I would never step foot into a public SF toliet. Last time I went in there the homeless shit all over the floor and toliet and walls. I went in and nearly threw up. A homeless person pointed and laughed at me. Fuck that.
I would not set foot there unless all of human existence depended on it.
It is like SF needs a “clean up the city volunteer day” once a month that is broadly attended.
The homeless problem is very bad in California and SF in particular, and it is very concentrated in a small area to the east that looks positively dystopian. But that doesn't represent the whole city. If there is a next time you visit, I recommend spending some time in the panhandle, the Haight, the sunset, basically anywhere bordering golden gate park.
I guess I’m saying something a bit different. When people visit SF from SFO they get on the 101 and within 2 hours they have a feeling of things are broken and that memory sticks. I’m desensitized to those problems so I mostly see the beauty.
If people land at SFO and took 380 onto 280 thn straight to golden gate perhaps their impressions would be different.
Of course the difference is vast, I think you could compare one part of NYC with NYC even and end up with vastly different ideas of trash. And that's kinda what I am going on about; the trash under highways in some part of the city is a meaningless metric.
I was flying from NYC to Denver a few months ago and a Denverite and I struck up a conversation on this very topic after observing multiple people throwing trash on the floor in LGA. Speaking of which, Denver, another city that is much cleaner than anywhere on the east coast.
In a public bathroom, I wonder how much of that happens because of mental issues, and how much is a byproduct of the bathroom not getting cleaned often enough.
Sounds like someone made it their home
This is an incredibly stockholm-syndrome take. If you live in a place that isn't a total failed state, normal people actually can use the public toilets!
It is not true in places with functioning government.
A public toilet in the tenderloin is a homeless toilet in all but name. A public toilet in Golden Gate Park is actually a public toilet in the sense that you are talking about.
Also, even if it WAS for people who have nowhere else, that doesn't mean that it should be covered with shit.
Speaking of targeted, this public project almost feels like it was designed to piss off conservatives. Which is a shame, because older tourists are a big segment of the market there. And foreign toursts. And just like climate change and summer homes on the coast, I hate that there will be ironic endings to this for conservatives.
Obviously, the homeless population and climate challenged have it worse. But we didn't need to make others suffer.
Such a shitty situation. Pin sanitation worker pay to software engineering rates or higher and build some fucking toilets.
I really can't believe how shitty major US cities are, nor can I fathom how they got there and how we think it's normal. It can't be just "public funding" because Taiwan isn't exactly a socialist welfare state either, yet the cities are downright urbane.
When I lived in SF, I couldn’t believe the amount of trash on the street. How can so many people litter so much? Then one day, I happened to witness a homeless guy taking all the trash out of every trash can on the street and just dumping them.
That one guy was undoing a week of effort by thousands of people to keep things clean of litter. That kind of behavior should be considered a serious offense, but no one cares, about either the guy or the trash. Have a paper straw! That will fix it.