Posted on 01/11/2008 9:46:03 AM PST by GovernmentShrinker
When New York City’s open-armed embrace of tourists finally extends beyond the boundaries of Earth to creatures from outer space, these visitors will find themselves right at home in Madison Square Park’s sleek, shiny new public toilet.
Indeed, the toilet calls to mind not a port-o-let, but rather the sort of room one imagines adjoined the personal quarters of Capt. James T. Kirk on the Starship Enterprise.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I almost hope Bloomie DOES announce a run for the Presidency. Journalists will have a field day taunting him with questions about this outrageously expensive, utterly impractical, and environmentally unfriendly potty that has been introduced on his watch.
Better for them to shoot-up in the bathroom than on the street.
Those look a heck of a lot more practical (but do they have doors that can be closed for privacty?). However they obviously discriminate against women and wheelchair-bound people, so we can’t have them here.
Can sure use a bunch of those in New Orleans during Mardi Gras time.
OMG! I would hate to be around to see the look on someones face when the door opens after 15 minutes and you are still....
I also see a lot of \”hovering\” going on, just like other cultures....
“Will the homos still use it for their toe-tappery?”
Probably has a pretty good vent fan - the smell of love might not linger long enough for there to be the turn-on there must be a normal men’s bathrooms. I suppose the sounds of grunts intermingled with explosive bursts of gas could still turn them on though.
The larger picture in post #10 would have a standing man exposed on his whole right side it appears.
Even at thirty two bucks a night, it'll be the cheapest room in the city.
Make that eight bucks a night, 32 quarters.
It IS a pay toilet. You have to stick in a quarter to set off the automated cycle. But I think they’d have to charge at least 20 bucks a pop to actually make the thing self-supporting, especially since the number of people actually desperate enough to use it is likely to be tiny. Regardless of the price, I expect most users will be tourists whose main reason for using it is to have a “You’ll never believe what I did in New York” story to tell to the folks back home in the real world.
I don’t think there are any seat covers. I think you just sit on the damp, freshly rinsed metal seat rim.
Maybe there’s a koran in it.
Darks? What happens when you do bring enough gum?...
There is no seat to raise or lower, just the wide rim of the bowl, with covers made of tissue available in a dispenser to the side. Sitting down is a leap of faith, like falling backwards into a stranger’s arms at a corporate team-building retreat.
STUPID FOOLS! They learned nothing from Seattle’s gold-plated toilet mistake.
The below is from the Seattle Times Editorial section.
Seattle’s automated public toilet experiment is a bust. The city should cut its significant losses, cancel the contract, pay the penalty and move these dens of iniquity out of their five Seattle locations.
The high-tech toilets were launched a few years ago to provide a safe, clean place to go to the bathroom for Seattle’s homeless, tourists and others with no other place to freshen up. Cost to the city is about $600,000 a year. The toilets have turned into publicly subsidized drug and prostitution parlors. A security guard at the waterfront location filmed nine people piling into the bathroom at once.
City Attorney Tom Carr believes users sometimes disable the time sensors, which have been set to 15 minutes, and later to 10 minutes. Nine people. Want to bet they weren’t discussing Plato?
After 10 minutes, the door opens and then a self-cleaning process begins.
The bottom line is the toilets are not used often enough for the original purpose. Some homeless people say they wouldn’t dare venture in because of safety concerns about unsavory activities going on inside. Bathroom cleaners often find drug paraphernalia left behind.
Getting rid of the toilets will not be cheap. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to break the contract with the vendor, but that is exactly what ought to happen.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who inherited this problem from the City Council, is contemplating increased staffing and lighting, reduced usage time and placement of exterior cameras to dissuade users from conducting drug deals. Staffing sounds expensive, and if users can dismantle time sensors, they can block or disable cameras.
The original idea for the toilets came from the need to stop people from urinating and defecating in public — all of which is still going on.
The next plan ought to be low-tech port-a-potties in locations where bathrooms are not available for homeless people and other citizens. The best thing anyone can say about port-a-potties is most people don’t want to linger too long because of the aroma.
Hit the flush button on a project whose time has come and gone.
So are the Seattle ones gone?
Just remember... aim carefully or you'll incur the wrath of the Oracle.
Actually there has been some small-scale hacking of MetroCards. Some trick involving folding/creasing them a certain way. May have been foiled by now, but for a while there was a big business in stations in certain sketchy neighborhoods, with in-the-know gang boys selling swipes at a big discount to the proper fare.
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