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> QR code

Um, solve the public restrooms problem for whom? Granted I’ve been living far from DC for 20 years, but I spent a large chunk of this summer there. Access to public restrooms was the same as it is here in Seattle: only a problem if you’re a street critter. People who can scan QR codes already have plenty of access to restrooms, they just need to at least suggest they’ll buy something. Homeless people and people barely making ends meet need to be able to use a restroom, and they shouldn’t need a smartphone to do that.

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There are places like small parks, playgrounds, etc can’t have bathrooms for the 99.9% because the .1% run everything

> only a problem if you’re a street critter

In parts of the Bay Area, sometimes you can't find a restroom no matter who you are. The UC Berkeley campus during school breaks is one such place. The campus has 0, and the businesses in the surrounding city have very few restrooms, even for paying customers. The subway has restrooms, but they're nearly always closed. You pretty much have to go to a sit-down restaurant (good luck if it's after 9pm). In 2020-1, this was 10X worse with everything being closed.

Sit down restaurants close at 9pm?

Most of them yes. Some at 10pm. In Silicon Valley, even 8:30pm is sorta common, but that's for a different reason.

As a Seattle dweller and an active person, finding a bathroom during a long run or a bike ride is difficult. There are large swaths of the city with no bathrooms. In commercial areas, having to meander through a store to use a restroom is bad for the person trying to use it and the other store customers. Seattle is failing in this regard for all its citizens, not just "street critters".

Agreed that everyone should have access to functional bathrooms and scanning QR codes to do so is silly.

If you could explain to an Australian here: I have either a pub or a McDonalds every two blocks that any person can walk into and use a restroom. This would include industrial areas. Is that not the case in Seattle?

Surprisingly, yes, there's really not a lot of McDonald's or other chain fast food restaurants downtown. You can try exploring in Google maps to get a feel for it (consider eg the area around Mercer and Dexter Ave). You can get to one, but it may be a half hour detour on foot. What is closer will be awkward as they describe.

Thanks for that. I have to agree to being surprised. I've just looked on maps from my last Sydney office, for some comparison: There's a McDonalds at 377 George St and at 600 George St, both about a four minute walk. There's a third inside the Westfield which would have its own bathrooms. KFC is three minutes away with bathrooms.

The Marble Bar is a 3m walk, Century Bar is 5m, Ryan's Bar is 9m, Burrow Bar is 5m, and Papa Gede's is 3m. All of this excludes the mass of pubs and clubs that shutdown due to lockout. I definitely feel out of place with what you've shown me!

When I was in the states I found that a lot of places would have locks / codes on the bathrooms that required you to purchase something prior to using it. Not fun when you're desperate to go and there's a big queue.

The European model is normally coin operated which is still a little annoying but at least if you know and carry a few coins you can get in quickly.

America seems to have some challenges that most developed countries don't have. I don't entirely know why, but one factor seems to be we default to expecting people to do things privately at home that get done in public spaces elsewhere. This leaves our public spaces under developed.

We meet friends at my place or yours. We don't have a lot of pubs. Etc.

The callousness of “street critter” really hits hard.

I think that’s probably putting it nicely.

Hackernews in general can be quite callous towards poverty.

I’m not sure if my post was taken as callous but I was explicitly rejecting anti poverty, my usage of the term was as a term of affection for the people I was advocating for, and identification with them. To be absolutely blunt I have only solidarity with my fellow street critters. And I want them to be able to use a bathroom without a QR code. Like everyone who isn’t a street critter can do (despite bullshit whining in other comments)

Not as callous as most parts of the Internet.

HN is the garden spot of Ceti Alpha Six.

I believe most "visible" homelessness is about mental health institutes not being a thing anymore, not poverty.

The general plan seems to be that the mental patients can't be misstreated if they get no treatment.

I blame the "One flew over the coconest"-mentality.

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