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RIP WC

thebeautyoftransport.com

107 pointstranslocator20 comments

I once visited a house nobody had lived in for 70 years. It had an occasional caretaker, but pretty much everything in the house was original and 70+ years old.

Normally when you see old things, they are old and worn out, scratched, not-really-working, etc. However because this house was pretty much untouched for 70 years, everything was still in near-new condition, working well, looking smart, etc.

There was even a record player, classic AM radio, gas powered lights (and some electric ones too), lots of kitchen gadgets for peeling every vegetable imaginable, etc.

It felt like I was living in a 1940's film!

Old urinals in the midlands (UK) had a bumble bee emblem you could aim at, but why a bee espcially, seemed odd. Later found out. In latin Bee = Apis. Hilarous innit.

Edit - wikipedia's even got an article on these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinal_target

If you liked these there's also a cool set of Victorian era toilets in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute: https://www.britainexpress.com/scotland/Bute/rothesays-victo...

As I was scanning the page to make sure it had a couple of nice photos I even learned something - the origin of the slang "steaming" for being drunk ("Davey was steamin' last night..."):

Why were there originally only male toilets?

The answer begins in 1853, when a law was passed banning the sale of alcohol in Scotland on Sundays. However, paddle steamers were exempt from this ban. The result ought to have been predictable; Scots intent on a drink took to 'steaming', which became popular slang for getting drunk.

But why were there originally only male toilets?

I can't imagine not a single lady didn't go a steamin'.

You'd think so eh, that would certainly be the case nowadays.

There is also the legendary "unofficial website of the paid public toilet on Grabin's street of the city of Korolev" that has been around since 2001.

http://arch.ksys.ru/tualet.html

Translated: https://arch-ksys-ru.translate.goog/tualet.html?_x_tr_sch=ht...

I will note that down for the next time I'm in this part of Korolev and need a toilet. Once was enough.

What this shows is just how important it is to get photos of as many local places as you can in your area and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. I've been doing this and have been making a solid attempt at documenting South West Sydney (focusing on the City of Liverpool currently).

You can see the results via Wikishootme:

https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/#lat=-33.918668614845444&l...

Cheap, generic, ultra-mass-produced and under-designed (or crap-designed) seems to be the order of business these days.

Pictures of urinals was not what I was expecting on HN on a bright Sunday morning but fantastic article!

Even more surprising for me, as Havant was my home town until university — that station was my main way of travelling to and from family right up until my mother's Alzheimer's (a few years after my father's death) meant she had to move out.

Whenever Havant pops up like this, my reaction is surprise that it's relevant on more than a local stage.

Old stuff is cool, but we shouldn't keep old things around just for the sake of it.

Old stuff tends to be harder to maintain, not meet modern expectations, be less energy efficient, be incompatible with newer things, potentially toxic or dangerous, etc.

If you plan to actually use the old stuff, then it will gradually wear out, and the expense of repairing a crack in a 100 year old thing tends to be higher than repairing/replacing something modern.

I appreciate you’re making a generalisation rather than stating a fact, but a lot of your points could just as easily be untrue as they are correct. It really depend on the item.

For example a lot of older stuff can be easier to maintain if the modern counterpart has some kind of electronic part that wasn’t in the original. And plenty of modern things aren’t made with the same longevity as older things.

> not meet modern expectations

I don’t see that as reason not to use old stuff in itself. If you’re changing something purely because of fashion then that’s a terrible reason to get rid of something older. But if there is another measurable differentiator then I’d see that as the reason rather than “expectations”.

I guess my point here isn’t that I disagree with you per se, just that I’d be weary of citing “expectations” without breaking down what those expectations are (in any particular case).

> be less energy efficient

We also need to be careful here too because the impact of manufacturing and shipping new things, plus the impact of disposing old things might still work out greater than the impact of using that older thing for longer.

> and the expense of repairing a crack in a 100 year old thing tends to be higher than repairing/replacing something modern.

I’ve owned plenty of modern things that were impossible to repair once they developed a small crack. And things that should be easier to repair than they are because they manufactures have decided they don’t want people fixing their own stuff.

I get the nostalgia about mosaic and all, but these open-style urinals is literally stuff of my nightmares. I am from a backwater town in then second world country and those urinals and latrines in public toilets made them filthy and stinking to high heavens. Not the worst of childhood traumas but I still have a recurring night dream of going into a public toilet and not finding a single approachable spot.

I think the question usually with these situations is can they be renovated in a way that retains the aesthetic or positive features of the original while addressing problems? In this case just hypothetically it might have meant keeping the urinal style but extending dividers downward, or spacing or something. But it would have necessitated custom work and some design problem solving.

These recently reatored art deco toilets in Paris look very smart:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/18/restored-paris...

And the toilets near the old Humber ferry pier in my home city of Hull are pretty impressive:

https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/lonel...

Unlike the ones in Paris, I've had the pleasure of visiting these.

I live locally and have used those toilets a number of times. I can’t say I’d be sad for improvement as they were pretty grim.

You could go back in time 90 years and toilets and sinks would still have basically the same UX as today, although IMHO it feels like there's something indescribably more artistic about early plumbing fixtures.

I remember using a rustic toilet in the french countryside. it was basically two porcelain footprints and a hole.

Despite all the renovation, the newly installed 2023 toilets don't look that different from the ones it replaced.

Electronic bidet toilets should really be the norm by now. Sad that the expectations haven't changed.

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