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Large Densely Populated Cities


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After spending a recent holiday in a large city, it makes me wonder how there aren’t more accidents in places like this. Public bathrooms seem to be few and far between. Local businesses keep bathroom doors locked in an effort to prevent homeless from taking over the spaces. I feel like if I lived in such a place then I’d be in a lot more precarious situations. Is there anybody else here who’s spent an extended amount of time in a large/dense city and if so what are your thoughts/experiences?

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On a "New York for Tourists" video I saw some time ago, one of the important points was that if you are in a place where there is a public rest room, use it even if you don't think you need to.  It might be the last one you'll see for the rest of the day!

Although in many cities some fast food chains still have available toilets, some may be for customers only, and they may require a key to enforce that rule.  Rest rooms can be expensive to maintain properly, and unfortunately there are vandals who enjoy making a mess of them.  

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I think that very much depends on the city and the country you are in. If you are talking about New York City, I totally get what you are saying. Been there and experienced that myself. But if you are for example in one of the major German cities with millions of inhabitants, finding a restroom will not be problem at all. All restaurants and bigger shops will have one and they are usually clean and open to everyone. However, if you go there on a Sunday Morning, you‘re screwed. Because on Sundays everything will be closed, except for gas stations and some pharmacies.

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4 hours ago, pissypants2005 said:

After spending a recent holiday in a large city, it makes me wonder how there aren’t more accidents in places like this. Public bathrooms seem to be few and far between. Local businesses keep bathroom doors locked in an effort to prevent homeless from taking over the spaces. I feel like if I lived in such a place then I’d be in a lot more precarious situations. Is there anybody else here who’s spent an extended amount of time in a large/dense city and if so what are your thoughts/experiences?

I go to Washington DC a lot for work and you wouldn’t think that would be too difficult a place to pee, but I’ve seen desperate tourists out in the evenings after work.  I think a lot of options around the tourist sites close by early evening, so it gets tougher.  This is when I’ve seen most of them.  One that stands out was a family near one of the monuments on the Mall.  I don’t recall which, and I’m sure I’ve seen at least one after-hours bathroom out there, but they must not have been near it.  There was a younger brother, and his sister was an older teen.  And pretty hot, too.  She was pacing around looking kind of miserable when I heard the Mom ask a park ranger dude if there were any bathrooms around. He said ‘no, go try at a hotel’ or something dismissive.  They obviously didn’t even know which direction to go in and looked all confused.  They went back to try to explain to the daughter, who was apparently the one who needed the toilet, and then her brother said something like ‘ha ha, you can’t go pee!’  The girl looked like she was about to cry, and I thought for a moment about helping them with directions.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I watched them trudge off toward wherever they ended up , and I wondered how much longer it took the to find a toilet.  I’d have loved to follow them and watch how it played out.

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Here is a list about my impressions on the bathroom conditoins of some contries I visited.

United States: Like mentioned in this thread, most of the bathrooms are located in private buildings and it is hard to find a public one if you are just hanging around in the street. Some bathrooms in restaunants or fast food store are locked and only open to customers.

EU (Berlin, Paris, etc): There are public bathrooms in the street but they are not free. There are some pissers in some cities but it seems that only male can use them. Some pissers are quite open. As a guy, I am also too shy to use it.

Generally when I have biz trip to US or EU, I never use a bathroom except for the ones in my hotel room or in the buildings where I deal with my biz.

China: There ususally are public bathrooms in old districts of a city (usually city center) and they are free. But for the districts newly developped, it likes the style of US. No public bathrooms but only private buildings.

Japan: Plenty of free public bathrooms. Even a small park with only a piece of grass land, there is a small public bathroom. Most convinient stores open there bathrooms to everyone free.

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In a number of UK cities young adults find themselves having to pee in public at the end of a night out (sometimes during a night out).  This is because there are few public conveniences, and those in late night bars are often overcrowded.  Typically I see about four or five times as many men as women pissing outdoors at night.   People normally find somewhere to go, even if not private and it is rare to see someone wet herself.

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Guest K95F

I think others already pointed out the bathroom situation, but specifically to New York (because I personally only experienced horribly here), the damn traffic is was so bad over Christmas season, I thought I was going to die riding the cabs. Not only were there not enough bathrooms, I was stuck in damn traffic all. the. time. 

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@Sudoers

"United States: Like mentioned in this thread, most of the bathrooms are located in private buildings and it is hard to find a public one if you are just hanging around in the street. Some bathrooms in restaunants or fast food store are locked and only open to customers."

I have never been outside of the United States and I can say what everyone else is saying here is true every single time I've been in New York City I have found myself in a situation of prolonged desperation because there simply aren't enough bathrooms for so many people. I think this is likely true of every major city on Earth. Lots of people in a small space with limited bathrooms is the perfect recipe for desperation.


And it's true in the United States that while stores and restaurants and places like that have bathrooms that, if you are just out and about that there aren't that many places that are specified as public bathrooms. Whereas in Europe I think that pay toilets are pretty common in the United States you basically just have nothing.


That is kind of what I learned the hard way of my job when I was without a bathroom for much of the year simply because I was out in the wilderness and everything like that, and places like this either the bathrooms are locked are not provided at all. In the United States providing public bathrooms outside of a business does not seem to be the norm, and if you are the one who is relying on public bathrooms will often find yourself caught short and holding for quite a while.

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Here in Melbourne atleast, Public Bathrooms are incredibly common. There's always tons of restaurants and bars around the place with bathrooms, or atleast 1 nearby shopping center you can go to. There's usually a park aswell with a restroom you can use. I'm only speaking for how it is here, if you're bursting with nowhere to go then I think you're just really unlucky 🤷‍♀️

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Guest AromaticPee

My old hometown had a few public bathrooms, my current hometown has some public bathrooms... but the thing is, I know a girl who'd rather pee anywhere else she can relieve her bladder. She'll even wet herself if there isn't something to pee on!

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In this day and age, profit rules.  If it doesn't make money, it rarely happens.  Public toilets are costly to install, costly to maintain, and often vandalized.  They are generally found where they are legally required, like in restaurants and bars, or if a business determines that having them will permit people to stay longer, like in department stores.  Of course they are present in places where you are expected to stay for extended periods like amusement parks, and planes and long-distance trains grudgingly provide the minimum.  Municipalities used to offer them as a public service, but when their budgets are cut, so are the toilets.  You can usually find them in public buildings like city halls and libraries, but they're only available during their business hours.

So we have to plan ahead if we're going to spend time in a major city.  Pee before you set out, don't overhydrate, and know where there are toilets available.  When you see one use it, even if you don't have to go!

 

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I've lived near Sapporo and in Tokyo, and several restroom map apps show that there are an infinite number of available restrooms throughout the cities. Even deep in the mountains where no one is around, luxurious and clean restrooms can be found.
As written in some topic, it was already completely reused for fertilizer 400 years ago in this country, and supported the economy. Our ancestors used the free restrooms maintained by landlords whenever possible for the benefit of landlords who rented rooms at a discount. It was a far greater source of income for landlords than rent.
It's believed that the restrooms that supported agriculture behind the scenes have a god in charge there (Please forgive me!). Although now replaced by chemical fertilizers, there are still many restrooms as a symbol of prosperity.

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