San Francisco's Public Works Agency Tests Paint That Repels Urine

monkeyzoo writes: San Francisco is testing an ultra-water-repellant paint on wallls in areas fraught with public urination problems. The paint is designed to repel the urine and soil the offender's pants. "It's supposed to, when people urinate, bounce back and hit them on the pants and get them wet. Hopefully that will discourage them. We will put a sign to give them a heads up," said Mohammad Nuru, director of the San Francisco public works. A Florida company named Ultra-Tech produces the super-hydrophobic oleophobic nano-coating that was also recently used with success on walls in Hamburg, Germany [video] to discourage public urination. Signs posted there warn, "Do not pee here! We pee back!"

Comments

Hurr durr

[Anonymous Coward]

Wont they just pee on the ground in front of the wall then?

Re:Hurr durr

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, was thinking the same thing.

So you're drunk enough to piss on some poor bastards wall. You start pissing and something unexpected happens. Do you:
a) Stop pissing;
b) Piss on the sidewalk; or
c) Get creative, bring Pythagoras into the fray, and see what interesting effects you can achieve with small angular corrections...

  Put more public troughs (yes women do it, just not as much as men) or stalls into problem areas.

They can be temporary.
They're made of plastic or stainless components and are easily cleaned.
They're relatively cheap.
They work.

Re:Hurr durr

[monkeyzoo]

OP Here... The editors' left out the last line of my submission:
"Time will tell if this works better than the firehose employed in India." https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  It's a hilarious video of a solution that has been tried in India, where a water truck goes around and blasts street pissers with a firehose.

Re:Hurr durr

[TheCarp]

> So you're drunk enough to piss on some poor bastards wall

See there you go, trying to see the perspective of the person causing the problem and understanding how they might reason it.... you sir, are unfit for public office.

Seriously though I wonder if the people who come up with these ideas have just no life experience at all, or are they just con artists trying to funnel budget money into their own pockets? (Or a little of both)

> You start pissing and something unexpected happens.

For example... lets say you walked down the driveway of a residential house, right past the cars and over to the trash cans....just for example you know.

Then you hear "hey" from up above, and notice 4 people up on the second floor porch looking down at you pissing on their garbage bins.

Turns out, I can tell you exactly what one local college student did, he waved and said "hey" and continued pissing.

Overall though, it tends to happen at night and by that point in the evening most of the actual waste was flushed out of their system 3 trips to the urinal ago back in the bar, so its not like its even going to smell in the morning. I probably get more piss on my house from local animals, even here in the city.

Its hard to call it a real problem. Plant more trees, problem solved.

If only it could repel shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

...most Slashdot posts and would bounce right back at their authors.

sigh

[DNS-and-BIND]

This is a technical solution to a social problem. I learned this on Slashdot. The problem isn't urine, it's the fact that filthy people - sorry, MEN - are pissing all over the city. All the paint in the world won't fix that. Installing clean, publically accessible bathrooms would fix the problem permanently. Men who already piss everywhere aren't too worried about a little splashback.

Re:sigh

[alvinrod]

Publicly accessible bathrooms that will end up full of junkies strung out on heroin who don't want to sleep out in the rain?

Cities have found out that these public resources tend to get abused, vandalized, or otherwise misused such that the general public doesn't want anything to do with them. Spend the money solving the poverty issues that tend to ruin implementations like that instead, and it turns out that many of the other problems which required those implementations tend to vanish as well.

You'd be better off just having the police occasionally ticket a few people for public urination and give them sufficient community service hours to clean up the mess it makes.

Re:sigh

[interval1066]

Men who already piss everywhere aren't too worried about a little splashback.

Ok, nice generalization.

You're ignoring some key points; this has been tried in Germany (this is where San Francisco got the idea) and it seems to be completely successful. And as a man who lives in SF neither me, nor anyone I know, has ever peed on a wall in a public place in the city to the best of my knowledge. The behaviour is really relegated to the homeless, whom I have seen doing this. For all the talk about piling on the poor homeless they really don't appear to give two f*cks about other people. There is a huge problem in San Jose, which is at the other end of Silicon Valley where homeless encampments sprout up, and wherever they do they create a huge trash/fire problem. The police come and shut them down, and they sprout up elsewhere. It would be one thing if they set up and were respectful of the environment and other people, but they never are; drugs and crime (rape) are the order of the day in these encampments.

Lastly, we need to do something. A friend of mine was here last year during the summer and his remark was "Beautiful city, too bad it smells like pee." Could have been the bay, or maybe it was the pee. Either way, it would be nice to not have people peeing like animals all over the place.

Simples

[maroberts]

Pee at an angle to the wall.

Night-time pop-up urinals

[Trevelyan]

Why don't they just install night-time pop up urinals, like other cities have done.
I know them from London, Paris and Amsterdam, but here's a video for one in Watford

Fairly straight forward solution, and no more stinky city.

Re:Night-time pop-up urinals

[jittles]

Why don't they just install night-time pop up urinals, like other cities have done. I know them from London, Paris and Amsterdam, but here's a video for one in Watford Fairly straight forward solution, and no more stinky city.

Have you been to San Francisco? There is a HUGE homeless community there. They used to have public toilets 24/7. Free ones at that. Then the homeless people started living in them. So then they started charging a small fee (I think it was originally around $0.50) to try and keep the homeless people from living inside of them. Eventually, they removed the public toilets because the public was unable to use them anyway. They need to solve the homeless problem until they can solve the public toilet problem.

you are all missing the wall ... er, point!

[Anonymous Coward]

Main improvement is not that wall pisses back; that is just a comical twist. The important part is that the wall doesn't get soaked in smelly urine. Street washing trucks and machines will take care of the pavement.

Solutions?

[GeekWithAKnife]

As I see it the problem is deterrent. People drink too much, cannot hold it in and need to pee. Given their drunken state they no longer care about how it looks or what others may think and they just piss anywhere.

IF fines were high and CCTV footage or pictures were published to name and shame I'm pretty sure we'll have far less people doing this!

Re:Solutions?

[Zuulie]

In London, the local councils, in their great wisdom, removed practically all public toilets. They were the flabbergasted when they had a problem with people urinating and decided that the solution was to punish people (£50 on-the-spot fine) rather than admitting removing all those public toilets was a huge mistake.

When you drum up support for surveillance and harder punishments, you seem to completely forget that our tax money should be used for public services, not for new ways to monitor and punish people for 'crimes' that were created by the local councils themselves.

This deranged urge to hang people out without any due diligence is baffling. Why is the standard process associated with our justice system is always shunned when moral panic ensues?

Re:Solutions?

[GeekWithAKnife]

No I do not contradict as those are not the options.

To name a few;
1. Piss in the establishment in which you bought the drinks. They have toilets.
2. Do not drink to the point you cannot control your basic bodily functions.
3. Behave like an adult and find a solution that is superior to a 4 year old.

Many excuse themselves with the stupidity of "I was drunk" but the truth is you can still exercise wilful self control. If you are unable to hold your alcohol then you should not be drinking.

Some may not care whilst they are already plastered true, but when they come to they'll remember for next time and their friends and family will hopefully also help these people come back to the fold of civility.

Imagine that all the people you know knew everything to the smallest detail about you. Can you still hold your head high and look into their eyes as an equal?

Otherwise if you wanna piss everywhere and drink without consequences you might as well go live in some gutter. At least then it will drain somewhere in the sewage system...

Re:Solutions?

[GeekWithAKnife]

Local councils are funded with tax payer money yes. The establishment in which you buy drinks is not funded (entirely) by tax money and by purchasing a drink the use of the facilities, lightning, heating, space AND toilets is factored in.

In reality what you are asking is that your tax money is used to create/fund toilets (naturally close to areas of drinking where most pissing takes place). Except of course that you have already paid for the use of a toilet when you bought a drink. So really you want to pay for two toilets and basically use one. Why? so when you drink too much you don't need to think about peeing before you go...a basic function that many children have mastered.

Bars, pubs and restaurants, I'm told, have toilets. Why do we need more? -Let's not forget why most public toilets closed to begin with, besides cost. Drugs, rape, basic disgusting and intentional misuse, that sorta thing.

In my opinion the government and local councils got this one right.

Forgive me if I assume that you're an adult; with the ability to gauge how much you've been drinking against the amount of time you can be away from a toilet.

Re:Solutions?

[Zuulie]

We're going further down the rabbit hole on this one, but then again, it's Slashdot commentary after all. I'm not sure why suggesting that a public service that is clearly needed and shouldn't have been removed causes such a strong response, including getting personal. Try taking a family with 3 children into central London for a day as an example, rather than the flamboyant example of a drunk staggering home. If incorrect decisions made by the local councils are rewarded by the ability to use the average citizen as an ATM, then this obviously makes complete sense. Otherwise... no not really.

Re:Solutions?

[monkeyzoo]

This has been a problem since the start of civilization... if you don't provide public facilities, the sewage ends up running in the street. It's not a matter of drunk people. EVERYBODY PISSES! And I've not found many businesses that will let you just come in and use their toilets. Finding a relatively secluded place to pee when you have to seems like the adult solution to me. The other alternative being suffering excruciating kidney pain before finally pissing myself, which would end up in the street anyhow. Cities should provide FREE public toilets. **THAT** is the solution.

Re:Solutions?

[GeekWithAKnife]

What makes you think I do not have children?

Let me tell you that you can always find a McDonalds, Starbucks or some such in central London.

Public urination is an offence that is committed by adults. I don't recall any children getting hit with a £50 fine.

You, parent/responsible adult are doing it wrong if you cannot factor in your kids needing to pee on a trip anywhere. -which is beside the point as this was originally about adults getting drunk and urinating in public.

A strong response because it's disgusting that people piss in the streets because they drink more than they should. That's the reason.

Re:Solutions?

[Agent0013]

It's like a lot of people in this thread have never gone pee before after drinking a lot of any liquid. You pee before you leave the establishment, then 30 or 40 minutes later you have to pee again. Now all the places are closed and you sure aren't going to just pee yourself. Or maybe you would choose to do that, but it is still public urination and the pee is still on the street either way.

Re:But But This is Anti Homeless!

[MillionthMonkey]

Have you ever bought pot? The stuff is expensive. And if you're homeless, munchies are the last thing you need.

Re:But But This is Anti Homeless!

[Linkreincarnate]

You joke but lots of places in the city have coin slots on the bathroom doors. Then people wonder why there is a public urination problem. This type of solution just shows how poor the attitude towards homeless people has gotten.

Re:Physics still applies, if you pee at an angle i

[JaredOfEuropa]

What they also get is every drunk idiot in the area coming to look and pee at that new magic pee repelling wall. Maybe someone will come up with a fun drinking game for it.

First world problems...

[mpercy]

First world problems caused by other first world problems (like closing or failing to provide public restrooms).

Stupid solution

[macson_g]

In the meantime, other cities (Amsterdam, NL for instance), simply put free, public toilets everywhere. I think it works a tad better.

Re:Physics still applies, if you pee at an angle i

[operagost]

Seems like it would have been easiest to change the breathalyzer to only display "drunk" and "probably not drunk" lights. That takes the fun out of it.

Cause and Effect?

[ExekielS]

Few public restrooms, high homelessness, urination as a biological necessity leads to 1 possible outcome: people will piss on things. Coat it with paint, coat it with spikes, the problem still exists, you just fuck the people who already have no options. If you can't address the cause, you can't solve the problem, period. I don't understand why politicians think shitting on those who have no choices available to them is an effective policy.