{"id":1057,"date":"2006-08-07T04:44:27","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T08:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=1057"},"modified":"2006-08-07T11:49:28","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T15:49:28","slug":"street-scat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/08\/07\/street-scat\/","title":{"rendered":"Street Scat"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A handful of these fine things are scattered around the downtown San Jose. They’re in other cities like San Francisco and Paris, and in San Jose it costs 25c to go. The low cost may still be prohibitive as I’ve already accidentally walked through a river of pee coming from a man hiding in a storefront one night as I was walking along — we made eye contact, and at least one of us wished we weren’t there.<\/p>\n

Public toilets are good, and discourage this sort of behavior mostly. Toronto used to have them all over — some are still buried underneath the Spadina-Queen intersection. Rumour has it one of the reasons why Toronto got rid of them is because men were cottaging<\/a> (you can read reports of Toronto Police entrapping old fashioned George Michael’s in the Allan Gardens toilets in the 20s-30s) in the days before Trudeau. These green units would probably offer more privacy for sex, but the door opens automatically after 20 minutes so people would have to be quick and unromantic.<\/p>\n

It’s like the space toilet in 2001, complete with Kubrick-like instructions on the outside . The door closes automatically behind you, you don’t have to touch anything in order to wash your hands and I think if you want to sit down some kind of paper covering device comes out, but even so I couldn’t think of anything more horrible to try (it’s good to be a boy, sometimes).<\/p>\n

When you’re finished, you can kick a big square button near the floor to open the door, so you really don’t have to touch anything but yourself, and maybe some people don’t even have to do that. It might be good if some of these were in Toronto, though they take up a fair chunk of space. There is room for two ads, and both on this one were of the public service sort.
\nStill, it’s a bit strange being in this little vessel, knowing you’re surrounded by people in public. Though there were no windows, it reminded me of that art installation called “Don’t Miss A Sec<\/a>” by Monica Bonvicini, where a public toilet was constructed out of two-way mirrors outside the Tate in London — you could see out, but nobody could see you do your thing. Not for the pee-shy certainly.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When the door opens, the entire bathroom is exposed, and the toilet flushes automatically. I’m not sure this part is good. This isn’t Europe\u00a0 — it’s good to have some healthy shame about this sort of thing — so placing these things off to the side would make people more comfortable, and let them exit relieved and unnoticed. It’s interesting though that they’re still called “Toilet” here in San Jose — Americans usually like the euphemism “Restroom”. Until Toronto gets something like this, we can contribute to Washroom Quest<\/a>, and share information on kind-of public washrooms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A handful of these fine things are scattered around the downtown San Jose. They’re in other cities like San Francisco and Paris, and in San Jose it costs 25c to go. The low cost may still be prohibitive as I’ve already accidentally walked through a river of pee coming from a man hiding in aContinue reading “Street Scat”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1128,3047,359,3048,21,3049,470,576,2976,19,1643,3046],"class_list":["post-1057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-europe","tag-george-michael","tag-london","tag-monica-bonvicini","tag-other-cities","tag-paper-covering-device","tag-paris","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-jose","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-police","tag-u-s-securities-and-exchange-commission"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStreet Scat - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2006\/08\/07\/street-scat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Street Scat - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A handful of these fine things are scattered around the downtown San Jose. 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