...The city of Seattle's trying to sell off entire washroom facilities! It seems their five all-singing, all-dancing, all stainless, self-cleaning, "set and forget" Hering-Bau WCmatic Public Toilets quickly became...nuisances. Nuisances popular with sex workers and IV drug users. Wow, who knew? You make a well-lit, lockable, unattended space available free for the standing in line and people come up with alternative uses for it!
Interestingly, the "vandal-proof, graffiti-resistant" washrooms show signs of various damage attempts -- crumpled doors, scarred air dryers, etc. Humans do so love a challenge.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
6 comments:
$89,000 and no reserve! Are they trying to turn a fantastic profit or is this a waste of taxpayer dollars?
I'll bet you anything that they got some federal matching funds for this.
We told 'em it was a stupid idea, but they never listen to anything we say anyhow.
There's a reason Seattle is known as "Berkeley North."
Humans do so love a challenge.
Are you that sure of their ancestry?
Jeffro, tempting though it is to conclude that such hooligans are not human, the fact is that they are our brothers and sisters, drawn from the same gene pool as Edison, Jefferson, Pratchett and the Marx Brothers -- as were Stalin and Mao. Some people soar, some plumb the depths -- and far too many lack the ambition to do either and instead content themselves with breaking light bulbs, sneering at dead white men and trying to screw up a fancy public toilet. I'd rate graffitists and other vandals lower than hookers and dope addicts; at least the latter two groups made some use of the thing instead of messing it up for others!
The most notorious one is just a few blocks from my old office.
I'm thinking the cost for putting them in was pretty astronomical too. Probably a little over a quarter-million or so apiece?
RX: They might be my relations, but I'm not gonna claim 'em in public. ;>)
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