
When peeing in public in this German city, beware walls that pee back - tacon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/03/12/when-peeing-in-public-in-this-german-city-beware-walls-that-pee-back/
======
stevenh
Anyone will discover in a fraction of a second that all they have to do to
avoid the reflected stream is aim diagonally at the wall.

At $117 per square meter of this paint, complete with a suspiciously well-
produced video to sell it to the public, it's hard to believe this isn't just
a slick packaged scam to get the taxpayer's money into someone else's pockets.

As others have pointed out, with the insane amount of money that would go into
this, they could just add public toilets here and there instead.

~~~
bambax
> _all they have to do to avoid the reflected stream is aim diagonally at the
> wall_

Or, not aim at the wall at all and urinate downwind...

Why there aren't more public toilets in major towns is a mystery to me. Here
in Paris there are a few, but not enough by a long shot, and for some
(puritanical?) reason they close automatically at 10pm, so if you're coming
out of a bar or a restaurant late at night, you're out of luck.

What's the problem with public toilets????

~~~
Fezzik
This may sound dismissive of drug addicts, but I know in Portland, OR, USA, we
shut down all our public bathrooms at night because homeless/junkies use them
as places to sleep, vandalize them, do drugs in them, etc... They became more
of a liability than a public benefit.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Unfortunately a case of treating the symptoms instead of the cause. Mind you,
it's a bit easier to lock toilets than solve systemic inequality.

~~~
redblacktree
a bit

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miduil
I wonder why they don't just make more public toilets. If there are no toilets
around, I don't wonder myself why people who drank a liter of beer start
pissing on things that are surrounding them.

~~~
BjoernKW
In Germany, sometimes there's this weird tendency to patronize people just for
the sake of it. So, instead of going for the obvious, reasonable solution
that's beneficial for everyone involved an inferior and more expensive
'solution' is implemented that doesn't really solve the issue but merely
punishes undesirable behaviour. While the streets will still smell like piss
at least people can gloat over the wrongdoers having got their comeuppance.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's not just German.

See: homeless spikes vs homeless shelters.

~~~
jordanb
Homeless spikes are an individual versus communal issue. Homelessness is a
societal problem, but once society has failed and there are homeless people
about, individual landlords don't want them sleeping around their buildings so
they install spikes.

The bathroom situation in some parts of Europe does seem like something that
could be addressed. When I'm wandering around a European city and find myself
with a full bladder, I'm always relieved to find an outpost of American
corporate imperialism such as a Starbucks or a McDonald's because---regardless
of anything else they bring---at least they bring clean well-maintained public
bathrooms.

~~~
stephenboyd
Installing anti-homeless spikes is still a choice for punishment over viable
positive alternatives such as planting a nice bush where you don't want people
to lay down.

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fiatmoney
"Oy guys, I heard these walls got some kinda fancy piss-reflectin' paint on
em!"

"Booollocks, ain't no such thing!"

"Well, let say we settle it then"

 _unzip_

"Hey mate, I bet if I piss at an angle I can get it in that box there..."

"Five quid says you can't"

etc.

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ChuckMcM
Now if you sold pants which were equally repellant could you set up a standing
wave of pee between you and the wall?[1]

Waterless urinals are available, I'm surprised that more of them aren't out in
areas where they are trying to avoid people peeing on walls.

[1] No of course not it would end up between your shoes and the wall

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kahirsch
According to the author of _Dirty Old London_ , these urine deflectors in
Clifford's Inn Passage[1] are among the last of what was once a very common
feature.

[1] [http://catsmeatshop.blogspot.com/2013/07/urine-deflectors-
in...](http://catsmeatshop.blogspot.com/2013/07/urine-deflectors-in-fleet-
street.html)

~~~
Brakenshire
> so unaccomodating are the owners of doorways, passages and angles, that they
> seem to have exhausted invention in the ridiculous barricadoes and shelves,
> grooves, and one fixed above another, to conduct the stream into the shoes
> of the luckless wight who shall dare to profane the intrenchments.

!

------
gus_massa
Better title: "Beware walls that bounce pee back" I was expecting an active
solution, like a saline water detector and a sprinkler.

Also, from the article:

> _It costs about $700 to cover six square meters with urine-repelling paint,
> which has raised questions over the idea 's efficiency. According to a
> WorldViews calculation, one could buy more than 1,500 bottles of normal
> German beer for the same price._

It's the wrong comparison, because the people that buy beer are not the wall
owners. You should compare the paint price with normal paint, detergent and
cleaners, and the nice surprise of a clean wall in the morning.

------
markyc
the physics don't really work, one can easily aim at a wider angle to the
wall, not perpendicular..

from the title I was expecting some kind of sprinkler that would spray back :)

building toilets and enforcing the law through fines seems much more rational

~~~
danparsonson
> the physics don't really work, one can easily aim at a wider angle to the
> wall, not perpendicular..

You didn't factor in the confounding variable of drunkeness with regard to its
effect on the ability to reason about angles and such :-)

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think it will only take getting yourself wet once to learn that when in
doubt, you should pee at an angle. People will quickly adapt.

Now if someone would make a pee _retroreflector_ coating, things could get
more interesting...

------
downandout
Wouldn't it be cheaper than ~$85/sq meter to just have a motion-detecting
camera on each wall that would record/broadcast the people peeing in all of
their glory on a town website, and have signs on the walls indicating this and
the URL where they can see themselves? A drunk person isn't going to care that
they have to do laundry in the morning because the wall "peed back" on them.
They might care that the entire town would see them doing it though.

~~~
matt4077
CCTV in public places is illegal in Germany for privacy reasons.

------
tigeba
Victorian-era solution [http://www.neatorama.com/2013/08/03/Urine-
Deflectors/](http://www.neatorama.com/2013/08/03/Urine-Deflectors/)

------
jusben1369
it's interesting that it's not enforced as a law. I can imagine that raising
the fine to $200 and spending 1 or 2 months ticketing everybody would change
behavior overnight. But obviously the majority of Germans don't think that's
warranted.

Lastly if a young male who is drunk pees on your house and his pee bounces
back onto him potentially embarrassing him in front of his male friends or his
companion how long till a brick goes through your window as you're sleeping?

~~~
pavel_lishin
They should just follow America's lead, and force everyone caught urinating in
public to register as a sex offender. I mean, it works here, right?

Right?

~~~
jusben1369
Well in America if 100 men pee up against a wall one will get shot by the
homeowner fearing a break-in. So even drunk young males will say to each other
"Dude don't go into that garden/alley to pee against the wall you never know
if the guy in there has a gun"

------
ianstallings
$700 for 6 sq meters of paint? I'm gonna make a wild prediction and say this
won't catch on.

~~~
ThePadawan
Seeing as there is little sense applying it above let's say 1.2m, that means
5m of house front that's now safe.

If you had a store in an area notorious for drunks peeing against everything,
investing less than $2k to completely cover yourself from damages, wouldn't
you do it? This'll pay off after 4 weeks!

~~~
lukeschlather
That sounds similar to the cost of a no-flush urinal. (Actually, I haven't
looked into it too deeply, but I'd wager you could buy, install, and maintain
a no-flush urinal for over a year at a cost of $2k.)

~~~
Udik
SO the solution to people pissing on your wall is to turn your wall into a
proper toilet?

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junto
Of course the simple way to deal with this is to piss sideways.

On the other hand, as a resident of a neighbouring derby city, I don't
personally have a problem with Hamburg football fans pissing on themselves!

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danielam
I have a better solution: electrified paint.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Would look cool during rain.

Come to think of it, this anti-pee coating could also be cool during rain -
nothing like getting splashed by an oncoming car _from both sides_.

~~~
derefr
Actually yeah, I really would like to see how a whole street of hydrophobic
buildings would look in pouring rain. Would there seem to be almost a lumpy
force-shield around them from the radius of all the deflected raindrops? Where
would they all go after hitting the buildings? Etc. (Good use for a physics
simulation; a "rain-tracer", so to speak.)

Now I'm wondering, though, whether you could mix hydrophobic oils into tarmac
in a way where all the water on a road would "slick off" toward the nearest
ditch, without impacting car tire grippage.

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tdicola
Presumably they're just spraying the walls in something like that Neverwet
spray
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZrjXSsfxMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZrjXSsfxMQ)).
I wonder if they realize that it breaks down in sunlight and won't work after
a few weeks.

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q2
>>> Public urination is quite common in Germany

This is surprising. I thought it is only a third world problem and Germany is
very clean.

What are other developed countries where public urination is common?

~~~
zxexz
Almost anywhere in Europe and the US. If people are out at night drinking and
there aren't easily accessible public toilets, then there really isn't much of
an option for non-public urination.

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davecap1
Listening to Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me?

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jkw
we definitely need this in san francisco

