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.

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.

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.

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...

First world problems...

[mpercy]

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

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.