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I've peed in a bush in SF. I didn't want to, but that's what happens when you have humans with bladders and zero public restrooms.

I tried to not pee in the bush. I asked around, went to a few grab and go restaurants, a gas station, but none had a public bathroom. My only option was to wait in line and pay cover to get into a bar, wait in line at the high end restaurants in the area, drive across town to Denny's for a cheaper pee, or drive 45 minutes to a saner city. I peed all over that bush, with a grin, as a fuck you to the idiocy of whoever decided to force me, and everyone else, to do it.

My trick is to walk into a random shop, drop some change in the tip jar, and then ask to use the restroom. I’ve never been turned down. Sure, I don’t want to pay to pee, but they have to clean it at their own expense, so I don’t mind chipping in.

Hotels, hospitals and restaurants with long waiting lines.

The S.F bathroom problem is that heroin addicts go into bathrooms, they lock the door, they pass out, and die or have a psychotic break and break everything they can or smear shit all over the walls and then the store is liable for the wrongful death or they have to clean it up.

The bathroom problem is because there is a ban on charging for toilets, nothing more, nothing less.

Most businesses would be happy to have another (minor) profit center, and most people would be happy to pay. There used to be lots available for a small fee. Instead, we get no public toilets at all because it is illegal to charge, and businesses decline to operate them at a loss. Your description is of the symptom, not the cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i...

If they had a charge for using the toilets, that would keep severely mentally ill homeless people and junkies from using them, so you are partially right.

...just as they are kept from using them now, along with everyone else, too.

True. In fact...

An elderly woman got evicted from the Tendernob apartment building that I lived in. Every night around 5p, she’d walk into the building, right past security, and into the bathroom. She’d lock the door and spend the entire night in there.

Australia here, Sydney. I would have assumed free public toilets are a government service, like they are here, in parks and train stations and dotted through the inner city on main streets. Are there no public toilets in the US?

The majority of toilets in the US, and all of the nice/good/clean ones, are on private property (businesses, et c). Any that are free to use for all get quickly destroyed.

California (the topic) has some of the highest taxes in the US, but some of the lowest levels of government services provided.

Hmm thanks. That's not good!

I have never had trouble finding a toilet in the 30 or so states I've been to. But I've never been to the west coast, so maybe things are different out there.

Fascinating. Looks like the original motivation for the campaign was the fact that loose change was required as payment, and not really any highbrow philosophy beyond that? This should be an easily solvable problem by now (though judging by the number of quarter-only parking meters around I’m not so sure).

That's fine as long as everyone recognizes this as a conscious, intentional, decision to put the waste in the streets/foliage. Pooping isn't a choice, after all.

Holy Mother, the US put men in the moon but couldn't build some public toilets and now their streets are minefields? Now a small step for man can be just a big mess to clean later.

Calling this "the US" is incorrect. SF is not "the US" and hardly reflects the country in most ways, though carries a ridiculous amount of influence.

> - I gave a beer to a homeless guy, and he chugged it & threw the can into the street. I asked him why he didn’t put it in the trash can right next to us, and he explained that he didn’t want the tiny Asian women who forage for recyclables to get stabbed by the needles in the trash cans, and that one of them would be along to get the can shortly. Sure enough, less than 5 minutes later, a woman pushing a shopping cart full of cans walked by, picked up the beer can, and continued on.

There's something unsettling about this story that I can't quite put my finger on.

Like why didn't he just leave the can next to the trash can? I've saw trash cans in Germany with bottles ringed around them and was told that it was to make it easier for people that collected the deposits.

If there are that many needles it sounds like more needle disposal receptacle are needed

For me, it's all about the jarring contrasts in a fleeting encounter between distant social classes. The guy's homeless along with thousands of others in one of the richest and most technologically advanced regions of one of the world's richest countries. Actively throwing litter into the street comes off as antisocial, until it's revealed to be motivated by empathy for his fellow destitute community members. That woman spends her waking hours collecting empty cans and avoiding needle-stick injuries on the streets of a city in which other people who aren't so different from her spend their time rearranging electrons in very specific ways that entitle them to safe and secure housing, as well as food, drink, and information imported into their homes from across the world.

Friend of the family was on her way to her HS Prom at City Hall at night with a few friends. Dressed to the nines, going to have a great time under the rotunda with her class.

A homeless guy came up to her and put something wet on her arm, directly in front of city hall. It was a lot of acid. She spent the next few days in the hospital recovering/surviving a very bad trip. She still deals with flashbacks, years later and doesn't go out at night. It was an assault, not violent, but much worse all the same.

It used to be just a 'don't go out after sundown' thing in SF. But now it's pretty much all hours of the day anywhere near Civic Center for women.

This sounds so implausible, I don't even know where to start.

First, LSD isn't the kind of a drug homeless people usually do. It has no addictive potential, and it doesn't give you a high. It isn't a "fun" drug, as opposed to the typical heroin/meth/etc. stuff those people do.

Second, LSD is usually distributed in the form of paper tabs. Why would they be wet?

Third, getting high from just skin contact, especially on your arm, is something I cannot find as possible after some googling. The only skin-contact-related use case I've found online is some people putting it on their eyes for faster absorption, but it is not the same as arm skin at all.

I am not accusing you of lying, I honestly believe that you are telling the story you were told by the friend of the family exactly as is. But I have a feeling that the reality was a bit different from what you have described, and I bet I can guess what it was.

My theory: she went to prom, did acid for the first time with her friends there, it ended up being too much and too intense, she got hospitalized, and then she made up that story for her parents. After all, who is gonna be able to track down and find a random non-descript homeless person?

> This sounds so implausible, I don't even know where to start.

Perhaps you should not have then.

I'm not lying, she's not either. Comments like these are why women find it hard talk about their assaults; they are not believed, mostly just accused.

Thanks for the comment.

> Comments like these

Like what? Questioning very hard to believe story?

Despite your incredulousness, I maintain my account's truthfulness.

Thank you for your comment.

>Comments like these are why women find it hard talk about their assaults

How does it have anything to do with women? My arguments would stay exactly the same, regardless if the person in question was a man or a woman or neither. In my eyes it isn't about women lying, it is about high schoolers making up excuses in front of their parents to get out of consequences of irresponsible drug/alcohol usage.

And I even explicitly said that I don't think you were lying, you were truthfully retelling a story you were told. I just doubt the source.

I have explicitly listed factual problems I see with this story. None of which had anything to do with the person in question, but rather the physical properties of the drug and the fact that LSD isn't the kind of a drug that homeless people typically use.

I am addressing factual things, while you simply snark me and segway into a "believe female survivors of sexual assault" argument. Quite literally nothing is similar about those two things, and conflating them as even remotely similar only does injustice to assault survivors and their traumatic experiences.

This was a very good analysis. A fourth point is that drug users rarely give away their hard earned drugs to strangers.

Op is so ridiculous. At start I thought it was burning acid so yeah that would be pretty bad. But your comment made me understand it was about lsd and lol no way this is true.