San Francisco Squalor: City Streets Strewn With Trash, Needles And Human Feces

[edale]

Gross. Why can't they just stop and use the restroom at a gas station, fast food place, starbucks, etc.?

[Trae]

Originally Posted by edale

Gross. Why can't they just stop and use the restroom at a gas station, fast food place, starbucks, etc.?

Sounds like common sense, but a lot of those places won't let you in unless you either buy something, give them 25 cents, or look presentable. The urine in a bottle thing is what the car sleepers do in California.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

curious. i always thought that was a trucker thing. pee in jug, fling out window....i guess it makes sense with the uber folks too. don't they have a home office or something they check in at or visit from time to time??

No, no office. In fact I had one ride from a woman who told me she ONLY picks up riders on the way to and from work and only if they are going pretty much where she's going.

Of course in SF Uber is building a new corporate HQ but there's no reason individual drivers would need to go there unless they wanted to complain to management about something maybe.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by edale

Gross. Why can't they just stop and use the restroom at a gas station, fast food place, starbucks, etc.?

No big deal. Just make sure you get a proper size bottle. You might be surprised at how much you can fill.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by Trae

Sounds like common sense, but a lot of those places won't let you in unless you either buy something, give them 25 cents, or look presentable. The urine in a bottle thing is what the car sleepers do in California.

If you're working most of the day in SF, I would think the bigger problem would be finding parking to just run inside. It might take you 30 minutes to find a parking spot to run in to a Starbucks or similar.

[Pedestrian]

^^Couple of points:

- SF is also tarrible at enforcing parking laws and especially against commercial vehicles like cabs. Uber/Lyft vehicles could probably park illegally for long enough to pee if necessary.

- The city does have self-cleaning Decaux (French-made) public toilets scatered around town but they have a bad reputation because they get used more for shooting drugs and sex than they do for the intended purpose.

- I myself, when in need and far from home, have found I can always access a bathroom on the ground floor of a hotel, especially the larger "convention" type hotels. Those have no idea who is actually attending a meeting at any given time and always have a bathroom off the lobby near the meeting rooms. No one will question you as long as you look presentable and don't smell rank.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

No, no office. In fact I had one ride from a woman who told me she ONLY picks up riders on the way to and from work and only if they are going pretty much where she's going.

Of course in SF Uber is building a new corporate HQ but there's no reason individual drivers would need to go there unless they wanted to complain to management about something maybe.

Right alongside 101, Lyft drivers have a 'hub' in SF for drivers for all that kind of stuff...


Didnt this^ used to be a plumber? Something like that? I remember the van.

[lio45]

I recall the first time I had to pee in a cup/bottle in the car. I had been stuck for a long time in a traffic jam in a central lane (cars all around me with people in them).

I remember exactly where it was, the Turcot interchange in Montreal. I had picked up a package at Dorval Airport, I was bringing it to our customer's place on the south shore and it was unfortunately rush hour. It was around 2005, I was in my dad's 2001 Chrysler Cirrus. I held it as long as I could of course, but at some point it became clear my options were really limited - pee my pants, get out of my car to walk across lanes and pee somewhere (out of the traffic lanes on the concrete edge, I guess) with everyone else looking at me from their cars, which BTW would've been illegal on several levels AFAIK... or, pee discreetly in some sort of container. Luckily, I had a bottle on hand.

Worked really well, and I was seduced by the convenience of this solution.

Nowadays, I usually keep a bottle of the ideal shape and size (large opening also is a quality) under my seat just in case, and use it on occasion.

I don't see any drawback... and sure don't feel any stigma.

Now, throwing the bottle away (littering) as in some of those SF examples is completely unacceptable. I always empty my bottle somewhere where it doesn't matter. (Grass, empty parking lot, etc.) and whenever I retire bottles, they're always put into recycling. If everyone did it the right way (like me...), this SF garbage-picker wouldn't have had the slightest clue to learn about this phenomenon.

[Pedestrian]

Watch where you step if you fly into SFO:

SFO warns cabbies to stop urinating, defecating in taxi lot
By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez on August 27, 2018 1:41 pm

SFO is cracking down on cabbies who are increasingly urinating and defecating in the airport’s taxi parking lot.

The San Francisco International Airport called the conditions a “health hazard” in an open email to cabbies.

Seth Morgan, a senior transportation planner at SFO, penned an email notice to San Francisco taxi drivers last Friday, which was posted to a taxi message board and obtained by the San Francisco Examiner.

In the notice, Morgan wrote that the practice has grown worse lately, which will result in additional San Francisco Police Department and SFO security patrols . . . .

http://www.sfexaminer.com/sfo-warns-...ting-taxi-lot/

[JManc]

• Video Link

[Sun Belt]

Part of the problem for California is that at least half of the year, we don't get any rain to speak of. It's warm and arid. Stuff gets preserved [just think of Egypt].

In other public human waste centers around the country like New York, at least the weather helps cleanse the streets. A couple heavy rainfalls each week will eliminate the smell of urine and a lot of the problems. A wet humid environment will have more bugs and micro bacterial elements to consume fecal matter, this doesn't happen in an arid environment where it will be preserved until somebody: A] picks it up or B] the first few winter storms wash it into the storm drains.

[Fresh]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Watch where you step if you fly into SFO:


http://www.sfexaminer.com/sfo-warns-...ting-taxi-lot/

Disgusting.

The Bay Area is meant to be a forefront of all kinds of global trends and initiatives and there's people shitting in parking lots at the airport?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

Part of the problem for California is that at least half of the year, we don't get any rain to speak of. It's warm and arid. Stuff gets preserved [just think of Egypt].

A coprolite is fossilized feces. Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour (in this case, diet) rather than morphology. The name is derived from the Greek words κόπρος (kopros, meaning "dung") and λίθος (lithos, meaning "stone"). They were first described by William Buckland in 1829. Prior to this they were known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones". They serve a valuable purpose in paleontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms. Coprolites may range in size from a few millimetres to over 60 centimetres.

Coprolites, distinct from paleofaeces, are fossilized animal (well, we ARE animals) dung. Like other fossils, coprolites have had much of their original composition replaced by mineral deposits such as silicates and calcium carbonates. Paleofaeces, on the other hand, retain much of their original organic composition and can be reconstituted to determine their original chemical properties, though in practice the term coprolite is also used for ancient human faecal material in archaeological contexts. In the same context, there are the urolites, erosions caused by evacuation of liquid wastes and nonliquid urinary secretions.

(Dinosaur sh*t: They'll be finding ours some day--remember that "extinct organisms" part)

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

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Fresh

Disgusting.

The Bay Area is meant to be a forefront of all kinds of global trends and initiatives and there's people shitting in parking lots at the airport?

They're cab drivers. They'd rather be shitting on the heads of Uber drivers but those are kept somewhere else.

[badrunner]

Is it something in the water up there? Lack of homeless services? Mental health issues? Why is this such a problem specific to San Francisco? I mean, LA arguably has the worst homeless problem in the country, but I've never seen piles of human waste on the sidewalk. As bad as Skid Row is, it's not an open sewer. I always wondered where they all go to the bathroom.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Is it something in the water up there? Lack of homeless services? Mental health issues? Why is this such a problem specific to San Francisco? I mean, LA arguably has the worst homeless problem in the country, but I've never seen piles of human waste on the sidewalk. As bad as Skid Row is, it's not an open sewer. I always wondered where they all go to the bathroom.

Ive been in downtown SF every day, working(about a block from Salesforce tower) and walking around during lunch for the past 7 days except Sat and Sun and sadly I havent seen any poop at all--I almost feel jilted given the huge attention this has been getting in the news.

lol

[ocman]

A lot the smells up here aren’t actually from the homeless but from the sewer/water systems under the city. You smell it coming up through the manhole grates .

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Is it something in the water up there? Lack of homeless services? Mental health issues? Why is this such a problem specific to San Francisco? I mean, LA arguably has the worst homeless problem in the country, but I've never seen piles of human waste on the sidewalk. As bad as Skid Row is, it's not an open sewer. I always wondered where they all go to the bathroom.

Slightly more empty open space in L.A. [along the freeways, under bridges, flood control channels, hills] to take a dump instead of public parks and other public rights of way?

[edale]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Is it something in the water up there? Lack of homeless services? Mental health issues? Why is this such a problem specific to San Francisco? I mean, LA arguably has the worst homeless problem in the country, but I've never seen piles of human waste on the sidewalk. As bad as Skid Row is, it's not an open sewer. I always wondered where they all go to the bathroom.

lol I saw a homless man taking a dump on the sidewalk as I was exiting my bus the other day. This was at the Vermont/Sunset station. It definitely happens in LA too.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by edale

lol I saw a homless man taking a dump on the sidewalk as I was exiting my bus the other day. This was at the Vermont/Sunset station. It definitely happens in LA too.

I was thinking that too..

It happens in lots of places but San Franciscans complain to the point of creating apps.