On 2026-06-09 12:00, rbowman wrote:
...

There are a couple of areas in town with high concentrations of
homeless that are pickier. The biggest annoyance is the restrooms
require a code that is printed on your receipt. It reminds me of a
book I read long ago, 'Black Like Me'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me

"In New Orleans, a black counterman at a small restaurant chatted
with Griffin about the difficulties of finding a place to go to the
bathroom, as facilities were segregated and blacks were prohibited
from many. He turned a question about a Catholic church into a joke
about "spending much of your time praying for a place to piss".

At my age [76], this is a serious issue. If only they printed the code
on the receipts ...

Here in the land of coldhearted billionaires, we have enough homeless
people that most coffee shops and restaurant post signs in their windows
saying "no public restrooms". The public parks lock their toilets at
night. And the private park [2] where we walk our dogs (because it is
mostly free of ryegrass - "foxtails" [1]) keep their outhouses locked
unless there is a "special event". Only the buildings with the flush
toilets by the soccer fields and the baseball fields are open most
days - a 10 minute walk away from the meadow areas where I usually walk.


[1] My beagle snorted up a foxtail one morning this spring. By the time
it got extracted, we had run up 1400 dollars in vet bills.
[2] This is a 70 acre area, an old city dump nicely landscaped, which
the city turned over to a foundation to maintain. It is indeed
very well kept. They charge $145 per year per dog for dogs to
be allowed there, but allow well-behaved dogs to be off-leash.
With that you get free parking. On week-ends everyone else
pays $7/vehicle. They have 2 soccer/rugby/lacrosse/football
fields and 3 baseball/softball fields for youth sports, and
a small amfitheater and two party meadows that can be rented
for weddings. They recently got a $1M private grant to upgrade
the baseball fields, conditioned on them raising $200K from park
users.
--
Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-06-10, Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> wrote:

Here in the land of coldhearted billionaires, we have enough homeless
people that most coffee shops and restaurant post signs in their windows saying "no public restrooms". The public parks lock their toilets at
night. And the private park [2] where we walk our dogs (because it is
mostly free of ryegrass - "foxtails" [1]) keep their outhouses locked
unless there is a "special event". Only the buildings with the flush
toilets by the soccer fields and the baseball fields are open most
days - a 10 minute walk away from the meadow areas where I usually walk.

We have that here in Vancouver, which has its share of coldhearted billionaires. On the other hand, I once worked in an office tower
downtown where you needed to get a key from the security guard to
use the washroom on the mezzanine. I tried using the (not unlocked)
washroom on the main floor once, but never again - it was as bad as
the ones in the sleaziest skid-row hotels.

This was, however, just after the city fathers, in their infinite
wisdom, closed the liquor store that was in the bad part of town.
They must have thought that this would cause all the drunks to
magically disappear. And they did - by moving to the area around
the next closest liquor store, which was across the street from
the tower in which I was working. At least the old liquor store
was around the corner from the cop shop so things were kept more
or less under control. But the forces pushing gentrification
seldom approach these things logically.

Nowadays, if you can get into a washroom in those areas,
you'll find that many are lit with black light. This is
an attempt to discourage junkies, who can't see their veins
in UV light.

I know, the lack of readily-accessible washrooms is a pain.
But if there's a simple solution to also keeping them clean
and safe, I haven't heard it yet.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | No artificial
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | intelligence was
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | used in the creation
/ \ if you read it the right way. | of this post.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.15
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)