Discussion: San Francisco's 'Spray Back' Walls To Stop Public Urination Are Working

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Discussion for article #239379

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Okay, couple of things. First, I see that these signs are in English, Chinese and Spanish. But that’s not your target audience. Can’t the signs be translated to “Drunk?”

Also, what about dogs? Dogs can’t read. There’s your number one light pole violator, right there.

And finally, why are there solar powered toilets showing up in the afternoon? This issue screams for lunar powered toilets that appear at 3 AM!

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Great. So now instead of regular drunks stumbling around the neighborhood, we’re going to have pee-stained drunks stumbling around the neighborhood.

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I want to see the video where this stuff is put on a bridge and the graffiti artists show up.

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This is an issue symptomatic of the profound wealth divide in California. Matt Yglesias has argued that zoning and rules written to favor incumbent land owners have created an intractable problem of housing affordability in San Francisco such that Land Value Taxation is off the table (even if Copenhagen, a much more livable city with residents who one might assume possess roughly similar bladder control to that of San Francisco’s toilet-less populations has had such a scheme for over 50 years). Here’s the thing, treating toilet-less humans as a nuisance makes little sense when you do nothing to deal with the fundamental causes of toilet-lessness. If you open your real estate market to the world so that your property becomes magnificently valued, you should have a tax scheme that assures Russian, Chinese or Indian kleptocrats that park their money in San Francisco real estate are most welcome but get taxed appropriately. Right now, this is not the case. Even the 101 corridor north of San Francisco (e.g. Santa Rosa) has become out of reach for most middle-class Americans, and has had to deal with an influx of homeless and mentally ill from the City. (Or should we just call Frisco what it has truly become, a Metropolis in the Fritz Lang sense?)

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Gah. Women! Amiright?

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a “stream of queries”? Really?

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Here it is in action haha:

Of course, I suppose you could just aim at the very bottom of the wall…

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What is needed here, as in most cities, is public restrooms. In Europe, public restrooms are commonly found. That’s because you usually pay a small amount to use them, and the restrooms have attendants who keep them clean. If US cities built restrooms, and staffed them with homeless people who charged .50 to use them, you would be solving 2 problems at one time.

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We need some ‘SprayBack’ paint for the 1%er ‘trickle-down’ umbrellas.

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I have not found Europe to have widely available restrooms. In fact, I find that you have to plan carefully to avoid a mid-day panic.

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Europe is a large place. I can say that in Dubrovnik, Split, Ljubljana, Munchen, Cottbus, Berlin, and Frankfurt, we found and used public restrooms.

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This whole saga appears to be an allegory for what Donald Trump is doing to the Republican primaries.

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So…how far away from the wall does a person have to stand to avoid backsplash? We need some product testing, field reporting here…

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I am rubber you are glue, bounces off me, sticks on you.

Now they just need a bounce back coating to the sidewalks where dogs and people shit!

I am rubber you are glue bounces off me, shits on you…Hey if the foo shits wear it.

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More nanny state interference. Next they’ll try and stop you from puking on the sidewalk!

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I always heard the people in SF were outstanding in their field and held their own, just thought it meant something else.

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So now the pissed off drunks are pissed on… Well played SF…

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There is reason San Francisco gets a top snob rating. And…while people pee on walls, it is the dogs peeing on the lamp poles. The dog problem is many times worse than the people problem.

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What happens if you (we guys) just pee at an angle? Does the pee splatter bounce off at the opposite angle? If so, guys, just don’t stand directly “facing” the wall head-on. If standing head-on is like standing at 9 o’clock to the wall’s 3 o’clock, just stand at 7 o’clock to the wall’s 1 o’clock – would that make the pee splash off at 11 o’clock?

Also, as others have noted, what about taking your boy doggie–and some girls, I’ve noticed–for a walk, they’re going to need another bath if you walk by one of these posts or walls and he takes a leak.

And graffiti artists? --What a very rude awakening and a paint-splattered face they’ll have!! (thanks @MsM up page, for mentioning graffiti artists).

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