout the day(empty trash, sweep, quick spray and wipe, refill paper and soap if needed). I doubt people are making such messes in their own private bathrooms, and I get that sometimes sht happens and you might accidentally make more mess than intended, but if you miss the bowl or something, at least try to clean up a bit after yourself. I would personally be embarrassed to leave the seat all peed for the next person to see and deal with. But it seems most people have no shame. They are content to smear the walls in their own poo, leave their used tampon on top of the roll dispenser. The things I've encountered, and more often than I could have imagined before.
As a kid in the early iPod days of 2011, I always thought an app that gave you toilet codes would be an amazing idea. Knowing that this Google Map exists brings me joy, because I've never given up on that idea. That's amazing.
This is much more interesting than I though. It's the same issue with public transportation. My nature of being public, you risk attracting unsavory people, but making them private defeats the purpose...
I love how this started out being about toilets but slowly became an intelligent discussion about the concept of maintenance and its importance in all walks of life.
I'm glad people are talking about this; whenever ive visited nyc i've always wondered what locals did when they had to go bc a free bathroom is impossible to find there
Outstanding video on a topic I’ve not seen covered much. Municipalities do not treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Having worked in a public service agency, I witnessed many, many discussions around this. The sticking point around providing a public restroom was always maintenance, ie the labor issue, ie money, ie having to employ additional people. Another big issue was dealing with the serious vandalism that occurred within these facilities.
"Perfect Days" was a revelation to me regarding civic infrastructure, both architectural and human. It made me wonder who filled the coffee machine outside his apartment. I love your essays - they spark me
My mom’s new cancer meds have a side effect that requires frequent trips to the bathroom. The lack of public restrooms means that this limits her ability to spend time out of the house. Before we go anywhere, we often need to scout out nearby restrooms on Google Maps just in case. She was already limited by her energy level, but not being able to find public restrooms shrinks her world even more.
I used to clean bathrooms at a few of my past jobs. People doing custodial tasks do not wanna clean up your mess. Theyre people too and their jobs are far more necessary than a lot of jobs out there. Tell your janitors good morning, say thank you, and dont make more work for them. Custodians are some of the most underappreciated people on earth
Yes, I agree maintenance is a huge factor in how bathrooms are perceived, but the people using them are also partially responsible. There is no reason why there should be sht smeared on the walls, urine all over the seat, the toilet paper holders constantly broken into and having to throw out and replace full rolls because they are filthy or wads of toilet paper littering the floors, or clogging the toilet, especially if there is a perfectly good trash can right next to the toilet. As someone who works in customer service with the public in a store building with medium - large-ish restrooms that does pay maintenance workers to clean the bathroom every day and also as an employee am sometimes responsible for some of the maintenance throughout the day, the public can be gross and rude. And they are definitely one of the reasons why the bathrooms get closed down more frequently than need be, or are in an uncomfortable, dirty state. Nobody wants to be scrubbing other people's feces off of walls or throwing out full rolls of tp. If you missed the bowl, wipe your own pss off the seat! Don't leave it for the next person to do it, disgusting garbage humans!
Timing + humor + sincerity + thoughtfulness + on point cultural references + care + history of where we’ve been + compassion + finding the interesting in any topic + consideration + careful research + media tie-ins + humanity + earnestness + hypnotizing wAvY hair + astute observations about where and how we are = (someone else said that Kendra give them this but I’m going to borrow it) a SPARK (and sometimes, parks, if they have a water tower or a public bathroom in them) Yes, definitely a spark; to make better places for ourselves and our community, and to build our community as well, as that’s just another space, another place we belong to, and belongs to all of us. A place which needs stewarding, just like a good public toilet. 🧐
@@stellagasaparro9912 i think you phrased it perfectly. when the world, day to day, feels so glum people like her (and of course her hypnotic hair) really do help keep that spark alive
I went to Tallin Estonia once with my 70 year old grandmother. Coming from the Midwest where there are many public restrooms and also privately owned restrooms that can be used with no questions asked, I wasn’t prepared for a tourist area with no damn bathrooms anywhere unless you purchased an expensive meal at a restaurant. We ended up desperately searching and finally found a portapotty at a construction site outside a cathedral. It’s just insane to me that places that get thousands of tourists every day wouldn’t have any dedicated bathrooms. I’ve also gone to Florida once and having to ask store cashiers for codes or keys to get into the bathroom was a new experience. Just insane.
Your description of that movie is so depressingly relatable that I don't think I can stand to watch it. we always talk about how making your passion into your job is a sure way to make you hate it. Maybe this is the reason why.
I just think on some level, some services should just, you know, run at a loss? Not everything needs to justify it's existence by how much money it can make/pay for itself. Some things are just necessary.
i think the entire government should run at a loss, but neoliberalism makes it so that every person and institution has to function like a company. growth, cutting expenses, better the margins
A loooong time ago I was a bike courier in Toronto. I had an internal map of bathrooms in various office buildings all over downtown. Like, I knew that on floor x of the building there was an open bathroom, and the elevator would take me there without an access card. It was one of the hidden skills of the courier profession. If you found a particularly good (under user, private) bathroom you'd tell a few folks about it. The less used the better, because all it takes is for some CEO to come in to the bathroom while a sweaty dude in spandex is taking a piss to get locks put on the door.
Libraries and local malls with public resturants are wonderful! The ones I live at even provided water fountains and feminine hygiene products like tampons and pads and needle deposits. its also the cleanst bathroom. These days it feels like I cant go anywhere outside without having to pay.
I work in a public library in a major city in the US. A vast majority of the people who use the bathrooms are very respectful and they want to keep the place clean. Cause if they don't, then the bathroom is shut down. Even if a mess does happen in there, the library staff are notified and it can be cleaned, fixed, or closed until the custodian can get to it. I do wish that there were more public bathrooms in the area, though. Cause then, there would be less people peeing in the alleyway nearby outside of library operating hours.
Thank you for covering this topic. I can usually go a long time between bathroom visits so the lack of public bathrooms rarely affects me much. But then I went to spend a day in Manhattan during COVID. Suddenly you couldn't get into any restaurants, suddenly offices were closed, suddenly medical offices only let you in with an appointment, and suddenly even many of the city-run public restrooms were closed. It literally took me two hours to find a place to pee. Even passersby on the street and my NYC-knowing friends online were stumped. It was a nightmare, and this must be what people with less flexible bladders experience all the time.
I visited Japan this year and the toilet experience was just immaculate - clean facilities in every single metro stop plus train station, plus plenty in public parks... I was furious when I got back home 😂😢
The pride the Japanese take in doing jobs that need to be done, and doing them well, is amazing. I yearn for it being compatible with American culture.
we need to change public perception of bathrooms. they aren't places of filth- at least, they shouldn't be. they're places of self-care and maintenance. they're someone's work. maybe people would be more friendly to building more of them, and maybe we'd treat them better. if people think a place is supposed to be messy, then it doesn't matter if they mess it up more. i would like to add a note about showers too, but frankly it's a hard sell and really i think everyone deserves the dignity and privacy and cleanliness of having their own home with their own showers. housing is a right, just like it's a right to poop and pee when you need to.
I can't count how many times I've needed a toilet immediately and been asked to make a purchase. I understand its not businesses' responsibilities to provide toilets.....but I'll loudly inquire every time where the nearest alley is so they know exactly where I'm going. I'm not spending $5-$10 a pop to relieve myself multiple times a day, and I'm pretty sure I've damaged my bladder from holding it far too long when I was a teenager so holding it for long isn't really an option anymore.
Thank you. Safety has become an issue in my town. One public restroom near me half sized the doors of their stalls to discourage drug use. The ones in a mall are dimly lit with blue lights. I recall twice when the newspaper reported park restrooms being used for sex crimes. City parks. Where children play. I understand why some businesses have locked their bathroom doors for customers only.
As a Starbucks partner who works in a area with a high homeless population, I often feel as if the working class (me and my coworkers) are left to deal with sheltering and facilitating the homeless by cities. Goverments are knowingly offloading the responsibilities onto us to, presumably, save money.
"Here I sit, broken hearted, paid a dime and only farted. Yesterday I took a chance, saved a dime and pooped my pants." I absolutely hated pay toilets and was so happy when they vanished in the 70s.
It feels good to learn theres actually some people out there who worry about the seemingly inconsequential to most others. As someone who is active and works out regularly, hydration is important and I drink a lot of water. That also means I pee a lot. Worrying about if there will be an accessible bathroom 90 minutes from wherever I am at any given moment has taken up WAY TOO MUCH of my brain power day to day. I got too much other stuff to worry about. I dont feel shame over keeping an emergency pee bottle in my car, thankfully im a man and can make that work. I feel for women and people with IBS.
this was really well put and easy to understand, thank you! This reminds me of a similar issue, which is that I've found big city coffee shops generally don't have outlets anymore. This is especially difficult as a person who doesn't drive. If I don't have a phone charge I can get stranded, can't find or tag on to a bus, etc.
As a Canadian, I don't always like shopping at the newer shopping plaza's (annoyingly called Smart Centres) because all the stores are separate buildings and there's no guarantee of a bathroom for the public (Walmart and Michael's have bathrooms). Malls area much better choice because they do have lots and lots of bathrooms! And renovated malls near me made really nice big bathrooms with lots of noise privacy
I'm glad people are talking about this. I am a caretaker for someone who has incontinence issues. Once they feel the urge to go, they need to go as soon as possible or have an accident... I've had to clean up from these a lot because many places just do not have a public bathroom. As someone who has had to clean restrooms, I understand that it is a lot of resources to keep open a public toilet, but it is also an accessibility issue, a bathroom is something everyone should have at a convenient location.
Funnily enough the bathroom that will forever stick in my brain was a very clean, free public bathroom in Iceland. It was across from a grocery store, had like 20 stalls, with doors down to the floor and had a person cleaning it all day. I would have happily paid to use it.
I live in a decent sized city (Tampa FL) and public restrooms or even publicly available restrooms in stores or shops are nearly non-existent. And we are a major tourist destination. It's hard enough for locals who may know places with restrooms I can't imagine how people unfamiliar with the area cope. Also public water fountains are sparse to non-existent. This is South Florida and the local government is constantly warning people of the extreme heat but then they've removed or don't maintain public water sources.
I used to go to NYC often and I always hated when I had to use the bathroom because there were no bathrooms anywhere without paying for one. The accessibility in that city is one of the biggest reasons I moved. I now live in Colorado and was surprised to find Boulder has public bathrooms. I also know in many countries public bathrooms cost some change. I’d rather do that than walk into some sort of retail location just to buy something I don’t need to use their bathroom. I don’t miss the days in NYC, and I actually don’t even remember seeing any subway bathrooms either.
I live in chicago and we have the same problem when im downtown if i need to go i go to the college i graduated from and use their bathrooms or go to target i keep a mental note of all the free bathrooms i can use in different neighborhoods
I worked at a restaurant in Times Square and people would come in asking to use the bathroom. There are no public bathrooms within miles. I would always say yes and my boss would always give me a hard time about it and I just told him "I am never gonna not treat people like human beings"
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!
There are few places in the world where public toilets are more necessary than in Times Square.
I remember living in nyc in 2018 i had an app that people would post toilet locations and directions how to find them. Had to go in times square one day and found a hotel and found the stairs and turns it mentioned, Used their bathroom then left lol. Most restaurants and shops have no public access and thus times square smells awful and every tourist who only visits the tourists traps think the rest of NYC smells like that
The same times square that has the huge McDonald's right by the movie theaters smack dab in the middle of times square? In my 32 years of life as a new Yorker it has never been that difficult to find a bathroom to use if absolutely necessary. Aside from businesses that will let you use their bathroom theres also a McDonald's within walking distance no matter where you are in the city.
@@romanaa7070 I dispute the assertion that there is "always a McDonald's within walking distance". That depends entirely on where one happens to be.
That's not the point anyway. The point is that the public shouldn't have to rely on private businesses (who have the right to refuse them) simply to be able to go to the toilet. That's an amenity, like roads and running water, that should be provided by the local authorities for the citizenry.
And you wonder why people complain about cities smelling like piss and crap. There aren't places that are easily accessible to relieve yourself anymore.
If you can't plan a day out in the city without having to shit on the streets you are no better than an animal or an Indian. Not even that, because most dogs can hold it in for the day. Stop making excuses for human filth. Also, there are plenty of toilets everywhere. Unless your day involves loitering around the streets doing nothing, you are bound to enter several buildings with usable toilets.
I’m on two medications that also act as diuretics so I have to use the bathroom a lot. Once I was out with my then boyfriend now husband running around desperately trying to find a bathroom for me to use. He ended up getting an impromptu haircut so a barbershop would let me use their bathroom. Sad it came to that, but very sweet of him ❤
I have a medical condition too, snd started carrying a portable female urinal in the car with wipes and disposal bags.
That's kinda sweet. The best thing I've tried is saying I'm pregnent and need to use the bathroom badly
your husband is a keeper
Marry that man!!!
❤ glad you did! 😂 What a hero!
@@Mariathinkingomg im stealing this 😭😭
Native New Yorker here. The lack of public restrooms in this city is absurd. I've witnessed people relieving themselves in parks, behind cars, and all sorts of places. And you know what? Im not angry at them. This is the fault of all the politicians and NIMBY folks.
It's why it literally smells like pee even on Broadway
I no longer lived in NYC during the pandemic, but I wondered what people did when business were all closed.
true NYC residents know you don't piss in our beautiful parks or behind someone's car...
you do it in the alley next to a business you don't like 🥰
I did it in the alley next to Scientology pretty regularly when I lived there but the area has changed a lot since and I don't think it's possible anymore. I don't even know if that alley still exists or has been blocked off with a fence for private use. Those fences are the real problem!
Cities will have 0 maintenance for public bathrooms then complain about how dirty and filthy they are. Then once again go around and get mad at the citizens when they have no other choice but to relieve themselves at alleyways. It's literally insane. You can't control when you have to go after all.
Capitalism be like:
I had to stop door dashing because everywhere around me stopped letting us use their bathrooms. I don't mean they were for paying customers and dashers and now just paying customers, but that they just closed the bathrooms down entirely. I almost peed myself one too many times and decided my dignity was worth more than that.
Not only go around and get mad, but in some cases people will actually get arrested for going in public. Maybe that's what they want, because then you can fine people and make some money off of them.
Not only that. The residents who voted for policies like that will only continue to vote the same way and wonder why nothing changes.
People care more about the condition of the roads than access to a public bathroom.
I don't have the mental space to explain how this video is important (homeless people, dignity, basic human needs, financial and physical accessibility, the value of maintenance, even monetary, etc). So i'll just say thank you.
This^
Of course today, there are adult diapers that can eliminate the need for public RRs.
As every old person knows, it's a great comfort and time saver.
I'm peeing right now..............
Depend: when nature calls, take a message
Huh, I just realized that the ongoing war against the homeless is why we don't have public toilets anymore. I reckon I just hadn't thought about it.
I was wondering what kind of weapons we'll need in this war against the homeless.
Deodorant?
Disinfectant spray?
10 foot poles?
Janitor here, and you are 100% correct. Cleaning and maintenance is not valued at all in the USA or Canada.
I think the root of the problem starts in public schools, where we land up training kids to be litterbugs with no responsibility for their own messes, by demanding adult janitors pick up and clean up after them. Creating not only adults who are complete pigs in public places, but as you said, creating an environment where no one is actually aware of the hard work clean spaces require, or the value of those who do that work.
Honestly its worse than that. The mentality starts at home.
Had some teachers that would tell kids who would litter in class, why did you do that, would you do that at home? They'd say yes, their mum would pick it up.
I remember hanging with one dude and he kept asking his mum to do basic shit for him like a spoiled brat. Even I called him out and said, no, we can do it ourselves and we can not make a mess. Your mom isn't a janitor and slave.
Don't even want to know why it was so common for stay at home moms growing up to allow themselves to be treated that way by their kids.
Exactly. Notice how countries where the students are expected to help clean the classroom at the end of the day have a reputation for cleanliness and respect.
Totally! I think we should learn from schools in Asia, where students are responsible for cleaning their classroom at the end of the day. It's just simple tasks like sweeping the floor, wiping the chalkboard, and taking out the trash, but it would contribute so much to the mentality of cleaning and maintenance as a standard.
i used to clean bathrooms at a store where the majority of the customers were millennial/boomer women. i got called to clean them every 20 minutes because the majority of them would not flush or leave feces/piss on the seats. i truly felt like i was going insane seeing how careless and disgusting people would act in a PUBLIC facility. i still dont understand the mindset that if its not their personal bathroom they leave all manners at the door... i lasted 6 months there and it still haunts me
There should be a sign!
"It'll be as clean as YOU leave it!
"I think the US has a pretty flawed relationship with maintenance by not valuing how much money and work and time it takes to keep something nice, by not respecting that role and the effort it takes to do it you're pretending it doesn't need to be done"
Preach. I think it happens in a lot of countries. The sense of civic duty is non-existent.
People don't value where they live or who maintains it nice for them. There's too much entitlement.
it really is just a lack of care for other people. "i don't care if i leave this mess. it's not my bathroom, i won't see it later, and someone else will clean it for me."
on the flip side, businesses think, "surely there's somewhere else nearby they could go. otherwise, if they need to go that badly, it's a small price to pay." every building does have a bathroom, but because of that, people don't think in the larger context of a community and actual accessibility.
Why would American government invest in their citizens when they could just blow all their money on war. /s
Exactly this. People have no courtesy sometimes. I have been professionally cleaning places since June and people are downright nasty if they don't have to permanently live with the mess they make.
I have wondered if in the US in particular this is somewhat related to the fact that we are a lot of years removed from the middle class being capable of employing staff. Cleaning staffs are always employed by either people with money to burn or faceless corporations/organizations: they're often seen as a luxury by the middle class, and as such they're often seen as a budget line to be cut as much as possible by the people making decisions for corporations and organizations. This can create attitudes of bias and elitism towards this kind of work. And I'm not exempting myself from this data: I've had friends suggest hiring someone to help me with household tasks because I homeschool my kids and often don't have time for everything, but I balked - I can't afford the extra labor cost for that. There's a large sector of the middle class in America which cannot afford to maintain both financial stability and regularly employed outsourced labor.
@@YellaSpiceFamily You could have a domestic class were you teach your kids do house chores, so you dont clean alone? Make the kids have more respomsabilites in home give them more tools to be seflsufficient. I have little newphews that bath alone since 4
One thing I never paid attention to until I became a mom recently: what happened to public changing places?? Half the restrooms I go in don’t have a changing table and I have to change my baby in the trunk of my car (which honestly is a lot cleaner)
I'm NYC This is a HUGE issue. As a nanny, daycare worker, and camp counselor this was tough 😮.
We carried wipes and such 24/7 to clean tables in there.
Same when bathrooms have no hooks or bags for shelves. 😢😮😅
Imagine what you’d do if you didn’t have a car
judging by the amount of fail compilations I have seen over the years I am convinced that the changing tables were to pricy to replace after *people started using them as seats while taking bathroom selfies and/or to do the horizontal tango on (which is nasty in an of itself)* though I am convinced/hope that it's the former more so than the latter. still makes me lose faith in people a lot but not in quite the same way...
I mean, have you met an elderly person or disabled person that needs to get changed too? I think it should be able to hold more than just for a baby. Even if people are gonna blink on it, make it sturdier so it'll make it and be used!!
@@perrenialjelly5151 well duh, but people who design these things rarely ever consider accessibility. ever.
9:44 A poem my father taught me from the 10c toilet days:
“Here I sit
broken hearted
Paid my dime
and only farted”
- anonymous
My grandmother used to say this one too, but used "paid a quarter" or "tried to sh*t" alternatively. Man, I miss her. She was the best 😂
@@MoonbeamAtKnight 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
My dad taught me this one too!
ha, my dad told me that one when I was a kid (except we're british so it was 'paid a penny'.)
My father taught me this:
Save your money, don't go to the show
Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said ho, ho
And the northern lights commenced to glow
And she said, with a tear in her eye
Watch out where the huskies go,
and don't you eat that yellow snow
Watch out where the huskies go,
and don't you eat that yellow snow
As someone who lives in a mid sized city with a startling lack of public restrooms I appreciate this video. It's an accessibility issue! It's a homelessness issue! It's a I want to spend time outside and exist without having to pay for breathing air issue! Always appreciate your niche videos keep it up
Does your city have lots of crime and homelessness? That might be why your city can’t be trusted with public bathrooms
At it's root it really is a homelessness issue. Or rather, an issue with a specific but large demographic within America's homeless population. Well, at least according to my anecdotal observations. Typically where I have lived the "public's" restrooms have been the restrooms of private businesses. Similar to what was described midway through the video. It wasn't/isn't a perfect model, but generally folks would be allowed to use a business's restrooms without the expectation of necessarily being a customer. In return the users are expected to respectfully be as clean and undisruptive as possible. Occasionally the businesses in question would make a couple extra sales anyways from the generated foot traffic and appreciation for the service. Of course, this being open to the public, someone would occasionally make an absolute mess of things for the business to clean up. But those instances were not particularly common, if notable when they did occur. In there absence, general cleaning and maintenance preformed by the business to maintain a bathroom for it's own use was sufficient to provide if not a pristine restroom, a workable one. Broadly it seemed to work. At least in my experience, I never used to struggle to find a restroom to use and I can't think of a time I've ever used a stand alone public restroom other than those of public rest stations on road trips.
However, more and more in recent years I have seen these private restrooms being closed and made inaccessible to the public. The reasoning is pretty consistent. Once too often they will be subject to someone who abuses them and either causes significant damage or mess which goes above and beyond what can be expected from general use. More often than not this is caused by the homeless community. Lacking their own facilities, some within this community will use publicly available restrooms to bathe to the extent that they can with a restroom not designed with that intent. This of course generates a significant and inconvenient mess. One which takes time and money to clean up and makes the business look bad to any who witness it.
Worse are those who would use the restrooms who are not of sound mind because of underlying mental health problems and/or substance abuse issues. Such people are often a major part of the homeless community. This is of course part of a larger problem and has been analyze by those more knowledgeable on the issue than myself. But in short, such folks often have access to limited services to help them out of their situation and insufficient incentive to take advantage of those which exist. These individuals can participate in the above problems and can cause cause mess and damage which is "less reasonable" because they are not well. Additionally, because of their erratic behavior they can present a perceived and sometimes real danger to themselves, the employees, the customers, and the business itself. Businesses of course do not want to deal with any of the above and have an incentive to close their restrooms to the public to avoid such issues. This is significantly worse in regions which attract the homeless community such as built up urban areas, regions with hospitable weather, and/or regions with policies which attract the homeless community, often without addressing the underlying problems that causes and sustains homelessness.
People will always abuse public bathrooms. Drugs and sex.
@@melvinlemay7366 Even by your own argument it's not a homeless issue at its root, but the causes of homelessness itself, and so on.
@@autoteleology Exactly
I was in Korea two years ago and I was so surprised how many bathrooms there were, even in residential areas! It was the first time I ever felt completely safe about having access to a toilet at all times.
that sounds wonderful!
The bathrooms in Korea and Japan are wonderful too. Most have very well done bidets
Same! I was in Korea during spring of this year. I distinctly remember not having to rush to leave and not hauling my coat and handbag closely to my body while I did my business because everything was so clean that I didn't have to worry about things getting stolen or getting soaked with trash/pee/fecal matters. It made such a huge difference knowing I was safe and anywhere was clean and safe enough to put my belongings down. 🥲
Same! Down with the idea that Europe is the best at this
I might be reaching here, but in those cultures they might have greater respect for public amenities. In America I'm often amazed by how poorly public bathrooms are treated by those who use them. It's easier to maintain bathrooms if those that use them treat them with respect. And as I mentioned in the other thread, plumbing is expensive. If you want to blame anyone, blame the people who don't use the bathroom properly.
I don’t remember who i learned this life hack from but in cities i typically find the nearest hotel and use the restroom in their lobby. The front desk receptionist has no idea if you’re a guest or not so they’re not likely to turn you away and as long as you don’t call attention to yourself, you’re golden
Biggest misconception ever. Depends on your race , gender, and clothing. Also most use card keys now. Horrible advice.
That's considered stealing by the cops so they might arrest you if the receptionist notices the theft against all odds.
About twelve years ago, I said there needs to be an app which shows where to use the bathroom. People laughed at me and said “plan better.” Even now, the businesses in my city are so afraid of people using their bathroom. We have a few more public toilets mind you.
In Australia, we have an online national public toilet map which was launched in 2001 and is maintained by our federal Dept of Health and Aged Care. Can't believe how poor service delivery is in the US for the taxes that people on average income pay.
@@damonroberts7372 yeah, gotta keep funding our military and give those tax cuts to millionaires. :/
we have one in Poland
OpenStreetMap has public toilet data. I have an Android app, Organic Maps, that lets me download OSM data for entire regions and search for toilets/ATMs/parking/food offline. was very helpful while on holiday in Switzerland recently!
We have one in the Netherlands too! It's called 'HogeNood' (literally high need, an expression used when you really need to go). It shows public toilets but also toilets in bars and stores, opening hours, if they're free or not and people can leave reviews!
i feel like this video was made for me. living in the united states with IBS means that i just don’t go to public restrooms anymore. having to constantly adjust my route while on vacation based on “closest CLEAN bathroom” is now like a secondary process that just runs in background. also if anyone is curious the cleanest public restroom i ever went to was a self-cleaning one in a tiny town called cluses in france
I also have IBS (among other problems) and have intense anxiety going pretty much *anywhere* because it’s so difficult to quickly find ANY public bathroom… let alone a clean and accessible one. And god forbid you ever want to use toilet paper that is more than 0.5-ply and doesn’t begin disintegrating the millisecond it touches your ass. Apparently that’s asking for too much.
It’s definitely a bring your own tp world out there and we’re just barely holding it together in it 🧐😔🫸🌎
Eta: if anyone was wondering, the “cluse” is a narrow valley
at the centre of which the first village (in the area now known as Cluses) was born
@@saram3156 Pay per use is bullshit. Tax the ultra wealthy
Look into the “just can’t wait” pass/card by the bladder and bowel community and/or ibs network. Not totally foolproof, and it’s not legally recognized in all states, but it’s definitely an accessibility asset!
Was there a brigade of women going around cleaning public bathrooms for free that I’m unaware of? I was under the impression that they’re maintained by the city like every other public facility (even if they’re not kept spotless at all times). Are random women rolling up to the men’s bathroom with rubber gloves and an apron?
Don’t forget about how important public restrooms are for the homeless. Also I love your point on America’s perspective on maintenance. As a country we’re more responsive (although many times not even that) rather than preventative. If measures are taken to prevent a bad thing from happening, we consider it wasted money because “nothing bad has happened yet.”
Not providing public toilets for the homeless is seen as a way of making them go away. Just like park benches with middle railings and concrete with bumps in in: if they have nowhere to sleep maybe they'll leave. No city wants to be the first with toilets for the homeless. The homeless from other cities will come to theirs if they do that
I mean its pretty hard to maintain public toilets when Americans hate service workers so much. Like there's actual vitriol aimed at janitors , restaurant servers etcetera.
People will tell you to "get a real job" all while useing the service you provide. They will tell you your job is intended for teenagers, that you don't deserve a living wage and that if you ask for one your stepping out of line.
If you haven't gone to college and received at the very least a liberal arts degree, then you are not even a person.
Hard to maintain public toilets*?
But yeah, you’re not kidding when you say people HATE service workers. I’m doubtful that anyone who maintains this resentment ever worked fast food: you gotta cater to the needs of at least 20 people at a time who literally demand their within the time it takes to cook it by board of health standards. And these are NOT people with good bathroom etiquette
@@KRobinson-ko1neamericans don’t respect public property, much less public toilets. No one wants to clean someone else’s shit smeared everywhere. so i’d say pretty hard.
After my husband retired from the Air Force he worked for a computer corporation for quite a long time until they laid off 300 employees and sent the work to China. He was in his 50s at that time. After looking for another job for several months the only one that paid decent money was American Building Maintenance (ABM). It seems if you’re over 50 in this country a lot of places don’t want to hire you, or so was my husband’s experience. He’s a janitor now, and has been for about 13 years, and he’s never had any problems with people talking down to him or threatening him. He’s had the opposite.
When I was a child in our elementary school, the Jaitrs or Cusodians had to be addressed by the Mr. , Mrs.or Miss
One of the things I've learned the hard way when traveling is to always use a public toilet when available, even if i don't feel like I need it, because there's no guarantee one will be available later. (Out in the burbs supermarkets pretty reliably have decent public restrooms, no purchase required.)
I can testify to the reliability of grocery store restrooms around my suburban metro area. They are large and mostly busy businesses-they don’t care, question, or go out of their way to monitor if you enter the store to only use the restroom then immediately leave. They haven’t all been the cleanest but they’re readily accessible and stocked with toilet paper and soap!
I’ll also add that this is a policing issue. Police frequently fine people for “indecent exposure” when people simply needed to use the bathroom and had nowhere to go. I witnessed this happen in the Metro. The transit police accused the person of exposing himself to children when he was all the way on the other end of the platform peeing onto the tracks. He insisted that he has a bladder issue and tried to avoid being seen. I kept yelling at the cops, “Where’s the public bathroom?” Because there were enough people to see this, the cops eventually let him go with a warning. That was three years ago. Now we have a nice accessible public bathroom that very close by. Providing good, accessible, free public bathrooms should be a human right. And it gives less money and abuse of powers to the cops.
“Should be a human right” is meaningless garbage. Try “should be a public service and I’m willing to pay more in taxes to have it!”
I'm really glad how towards the end of this video you speak about how the demise of support for public toilets is really about contempt for the people who would use them. I feel like after the pandemic while stated reasons for closing some public toilets where disease and crime, the real issue was a desire to make the downtown districts less hospitable the homeless and indigent people. The thing is, such individuals continue to exist even in an environment that is not designed to accommodate them.
As an American moving to Europe i got warned a lot about the fact that bathrooms around the city cost money here…the thing is though, there actually *are* bathrooms around the city. Do I wanna pay up to a euro to pee? No. But being able to quickly and easily find a place to pee is pretty cool. Now if only they would stop rejecting my credit card 😭
I wish Canada, specifically Edmonton had for profit bathrooms.
I wish Canada, specifically Edmonton had for profit bathrooms.
Are you moving to the Netherlands maybe? Because I went there and I hated that everything was to be paid by card because I was 15 and didn't have one 🥲
@@lulianjuliuswassbach oh no haha I’m sorry! No I’m in Germany - everything takes card only but seemingly won’t accept my card :/
@@Taquinqua I'm also German! But that's weird, I mean, I'm from MV and we're always behind, but I've never been somewhere in Germany where they only take card
There are only 2 public restroom moments that really stick out in my mind, both for bad reasons. One is going to the (dirty, dingy) public bathroom in Central Park, pooping, and realizing with horror that there was no toilet paper in my stall. Making the risky move to run to the only other stall before anyone could come in. And realizing that it ALSO had no toilet paper. And there were no hand paper towels. And I had no tissues in my bag. That day has haunted me for a decade and it will continue to haunt me forever.
The other is a McDonalds bathroom I went to on the last day of my trip to Finland. I'd just spent the very last of my money (this was before I could use a card internationally), and I needed to go, BADLY. I'd already been having gut troubles on the trip and having to ask my then-bf for coins to use the restroom at the McDonalds (where I had just bought food) was the icing on the cake. I paid my way into the restroom and then pooped a whole lot of blood and cried 🙃
So.... while I do think we need well-maintained public bathrooms everywhere, I'm on the side of not having them be paid. Or, at the very least, no paid restrooms in businesses. When you just don't have the money, you Do Not Have The Money, and not everyone is as lucky as I was. I can only imagine what it must be like to be unhoused and have to scrounge together money to use a toilet on top of everything else. I'd rather have my taxes pay for well-maintained public bathrooms, than for anyone to have to beg for money to use a restroom in an emergency.
pooped blood? were u okay? also agreed, been to nyc a few times and there were either no bathrooms, or most of the existing ones were horrendously dirty..
@@staeriix I was ok! I had been dealing with severe constipation (new place, new diet) and it caused an anal fissure, which sounds terrifying but is very treatable. Obviously it was very fricken scary to see it, though.
I'm very sorry about your experience, but I have to say I'm curious. As a Finn, I don't remember paying for a restroom like.... Ever. Now I have used restrooms where you need to buy something from the business to use the restroom but never have I had to pay to use a restroom when I already spent money. Maybe, hopefully, your story is old, and things have changed- I am quite young so my experiences are from the 2010's and 2020's. In my opinion the public restroom situation here is pretty good now at least in the 2020's and in big cities
@@nobodyelse2938 This was in Tampere in the late 2010s, I think it was the only time I needed a public restroom during the trip so not sure how common it was there!
As someone who went on a two hour rant about a door for how amazing its design was, I understand people's obsession to cover everyday things. When you see a good ergonomical design you have to praise it especially when it is designed so well that most people do not think about it.
I just love how bathrooms became free based on them being a basic need, but we still discuss if feeding kids at schools is that important...
Tbf, I've noticed places and people who don't believe in feeding children also don't believe in public restrooms as much as you'd think.
Many countried have well run school food programms and they are healthy affordable often local. They are even free some times
Many first world countries do not have school lunches. People who are needy are given the money to feed their children lunch already in the US and elsewhere.
You talk about eating like it's something that you can't live without
@@paxundpeace9970 yeah, where I'm from originally, we had affordable school lunches (and if you couldn't afford it you could get them for free, no shame), but also we spent less time in schools so there was no huge need for it-you'd have it at home after school.
And for bathrooms, I do believe in the system that started for me when I went to university. You stand up and walk out. Maybe you have an urgent call, maybe it's just going to pee. Maybe you are just having a hard time during that lesson. No matter what it is, you are responsible for the things you might've missed.
Working with kids I've realized that when they know there will be a test, but it's a test for them, to verify what they know, and the teacher is a person working for a system with them, not against them, they REALLY make sure to pass with flying colors.
When I studied in Paris, I was directed by several people to just piss in the bushes. In the middle of the city. I asked for a toilet and many people said "go in those bushes" and pointed. There were coin public toilets in certain parks, but in many areas there were no toilets anywhere. Businesses didn't have public restrooms. I was shocked. I live in the rural Southern US, people will let you use the toilet in any store or restaurant because of our hospitality culture. When large national chains changed their toilet policies and only allowed customers people were super offended. It was a big deal, elders grumbled and said they would never go to those businesses.
It's normal now. And a lot more bushes smell like piss.
Businesses are private entities, their bathrooms are theirs to control as they want.
Had the same issue studying in Paris. As a result, I have SEEN some stuff.
I don't know about the southern US being that much better though, probably heavily depends on where you're at. Southern hospitality is mostly nonsense. People in the south are as rude and unhelpful as anywhere else, if not more so.
@@drew8235 Oh it varies widely, but Kentuckians are generally very welcoming. Things have changed rapidly in my lifetime though.
Aaaand that’s why Paris smells like piss
This reminds me of when I first went to Paris and my friends and I went to a park and fell asleep (everyone else was napping too). I woke up to the sound of a guy peeing in the bushes, I was surprised with how many people were around.
It is validating to see this because I grew up in NY, I had bladder issues, and practically everyone I know (including me) has some barely-made-it-to-the-bathroom or peed yourself/shat yourself stories because it's sooo hard to find a restroom even in private businesses. I would usually just go to any restroom anytime I saw an open one because of the fear I wouldn't find another later on. I was definitely living less freely because I felt trapped without access to bathrooms. I would put on those thick period pads in case I wouldn't find a bathroom and in case I leaked. :( I moved away 10 yrs ago but whenever I visit, the difficulty to find bathrooms quickly becomes top of mind.
Ooo! No one's mentioned the thumbnail yet! "Go Piss Girl". Amazing.
Thank you! I stared at it and was like, what does Gossip Girl have to do with this topic🤦🏼♀️
@@dressmaking i did the same thing. my brain just read it as gossip girl 😭
"The public movement to ban pay toilets in America happened because restricting access to bathrooms is a public health and safety issue, but instead of free public toilets, the outcome was significantly fewer public toilets" feels like a pretty accurate summary of politics and economics in a capitalist system.
🙏
Yet in Europe where paid toilets are common this isn't an issue. Sounds like capitalism is the solution to me.
@@EssenceofPureFlavornot an issue to people that can pay for it perhaps
Public services have nothing to do with the economic system, either voters vote for representatives that will implement them or they don't.
NYC has some of the best Rec Centers in America (pools, tennis & basketball courts, gyms, etc...) and it costs $100 a year for most people and are free for anyone under 24, over 62, a veteran, has a disability.
These are great public services and are offered at a much better price than most European cities, because the NYC government has heavily subsidized them (this is since the 70s btw, so way after US economic Liberalization)
Vote for what you want and let your local officials know what you want. If you don't, you can't be mad that they don't do it.
The suburb I used to live in put up an tiny temporary increase in property taxes (0.005% over 30 years) to pay for expanding the HD. It failed 3 F*cking TIMES! and by a under 30 votes every time. Finally a "big election" came along and all the normal people voted on it, passing 65% to 35%.
Fight for what you want. If you lived in a communist country and let your representative listen to the old people, you'd have the same sh*t.
Maintenance costs money dumb dumb
I feel this is a similar issue to Garbage collection, and Waste Management. Politicians don't want to be known as the Garbage person, as someone who deals with waste and how we regulate it management, but trash needs to go somewhere. Someone needs to be responsible for landfills and where we make them and how they are filled and maintained.
A bathroom is in a similar state, you need them, we all need them. But it's not glamorous to think about them. Everyone needs one.
Idk, if it’s good policy that will improve the lives of my constituents and beyond, I’d happily let people call me the garbage or toilet person. I’d take that, momentarily meme with it then keep fighting for good policy. Like, I’ll be your humble eco-friendly trash queen, b*tches!!
A good example is Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz. I suggest reading this 4 minute article: “Opinion | Unfortunately for Trump, ‘Tampon Tim’ is a compliment” by Megha Desai.
It's so bizarre to me that it's more embarrassing to be seen as "the toilet person" or "the garbage person" than it is to be the person in charge of a filthy city because you refuse to acknowledge the need for sanitation work.
All the public toilets in the world have migrated to Australia!😂 We have so many public toilets - all free!!! - and there are constantly more being built. Every tiny town has a public toilet in a park in the middle of town. Even in national parks, in the middle of nowhere, you'll come across a couple of picnic tables and a long-drop toilet. In areas where drug use is a problem they have a sharps container and it means you never see needles left around. The benefits are so obvious it's weird when i travel and realise how hard it is to find a toilet
i’m so grateful for Australian public toilets
More evidence austrailia is on the rise on the world stage if you ask me
We take them for granted and just expect enough clean public toilets for everyone. Can you imagine the outcry if anyone asked us to pay!
The sharps container solution is so simple yet so genius
@@_milkysoup I’m so surprised that other countries don’t have sharps containers in their loos. Some female toilets even have Share the Dignity vending machines in Community Halls, Community Centres and Libraries that dispense free menstruation products.
Lack of public restrooms with two small children, the younger of whom is now potty training, dictates EVERYWHERE we go or don’t go. Most of the playgrounds in our city have no restrooms, or perpetually locked restrooms. The rest have no TP, no changing table, no soap, no towels, and overflowing trash cans, or poo in the bowl. Yet we prioritize these places because they are better than changing a kid after an accident. One reason we moved back to our small city from New York was the lack of access to restrooms. It’s not great here, but it’s a heck of a lot better than risking a UTI walking around Brooklyn full to bursting.
Big cities have this problem for sure, but the most memorable lack of toilet for me was a tourist oriented area in a small town in WA. HOW can you have a cute little shopping/touristy area and virtually NO public restroom??
Im from Wa state and curious to know where this was, and if it was Western or Eastern part of the state? My solution is usually to find a grocery or convenience store. And if im traveling theres pretty much always free bathrooms at any state park here. But ya small towns especially the coastal areas I prepare for the worst lol.
@@sergeantbigmac I'm pretty sure it was La Conner. We were in the area known for tulips. It was a very touristy area, but if memory serves it was a slow time, not many people around. There may have been one set of bathrooms for the area, but I just have this strong memory of not being able to find one. I think we finally ended up in a restaurant for a snack and a bathroom 😆
@@aksez2uskagit County gas stations usually let you use the restrooms. La conner is kind of an outlier
That’s any west coast small town.
Are you talking about Pullman/Moscow?? Because I took a trip there for college a year and a half ago, and I experienced a surprising lack of public bathrooms. Lots of bars tho. Ironic; alcohol would make you have to pee.
Just finished a trip to Japan, and public bathrooms are plentiful and well taken care of. There's even sanitizer in the stalls with instructions on cleaning the lid before use. As someone with a bathroom-related chronic condition, this was so, so nice to see. In America, my condition is nearly unmanageable because of the lack of bathrooms.
There was an American woman with a similar condition who sht herself in a department store, and from that was able to advocate for a bill that requires (some) states to allow access to employee bathrooms for those who need them
Other countries show that it is indeed possible to have accessible and clean public bathrooms, yet the us/Canada etc still manage to pretend it isn't
Yeah but in Japan people have decency when it comes to actually using the bathroom.
Perhaps Japanese culture plays a role…
I work in a grocery store in an urban area, and I wish I could show this video to everyone at work suggesting we should close the bathrooms to the public.
There have been multiple business closures within a 5 block radius within the past year which has definitely led to an increase in the number of bathroom incidents at our store (people locking themselves in and screaming, smearing their waste on the walls, and scattering wet toilet paper 'snowballs' around the stalls to name a few).
However, every time someone suggests that, I say "you see the unhoused people that sit outside our store asking for money for food. do you want to close one of the last few available toilets in the area?" and they still stand firm on closing it. Most places in my city have a big sign on their door that says "no public restrooms" even though they used to have them. It's starting to feel dystopian.
Public toilets and insurance/benefits are public utilities and forcing those responsibilities on private businesses is (until reform takes place) a necessary evil. Ideally, it would not be every businesses responsibility to do the government's job in providing these things.
Yeah I work in retail and sometimes the customers are so awful in the bathrooms I want to lock them
But then I think back to the one time I worked at a place that didn't have a public bathroom and how people would just go ahead and pee on the carpet in the dressing room and I change my mind
At least the bathroom tiles are easy to clean
Thanks for sharing your story. We definitely need to hear about both sides of every issue.
@@TEO.187 I want to have my own business, be the only CEO that also cleans the bathrooms.
The situation is awful for every-day needs, but the problem is made so much more pointed when a city tries to host any sort of event/fair/festival/sports shindig and there's an influx of visitors. Like yeah, maybe on a random Thursday night it feels more achievable to find a bathroom in a bar, but when the city is PACKED for an event and there's a line in every establishment and only one patron can access the bathroom at a time... you end up so unbelievably stressed about making the choice to either try and find something that will be faster or sticking it out and dancing on the spot in line, hoping you don't pee yourself in front of strangers. I did a year in Florence, IT in college and it was common on regular days to see people peeing behind dumpsters, but on holidays or during events/festivals it got downright disgusting. I ended up constantly walking back up to my 5th floor apartment (no elevator, obv) just to go to the bathroom instead of trying to figure out a place to go while out running errands or socializing. White Night was horrific, I feel like every corner you'd turn there'd be someone squatted down behind a dumpster and how can you blame them? The piazzas are filled with food and drink stands, it seems obvious that if you pump people full of wine/alcohol and snacks, that they're gonna need bathrooms. City organizers shouldn't be able to host money-generating events if they can't provide visitors with free bathrooms.
So, I watched Perfect Days a few months ago and I wasn't expecting one of my biggest takeaways from the film to be all of the public restrooms in Tokyo. I was genuinely floored by that as someone who lived in NYC for over 9 years. (It's also a wonderful movie!)
That was such a great movie, and I also had the thought that they have a great public toilet system in Tokyo!
People who've never lived in a big city won't understand how VERY REAL this is. In Los Angeles public bathrooms basically don't exist
And in LA there are tons of homeless and drug users destroying the bathrooms… make drugs illegal and prosecute crime and it will be significantly cleaner and safer
the result of that is that Los Angeles itself becomes the public bathroom.
@@Osterochseexactly!!!! This is the message everyone needs to understand! Everyone, city/county/state officials, “nimby”s (meaning people who say/vote “not-in-my-back-yard”), EVERYONE. This is just another area where we in the US fail to fund public goods and infrastructure and wonder why everything has gone to literal shit!
Indiana resident here, wondering why anyone chooses to live in such a disgusting mess. I had to go to San Francisco for work once. Never again? It was so nasty. Come to Carmel, Indiana! We have beautiful, clean parks, low cost of living, high paying jobs... and roundabouts!
It’s far from just a big city issue though
I cut my eye teeth, so to speak, on dirty bathrooms 10 years ago when I was receiving radiation treatments for prostate cancer. The type of radiation I underwent back then was such that it caused painful and frequent urination, as well as frequent and bloody stools. I was driving to different locations every day for my work, and was also taking night classes at a local community college. I have seen some bathrooms with a filthiness I couldn't do justice to by trying to describe. The prostate cancer is gone, but now I've been doing rideshare for a few years or so, and of course bathroom calls are inevitable. I find public parks to be the most consistently easy source of places to relieve myself. They're cleanliness often depends upon the municipality in which they're located, but none are really what I would call clean. There are certain retail outlets which I patronize, and I work them into the mix for use whenever practical. For my part though, I'm thankful to have normal elimination, which goes a long way toward mitigating whatever unpleasant situations I might find myself in.
that sounds like it sucked so much, especially with the more frequent urination. what a way to be radicalized on bathrooms
@@bionodroid547 The radiation in 2014 wasn't as sophisticated. I had to take 43 treatments at 5 per week so it took just over 2 months. They had to put a jointed lead cup over your testicles to protect them. The radiation was beamed into you for 15 to 20 minutes each time. The cancer was destroyed, but came back in 8 years or so. Then I had CyberKnife radiation. There was no cup of any kind and it only took five sessions of 10 to 15 minutes. The cancer was gone immediately. This was in March of 2023. This May I had 20 15 minute sessions of CyberKnife radiation for cancer in my right lung. Now that has side effects, rather severe fatigue that I am now about 80% recovered from. PET CT scan shows the cancer to be in remission.
Have you tried using the restrooms at larger supermarkets or grocery stores? They are my go-to in my suburban metro area, and much cleaner and reliably open (and stocked) in comparison to the public parks in my area.
@@brightsalot I do use grocery stores, but I always buy something regardless. When I'm short on funds once in a while, I find some other place for a bathroom.
I was in New York City recently and a friend needed to use the bathroom and was super worried about finding one. But I knew about the got to go Google map and there was one just a block away. It was so nice. If this had happened in my own City I would have no idea where to go.
“It’s the fault of the person you don’t like who used it.” That is sadly how so many people think! Even some comments here blame the junkies. I’m always saying then we need to come up with places where junkies can do their junk in relative safety away from normies. Why take away something everyone can use like a public restroom because a small percentage of the population has no other place to engage in destructive behaviour? Will taking away a restroom really prevent drug use? Not a chance in hell.
OOOOOR - and hear me out - maybe we could actually enforce our laws and sentence people with efficacy so there's not as many criminals doing the criming 🤔
@@YellaSpiceFamily That has nothing to do with the need for everyone to have bathrooms bub. Stay focused on the topic at hand.
@@KitsuneMagic13 it does if it is part of why we lose access to them 🤷♀️
@@KitsuneMagic13 Moreover the op was suggesting safe spaces for crime instead, which is absurd
@@YellaSpiceFamily Harm Reduction works, including safe injection sites, even if you don't believe in it.
Changing stations for infants.
They should be in Men restrooms too. You know how many women die in childbirth? Or divorced dads? Or the man is being an actual "father" and is spending time with his child?
We lived in the Omaha area when our children were babies (Mid 1990s). There were several places that we went to that had changing stations in the the women's and men's restrooms. I always went out of my way to let the store manager/owner how much that was appreciated.
I mean, yeah
Definitely. I'm old enough to write letters to the city now, and I wrote one because there was no changing station for my son and nephew at a local park. The dads had to change the boys on the wet floor (Vancouver, BC - it's always some form of wet on the ground, and shoes track all of that into bathrooms).
For real. It's such a small change (/pun not intended) but the existence of babies, like, outside houses is so entrenched as a Woman Thing, it's wild
Over here, the changing rooms are usually integrated into the disabled toilets because they've got a lot more space in them and they're unisex
As a Los Angeles resident for 15 years, I can verify LA is absolutely terrible when it comes to public bathrooms. If I ever take the transit downtown I would have to plan my whole trip around the 3 available restrooms I know are accessible.
The city is even revitalizing all its park & none of them are being fitted with even a single bathroom.
Because you know children are known for their ability to hold their bladders.
@@greatmolanko union station has bathrooms, and there are free public ones in olvera st, the library, The Last Bookstore, and maybe if ur lucky a mcdonalds before sundown
I have the location of every In N Out in this city memorized and I've still peed outside probably more times than I've used a public restroom. People don't even care anymore. We all know there is no other alternative and nobody is going to walk around in their own waste.
It's also problem for mail delivery. You are doing it for hours outside and you have to drink or you are underhydrated
Delightful. This reminds me of a time my husband and I visited Portland and he had need of a restroom. He spotted a Portland Loo in a park, walked over, opened it, and encountered a gentleman with what appeared to be all his possessions. The man said, "sir, this isn't a bathroom, this is my home."
Portland is the only place I’ve encountered one. I thought they were great in 2016… what a weird experience for your husband!
That made me laugh for a second, but then immediately feel bad bc of how that man must've had nowhere else safe to be. The tone is just so flat
I ran into one of those and retorted, "Well it's still a public toilet so pardon me as I relieve myself." Because I needed to.
I'm a little old school, but I think they should bring back the bathroom attendant. The bathroom attendant stays in or very near the bathroom at all times ... They clean as necessary and deter vandalism and exaggerated filthiness. It would be another job to the market and should be a good payin job. 😁
I can imagine a lot of people mouthing off at the attendant and some attention-seeking ones creating scenes for social media. It sounds like a job for a really tough and physically imposing person
@@m_martha_e A bathroom bouncer?
Unfortunately businesses already refuse to hire more than the leanest skeleton crew possible to operate a business
Basically every retail chain in America has replaced all the different jobs with a single "retail associate" who is cashier, stocker, cart attendant, dressing room attendant, janitor, and more and it's absolutely dystopian
A good pay for being a janitor? Let's be real, it should be underpaid because no way that they can earn more than a teacher who needs to have a degree for that job
@@dontmindmefangirling3123 teachers should get paid more too. But yes, janitors should be well paid for doing a job NECESSARY for sanitary and clean spaces. Especially as human bodily fluids can spread disease, and their job involves having to clean up bio messes.
I recently started a job where there's two private individual bathrooms upstairs for just the staff at the clinic tucked away in a hallway away from others' offices. There's public bathrooms down stairs and other staff bathrooms too, but it is honestly feels like such a BLESSING to be able to come to work in the morning and have quiet privateness at any time. No busy bathrooms with stalls that provide no privacy or space to have time for a few minutes to conduct other matters of business. It feels like a luxury.
"Piss poor when it comes to piss places" lmao
i remember visiting maine and a few towns had free public restrooms and they were SO clean. i was like, why can’t we have this everywhere 😭
Maine is a pretty peaceful, high trust place. Blah blah diversity blah blah
I live in San Francisco. Those self-cleaning bathrooms are weird and disgusting. It takes forever… after each person uses it, you have to wait for it to close and “self-clean” which appears to be spraying water and cleanser over it and then running a blower to “dry” it, which doesn’t actually dry it. That takes about a minute for each user before the door opens again. The toilet itself is odd and has a razor-edge, so it’s ok for guys, but women have to be able to hold a squat over a wet toilet. It’s just bizarre in there, an odd, oval shaped alternate universe. But I guess at least they exist.
It’s like that “self cleaning toilet seat” from Jackass: there’s a big mound of shit on the seat and the seat rotates and shit is grabbed by a retractable receptacle, which of course streaking the shit on the seat
San Francisco budgeted 1.7 million dollars for a single public restroom. Probably the one you’re describing.
urbanplanadvisor AI fixes this. Public toilets: hard to access.
Love the focus on communal good with this topic. It's been a huge pain for me as a Californian at times to find a restroom when I desperately needed one due to unpleasant... Surprise scenarios.
And that's in a state known for lack of walk ability but NY is more designed for pedestrians, it's wild they don't have better restrooms.
Every US city needs better public restroom availability though!
There’s restrooms available in NYC, but people don’t think “Let me use this bathroom in the library or Macy’s”. They usually only think of restaurants.
@@Undecided0 Good to know! I imagine people only think of restaurants because it's the only type of establishment that is "required" to have one (most of the time).
It is a bit absurd to me that major chains can require people to need to spend money to use the restroom though. I feel for the janitors and employees but my bet is that it's mainly a profit motive.
@@seancutt793Also Starbucks & Chipotle doesn’t require you to purchase anything to use the bathroom. The only thing is that they might have a line of people waiting to use it.
The McDonalds story is surprising to me because i distinctly remember reading years ago that they had made it company policy, as a matter of principle, that restaurant toilets are always freely accessible and that this is even part of the franchising contract. Makes one wonder if they have gone back on that principle or if its just poorly informed staff.
Here in NYC, most McDonald’s require you to enter a code. The larger McDonald’s & the ones in the outer boroughs usually don’t have that.
Aaron much as I hate it as well in my city, but you can't blame them. Too many people ruin it for everyone else. I'm sure it's not just the homeless-drug addicts.
They don’t do it anymore, at least not here in Tucson
The franchise holders don't give a rats ass about the rules and the company doesn't care to enforce anything that doesn't cut into profits
@@TEO.187 yup my company is like that.
I was just thinking about you yesterday and how you're so niche and how weird it is that absolutely get so bonkers excited every time you release a video even though I have no idea what's going to be about but I'm fairly certain that I'm not going to know anything about it. I love this shit.
I’d say it’s quite rational to get excited about out a new Kendra video. They’re all brilliant!
I too was thinking of her yesterday!! I was going back through a couple videos and I finally noticed her schedule in that list was roughly every month. The last video said “one month ago” so I was like “ohhhhh it must becoming soon then! ☺️☺️” and then- voilà- sure enough, here it is! 😁
Ok. So I was visiting Portland with some friends of mine, an older couple. We found a cool rock shop just as it opened then the guy realized he needed to go, (he has a bit of a restroom problem) They didn't have a public restroom even though we were likely planning on buying something. We were directed to go two blocks to the 'mall'. Well we got to the mall but it wasn't open yet. Fortunately there were some people loading things into one of the stores who let us in. But even in this (not open yet and completely empty) mall there were no proper restroom signs. So me and this almost 70 year old man were running up and down non-working escalators trying to find which floor the dumb bathroom was on. There was a security guy walking around who saw us frantically searching but chose to completely ignore us. Fortunately we finally found it with no accidents. But it was definitely an.....adventure.
As someone with serious digestive issues, what great initiative. I've definitely been doubled over, red-faced, waddling across the street to land in a Trader Joe's bathroom.
There used to be a magazine called "Facility: A Magazine About Bathrooms". I say "used to be" because their website still exists, but they only produced two issues, and the second one was in 2021. Although the title doesn't say it, it focused on public bathrooms.
16:20 "If we make a big enough stink" is.... either unfortunate or hilarious phrasing, depending on your goals 😂
I started a job where im mainly cleaning the public toilets in a larger hotel, and despite hating having to touch messes (with gloves on ofcourse) I still cant help but enjoy the aspect of cleaning. I think an outdoor public restroom job would be really great for a lot of people, and the sooner people realize how much pride and joy many people take in cleaning, the sooner they will realize how many are truly willing to do these jobs.
great video! i wish id found your channel sooner!
Decades ago, when I worked in manhattan, I kept a mental map of bathrooms I could get to. A lot of them are probably gone. But the best were bookstores, libraries, some restaurants, large retail like Macy’s. Grand central and penn station. I think the most of the bookstores are gone. It the libraries are probably still “open” to the public.
coffee shops have probably replaced a lot of these bookstore bathrooms
In California, all restaurants must give out free water. Water is a human right and therefore part of the cost of operating a restaurant in CA is that anyone can walk in, ask for water and you have to give it to them even if they aren't buying anything else. I love this system and am frustrated at places where this is not the law/norm.
I think bathrooms should have the same solution. If you operate a restaurant, you should also be forced to offer a free bathroom
If a bathroom requires a fee, then it is not a public bathroom, there are some people who will not be able to pay for it and they will have to go somewhere.
Public restrooms omg sometimes ill just go maps and look for public restrooms just in case, especially places i frequent. A lot of places dont even offer a restroom its quite annoying. Everything you can use, you have to payfor 🙃
My controversial opinion is if public parks and playgrounds didnt exist but were proposed today, they would either not be accepted/built or met with criticism
Same with public libraries. If they didn't already exist, can you imagine them being introduced today?
As someone who works in a park, doing both indoor and outdoor maintenance, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. There's a lot of people and time and money that goes into making something beautiful and functional for the community it serves! This video was super insightful and entertaining, thank you for your research and delivery of this topic. Look forward to seeing the next one from you. ✨
Seattle is HORRIBLE about bathrooms. I haven’t lived in cap hill or had much of a reason to wander around there for over a year, but I do still take transit there when I have errands to run. There aren’t even bathrooms in the train stations here! Every store has “no public bathrooms” scrawled on a piece of printer paper taped to the window. “Restrooms for customers only” it’s all just part of the evolution of criminalizing homelessness and on a broader level criminalizing existing in public without being a customer. It makes everyone’s life worse under the guise of just making it harder for undesirables.
This really ties into accessibility and discrimination issues 💀 It's annoying af to be an able-bodied person trying to find a restroom in a big city. But if you have mobility issues? It's so impossible, you may just not go at all.
If you're trans or gender non-conforming, having to ask for a bathroom code can put you at risk of transphobic violence.
And, of course, the absolutely cold hearted discrimination against poor and homeless people. They can't win - people complain about them being messy in public restrooms and bar them from entering, people complain about them if they pee on the street (even when they do it discreetly) - but where tf are they supposed to go??? You can't make people disappear by not liking having them around. People are human with bodies, and everyone has to empty theirs at some point.
It sucks to clean a public restroom, but whose fault is that really? The person who used it? Or the person/company who understaffs and underpays sanitation employees? Thanks for pointing that out, Kendra. It's so heartening to hear someone talk compassionately about public restrooms & I LOVED learning more about the history of potty policy 💜💜
Trans wheelchair user here. It’s a nightmare, especially when not in a familiar area. Some bathrooms are just straight up not accessible. Some are, theoretically, but of course the actual building to get there isn’t. Then you add on weird looks or worse, it becomes more reason to avoid trying to go out. These days I spend my days at home because going out is too much.
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It's both. If my store (which is large and has good sized restrooms with several stalls) wanted to have clean bathrooms all the time, they would need to have maintenance do a full cleaning every half hour at the very least because people are rude and disgusting. The bathroom gets properly cleaned every morning and us employees, who use the same bathrooms as the customers, are expected to quick clean throughout the day(empty trash, sweep, quick spray and wipe, refill paper and soap if needed).
I doubt people are making such messes in their own private bathrooms, and I get that sometimes sht happens and you might accidentally make more mess than intended, but if you miss the bowl or something, at least try to clean up a bit after yourself. I would personally be embarrassed to leave the seat all peed for the next person to see and deal with. But it seems most people have no shame. They are content to smear the walls in their own poo, leave their used tampon on top of the roll dispenser. The things I've encountered, and more often than I could have imagined before.
As a kid in the early iPod days of 2011, I always thought an app that gave you toilet codes would be an amazing idea. Knowing that this Google Map exists brings me joy, because I've never given up on that idea. That's amazing.
This is much more interesting than I though. It's the same issue with public transportation. My nature of being public, you risk attracting unsavory people, but making them private defeats the purpose...
I don’t like ads, but if it comes between seeing an ad for Arby’s or popping my pants? Advertise away.
I love how this started out being about toilets but slowly became an intelligent discussion about the concept of maintenance and its importance in all walks of life.
I'm glad people are talking about this; whenever ive visited nyc i've always wondered what locals did when they had to go bc a free bathroom is impossible to find there
Outstanding video on a topic I’ve not seen covered much. Municipalities do not treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Having worked in a public service agency, I witnessed many, many discussions around this. The sticking point around providing a public restroom was always maintenance, ie the labor issue, ie money, ie having to employ additional people. Another big issue was dealing with the serious vandalism that occurred within these facilities.
"Perfect Days" was a revelation to me regarding civic infrastructure, both architectural and human. It made me wonder who filled the coffee machine outside his apartment. I love your essays - they spark me
My mom’s new cancer meds have a side effect that requires frequent trips to the bathroom. The lack of public restrooms means that this limits her ability to spend time out of the house. Before we go anywhere, we often need to scout out nearby restrooms on Google Maps just in case. She was already limited by her energy level, but not being able to find public restrooms shrinks her world even more.
I used to clean bathrooms at a few of my past jobs. People doing custodial tasks do not wanna clean up your mess. Theyre people too and their jobs are far more necessary than a lot of jobs out there. Tell your janitors good morning, say thank you, and dont make more work for them. Custodians are some of the most underappreciated people on earth
Yes, I agree maintenance is a huge factor in how bathrooms are perceived, but the people using them are also partially responsible. There is no reason why there should be sht smeared on the walls, urine all over the seat, the toilet paper holders constantly broken into and having to throw out and replace full rolls because they are filthy or wads of toilet paper littering the floors, or clogging the toilet, especially if there is a perfectly good trash can right next to the toilet. As someone who works in customer service with the public in a store building with medium - large-ish restrooms that does pay maintenance workers to clean the bathroom every day and also as an employee am sometimes responsible for some of the maintenance throughout the day, the public can be gross and rude. And they are definitely one of the reasons why the bathrooms get closed down more frequently than need be, or are in an uncomfortable, dirty state. Nobody wants to be scrubbing other people's feces off of walls or throwing out full rolls of tp. If you missed the bowl, wipe your own pss off the seat! Don't leave it for the next person to do it, disgusting garbage humans!
Watching this channel is something special. Dunno how to explain it man, but now I feel like I should be going to my MP and advocating for toilets
Timing + humor + sincerity + thoughtfulness + on point cultural references + care + history of where we’ve been + compassion + finding the interesting in any topic + consideration + careful research + media tie-ins + humanity + earnestness + hypnotizing wAvY hair + astute observations about where and how we are = (someone else said that Kendra give them this but I’m going to borrow it) a SPARK (and sometimes, parks, if they have a water tower or a public bathroom in them)
Yes, definitely a spark; to make better places for ourselves and our community, and to build our community as well, as that’s just another space, another place we belong to, and belongs to all of us. A place which needs stewarding, just like a good public toilet. 🧐
@@stellagasaparro9912 i think you phrased it perfectly. when the world, day to day, feels so glum people like her (and of course her hypnotic hair) really do help keep that spark alive
I went to Tallin Estonia once with my 70 year old grandmother. Coming from the Midwest where there are many public restrooms and also privately owned restrooms that can be used with no questions asked, I wasn’t prepared for a tourist area with no damn bathrooms anywhere unless you purchased an expensive meal at a restaurant. We ended up desperately searching and finally found a portapotty at a construction site outside a cathedral. It’s just insane to me that places that get thousands of tourists every day wouldn’t have any dedicated bathrooms.
I’ve also gone to Florida once and having to ask store cashiers for codes or keys to get into the bathroom was a new experience. Just insane.
Your description of that movie is so depressingly relatable that I don't think I can stand to watch it. we always talk about how making your passion into your job is a sure way to make you hate it. Maybe this is the reason why.
I will say it is nicely resolved and some of the messages in it will be sticking with me for a long time.
I just think on some level, some services should just, you know, run at a loss? Not everything needs to justify it's existence by how much money it can make/pay for itself. Some things are just necessary.
i think the entire government should run at a loss, but neoliberalism makes it so that every person and institution has to function like a company. growth, cutting expenses, better the margins
@@_bibi_s I mean I get that the government as a whole needs to not run in debt - get the money it needs from taxes, then do it's dang job
A loooong time ago I was a bike courier in Toronto. I had an internal map of bathrooms in various office buildings all over downtown. Like, I knew that on floor x of the building there was an open bathroom, and the elevator would take me there without an access card. It was one of the hidden skills of the courier profession. If you found a particularly good (under user, private) bathroom you'd tell a few folks about it. The less used the better, because all it takes is for some CEO to come in to the bathroom while a sweaty dude in spandex is taking a piss to get locks put on the door.
Libraries and local malls with public resturants are wonderful! The ones I live at even provided water fountains and feminine hygiene products like tampons and pads and needle deposits. its also the cleanst bathroom.
These days it feels like I cant go anywhere outside without having to pay.
I work in a public library in a major city in the US. A vast majority of the people who use the bathrooms are very respectful and they want to keep the place clean. Cause if they don't, then the bathroom is shut down.
Even if a mess does happen in there, the library staff are notified and it can be cleaned, fixed, or closed until the custodian can get to it.
I do wish that there were more public bathrooms in the area, though. Cause then, there would be less people peeing in the alleyway nearby outside of library operating hours.
Thank you for covering this topic. I can usually go a long time between bathroom visits so the lack of public bathrooms rarely affects me much. But then I went to spend a day in Manhattan during COVID. Suddenly you couldn't get into any restaurants, suddenly offices were closed, suddenly medical offices only let you in with an appointment, and suddenly even many of the city-run public restrooms were closed. It literally took me two hours to find a place to pee. Even passersby on the street and my NYC-knowing friends online were stumped. It was a nightmare, and this must be what people with less flexible bladders experience all the time.
I visited Japan this year and the toilet experience was just immaculate - clean facilities in every single metro stop plus train station, plus plenty in public parks... I was furious when I got back home 😂😢
The pride the Japanese take in doing jobs that need to be done, and doing them well, is amazing. I yearn for it being compatible with American culture.
Maintenance and cleaning are vital to civilization.
"A good engineer wears out more rags than wrenches."
- James H. Maggard
we need to change public perception of bathrooms. they aren't places of filth- at least, they shouldn't be. they're places of self-care and maintenance. they're someone's work. maybe people would be more friendly to building more of them, and maybe we'd treat them better. if people think a place is supposed to be messy, then it doesn't matter if they mess it up more.
i would like to add a note about showers too, but frankly it's a hard sell and really i think everyone deserves the dignity and privacy and cleanliness of having their own home with their own showers. housing is a right, just like it's a right to poop and pee when you need to.
Sure beats people shitting in the street
In Buenos Aires (Argentina) it is illegal for bars and restaurants to deny access to their bathrooms to non-clients
I can't count how many times I've needed a toilet immediately and been asked to make a purchase. I understand its not businesses' responsibilities to provide toilets.....but I'll loudly inquire every time where the nearest alley is so they know exactly where I'm going. I'm not spending $5-$10 a pop to relieve myself multiple times a day, and I'm pretty sure I've damaged my bladder from holding it far too long when I was a teenager so holding it for long isn't really an option anymore.
Thank you for making this video ! This was so interesting and informative :) I love your videos Miss Gaylord!
Thank you. Safety has become an issue in my town. One public restroom near me half sized the doors of their stalls to discourage drug use. The ones in a mall are dimly lit with blue lights. I recall twice when the newspaper reported park restrooms being used for sex crimes. City parks. Where children play. I understand why some businesses have locked their bathroom doors for customers only.
As a Starbucks partner who works in a area with a high homeless population, I often feel as if the working class (me and my coworkers) are left to deal with sheltering and facilitating the homeless by cities. Goverments are knowingly offloading the responsibilities onto us to, presumably, save money.
"Here I sit, broken hearted, paid a dime and only farted. Yesterday I took a chance, saved a dime and pooped my pants." I absolutely hated pay toilets and was so happy when they vanished in the 70s.
When you’re feeling kind of low
And you’re bowels are gonna blow
Diarrhea
It feels good to learn theres actually some people out there who worry about the seemingly inconsequential to most others.
As someone who is active and works out regularly, hydration is important and I drink a lot of water. That also means I pee a lot. Worrying about if there will be an accessible bathroom 90 minutes from wherever I am at any given moment has taken up WAY TOO MUCH of my brain power day to day. I got too much other stuff to worry about. I dont feel shame over keeping an emergency pee bottle in my car, thankfully im a man and can make that work. I feel for women and people with IBS.
this was really well put and easy to understand, thank you! This reminds me of a similar issue, which is that I've found big city coffee shops generally don't have outlets anymore. This is especially difficult as a person who doesn't drive. If I don't have a phone charge I can get stranded, can't find or tag on to a bus, etc.
What a fantastic video. Idk why it popped up on my feed but im happy to see it
As a Canadian, I don't always like shopping at the newer shopping plaza's (annoyingly called Smart Centres) because all the stores are separate buildings and there's no guarantee of a bathroom for the public (Walmart and Michael's have bathrooms). Malls area much better choice because they do have lots and lots of bathrooms! And renovated malls near me made really nice big bathrooms with lots of noise privacy
Noise privacy so when it’s real loud when you go? 😂
I'm glad people are talking about this. I am a caretaker for someone who has incontinence issues. Once they feel the urge to go, they need to go as soon as possible or have an accident... I've had to clean up from these a lot because many places just do not have a public bathroom.
As someone who has had to clean restrooms, I understand that it is a lot of resources to keep open a public toilet, but it is also an accessibility issue, a bathroom is something everyone should have at a convenient location.
Funnily enough the bathroom that will forever stick in my brain was a very clean, free public bathroom in Iceland. It was across from a grocery store, had like 20 stalls, with doors down to the floor and had a person cleaning it all day. I would have happily paid to use it.
I live in a decent sized city (Tampa FL) and public restrooms or even publicly available restrooms in stores or shops are nearly non-existent. And we are a major tourist destination. It's hard enough for locals who may know places with restrooms I can't imagine how people unfamiliar with the area cope. Also public water fountains are sparse to non-existent. This is South Florida and the local government is constantly warning people of the extreme heat but then they've removed or don't maintain public water sources.
It blows my mind that De Santis tries to mock Newsom with a poop map and yet he manages to be the pot calling the kettle black
I used to go to NYC often and I always hated when I had to use the bathroom because there were no bathrooms anywhere without paying for one. The accessibility in that city is one of the biggest reasons I moved. I now live in Colorado and was surprised to find Boulder has public bathrooms. I also know in many countries public bathrooms cost some change. I’d rather do that than walk into some sort of retail location just to buy something I don’t need to use their bathroom. I don’t miss the days in NYC, and I actually don’t even remember seeing any subway bathrooms either.
I live in chicago and we have the same problem
when im downtown if i need to go i go to the college i graduated from and use their bathrooms or go to target
i keep a mental note of all the free bathrooms i can use in different neighborhoods