Where
this is, I couldn’t say. Anywhere, potentially:
Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, New York, Detroit. Take your
pick.
What
were these ‘experiences’ (note the plural)?
With a little imagination, we can conjure up quite a list
of manmade horrors beyond our comprehension: from unflushed
and overflowing toilets to dirty needles to used condoms
to people overdosing to people fornicating.
This
sign and others like it are yet another reminder that
we are living through the Great Enshittification, part
of which is a rising tide of sanitation violations across
nations, beckoning a cry for the salvation of our civilization.
More than a sign, it’s a diagnosis: the sad state
of public conveniences is a signal that the baseline of
urban life is fraying.
Slowly
and then quickly, the public washroom has devolved from
courtesy to liability, with an observable pattern: “no
public washroom” signs, more buzz-in entry, more
“customers only” policies and more cones to
indicate closures while staff await the hazmat crew. When
you ask for the code, they size you up. If you look normal
and trustworthy, they’ll let you in. You can hardly
blame them.
Coffee
chains like Starbucks and Tim Hortons deals routinely
with extreme cleaning challenges, including hazard-level
filth, threats and vandalism. Some Starbucks locations
had to install needle-disposal containers and black lighting,
which apparently makes it harder to find a vein. The foul
state of Tim Hortons washrooms is a running joke on social
media, with thousands of complaints of unflushed toilets,
lack of basic supplies, lack of running water and even
pests. In 2024, a woman filed a lawsuit against a Timmie’s
franchise after one of its toilets detached from the wall
while she was using it. Issues with Starbucks’ washrooms
have been part of an impetus to pack up and leave cities
like Seattle and San Francisco.
With
the gradual disappearance of indoor options, the great
outdoors has become a fallback. Maybe you’ve heard
about, or worse, witnessed scattered incidents involving
homeless people dropping deuces in gas station parking
lots or behind patches of scrub near freeway off-ramps.
In
the Toronto neighbourhood of Roncesvalles, a shop owner
complained to neighbours how, every morning, she’d
arrive at work to the glorious sight of a steaming pile
on her doorstep. Determined to catch the dogwalker whose
pet had been relieving itself there after hours, she installed
CCTV. Spoiler: no dog was involved in the befoulment of
the doorway. I’m not sure why picking up human shit
is more repulsive than picking up dog shit. I only know
it is.
In
downtown LA, there once was Cole’s French Dip, a
118-year-old institution. The restaurant managed to survive
the Depression, Prohibition and World War II, but couldn’t
survive the human feces littering the street outside their
front doors. It closed shop in March.
At
some point, the anecdotes became data, which Vancouver
keeps close tabs on. In 2018, there were 167 complaints
of feces on the street. In 2024, it was 17,000. To combat
the issue, the city has deployed poop ferries.
San
Francisco is a literal human turd minefield, with a dedicated
reporting system to track danger spots. During a 2023
televised debate, Florida governor Ron DeSantis found
the perfect way to illustrate Gavin Newsom’s shit
leadership during his time as the city’s mayor:
waving a map indicating all the places you might step
in some.
Leadership
is precisely the problem. Specifically.
The
policymakers who shuttered asylums without building alternatives,
leaving severely mentally ill people to cycle through
crises in full public view.
Progressives
who persist with “harm reduction;” IE: free
narcotics and paraphernalia in neighbourhoods from Edmonton
to Austin.
Politicians
and NGO’s who push mass immigration from countries
that are—how to put this delicately?—less
queasy about public shitting than our own.
If
you’re a resident of Wasaga Beach, north of Toronto,
you may be familiar with the infamous “toilet tent,”
which is exactly what you think it is. Wasaga Mayor Brian
Smith found himself inundated by complaints of large gatherings
of Indian migrants making use of this makeshift convenience.
So much so, the province got involved. Below is a screenshot,
but here’s a clip of Premier Doug Ford asking people
nicely not to use the beach as a toilet.
Punishing the offenders is next to impossible. How do
you raise the issue of migrant assimilation without accusations
of racism? How do you punish a fent-head whose life is
punishment enough? Though there’s been at least
one notable exception: a homeless man entered a New York
restaurant patio, took a crap on one Pride flag and wiped
his ass with another. The NYPD investigated the incident
as a hate crime.
Like
so many unintended consequences of bad public policy,
the privileged are largely insulated from the fallout.
They hold the keys to executive washrooms and glide effortlessly
into the lavender-scented facilities of four-star hotels—the
kind with private stalls, marble counters and linen hand
towels. It’s ordinary people left to deal with the
mess: minimum-wage workers, city maintenance crews, exhausted
parents. Somewhere right now, an exasperated mom is standing
outside a Walmart washroom waiting to change her baby’s
diaper while two homeless guys are inside sink-bathing.
Public
shitting and filthy public conveniences are not things
we should just get used to. Lee Kuan Yew understood this.
One of his first orders of business was cleaning up Singapore’s
public facilities, introducing fines for public defecation
and failure to flush. These new laws were part and parcel
of his transformation of Singapore from a sweltering,
chaotic port of squatter settlements, open drains and
street hawkers into one of the cleanest, safest and most
meticulously ordered cities on Earth.
Meanwhile,
in the West, things have been moving in the opposite direction.
Historians have their markers of civilizational decline—lead
in Roman water, debased currency. When future historians
analyze our downfall, they may identify a major key: the
sight of a Tim Hortons bathroom.
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