Why it's so hard to find a public toilet
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Why is it so hard to find a public toilet?
This is Planet Money from NPR. We have all been there. Do you have a restroom I could use? No? No. You're walking around in a town, in a city, and you have got to go. So you pop into a nail salon.
Hello. Do you have a restroom we could use?
All right. No on the nail salon. You try a smoke shop. I'll try anywhere. I don't care. This is Teddy Siegel. And if you're out in New York City, Teddy's got your back. Are you a public toilet influencer?
Sure. Yeah, I guess so.
She's being humble. Teddy's created this crowdsourced, publicly accessible Google map.
It is like a maze.
Of all the places you can just walk into and use the bathroom.
It really just depends like when you're catching the toilet.
Churches, bookstores, hotels. Barnes and Noble is like close-ish that way. It started in New York and now includes the U.S. and a bunch of other countries. It's called Got2Go.
People come up to me on the street and are like, bathroom girl.
It all started a few years ago when she was new to the city. She was out shopping and needed to go, but no store would let her use their bathroom. Finally, she went to a McDonald's and they told her she had to buy something to use their bathroom.
So I quickly bought a water bottle, ran up the stairs, thankfully made it in time.
And when she did, the bathroom was just there, open, accessible to anyone. Like, she didn't actually have to buy anything. So she went outside and made a TikTok. Guilt-free places to pee in NYC. McDonald's. Then she made another.
Here are the top 10 best free bathrooms in New York City according to an expert on public bathrooms, aka me.
And another.
If you're out in New York City and gotta go, here are my top five tricks on how to find a bathroom quickly.
And now, every time she's out in the world, she's adding and subtracting from her bathroom map. We check out a dim sum place.
It says, restroom for customers only. Please help keep it clean.
Everyone just keeps nodding no, no, no. Now, Teddy isn't just a public toilet influencer. She is also a professional opera singer. Is there a toilet song?
Um, I don't think there is a toilet song, but... There is an aria that is all about...
desperation.
About this girl begging her dad to marry this guy. And if he says no, she's going to throw herself off a bridge. Very dramatic. But that's sometimes how I feel like I will do anything that it takes in order to find a bathroom.
And so in the middle of Manhattan, flanked by skyscrapers, while cars and people whiz by, she starts to sing.
Do you have a bathroom that we could use? Okay, that's okay. Thank you. Do you have a public restroom we could use? I bet they have a code on the door.
Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erica Barris out here in these streets using crowdsourced maps just to find a place to go. Why is this a system we have? There could be a very simple free market solution to all this. We could pay to use a bathroom. Why can't we? Today on the show, we hardly have any public toilets in the US, but we used to, and we also used to have thousands of paid toilets. This is the story of how they both went away. That is a satisfying flushing sound. It is.
As U.S. trade with China exploded, American manufacturing shriveled, and workers struggled.
What inspired the movement against pay toilets?
They saw their communities decline, and then the world changed very rapidly around them. Well, they kind of aged in place. Data doesn't speak in words, but it's a very dramatic story. In a recent Planet Money bonus episode, we hear from the economists who helped tell that story and changed the way economics thinks about the costs of free trade. To hear it, sign up for NPR+. Just go to plus.npr.org.
When I set out to understand why it is so hard to find a proper place to pee, I discovered two surprising reasons. Michael and Ira. Two brothers who grew up in Dayton, Ohio in the 1950s and 60s. What kind of kid were you? Were you like a mini beat poet?
I would maybe describe myself as a creative nerd.
This is the younger brother, Michael Gessel. He and Ira had this one pet peeve. Pay toilets.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why is it so hard to find a public toilet?
0:01–4:21
2
What inspired the movement against pay toilets?
4:21–10:07
3
How did crowdsourced maps help bathroom access?
10:07–16:25
4
What are the challenges of finding free public toilets?
16:25–23:18
5
What was the impact of the pay toilet ban in the 60s?
23:18–24:27