Monday, January 21, 2008
The Spotty Potty Project, Part One
It's time this blog took a stand about public restrooms. The overriding issue — one the presidential candidates haven't mentioned nearly enough — is the one I'll call spotty potty availability.
We all use a public restroom from time to time — if we can find an available facility. "The porcelain project," an article in the Baltimore Sun, my hometown paper, says "patrons have to fight to use the bathroom in drugstores and barbershops and banks, even though the Maryland plumbing code states that any customers or potential customers may use the employee facilities in any store."
Question number one: why are restrooms in many stores designated "employees only," anyway? Why not make them available to the public?
When Steven Soifer isn't teaching community organization at the School of Social Work in Baltimore, he likes to go around to stores and ask to use their employee restrooms. When he gets turned down, he brings up the provisions of the plumbing code. Store employees, who typically are ignorant of the law, sometimes give in and let him visit the facilities, sometimes not.
But it's always a grudging thing.
Question number two: why is this? It's not as if there are two different types of humans, those without insistent bladders and those with, and store workers are uniformly of the first type. Everyone gets a full bladder from time to time and has had the experience of desperately needing to have an empty bladder, not next week, but now!
The Sun article is almost silent as to the whys of spotty potty availability and employee reluctance to share. One quoted source did ask, "I mean, can you imagine the derelicts?" If potties were not so spotty in their availability, the thinking seems to go, hobos and vagabonds would infest them, and then where would we be?
There are, of course, security issues. "One check-cashing firm told [Soifer] that if he wanted to use the bathroom they would need to 'disarm the building.' " He was then unceremoniously turned away.
Question number three: why are the restrooms behind the security perimeter in secure buildings?
Stores are one thing, truly public places another. Take that huge tourist magnet in Washington, DC, the National Mall. It's that long strip of open area in the heart of the Nation's Capital with the U.S. Capitol at one end, the Lincoln Memorial at the other, and the Washington Monument in between. The Capitol end is flanked by the majestic buildings of the Smithsonian Institution. The other end sags southward to include the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial.
If you haven't seen it, go.
Problem is, there are almost no places to go, if you know what I mean.
"For Starters, Mall Visitors Just Want More Bathrooms," writes the Washington Post.
A century has passed since the character and design of the city's public space were last considered, 30 years since the last touch-up. The Mall is a place where visitors exercise their First Amendment rights in protest, soak in the grandeur of monuments to the nation's great leaders, pay their respects at memorials to fallen soldiers or simply take a stroll.
If only they could easily find a place to relieve themselves.
"Restrooms," or the lack thereof, is the No. 1 complaint fielded by Diana Mayhew, executive director of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, after a million people come to marvel at the pastel blossoms. Apart from portable toilets sometimes brought out for special events, fewer than 100 public restrooms are located on the 600 acres of the Mall, which draws 25 million people a year.
What's worse, almost all the public restrooms are in the west end of the Mall. In the part flanked by the museums, you're expected to use the facilities inside those buildings. But after the museums close for the evening ... well, you're on your own. (Here's more about that problem.)
And if you use Washington's Metrorail system to get to and from the Mall, you can apparently forget about finding open-to-the-public restrooms at its stations. Oh, the stations have restrooms ... but they're for staff only. Go figure!
Question number four: why don't public facilities that have millions of visitors each year make it easy to find a place to pee?
More later in this blog's ongoing "Spotty Potty Project" ...
Posted by eric at 1:27 PM
Thanks,
Alex
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