primitives discuss pay toilets

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025561036

Oh my.

OilemFirchen (1,997 posts)    Fri Sep 19, 2014, 08:14 PM

Why Don’t We Have Pay Toilets in America?

A great article with a salute to high school friends Ira and Michael Gessel:

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/dont-pay-toilets-america-bathroom-restroom-free-market-90683/#.VBn7_CTEq70.facebook
 
In June of 1970, CEPTIA held it’s first official meeting at the Dayton Public Library, although it started 15 minutes late because library officials were worried an adult was not present. The meeting was attended by 29 members—mostly friends of the four founders—and the group cited a total membership of 48 at the time. Lifetime membership cost a quarter and included a card signed by one of the founders. The group also created an anthem, a newsletter, and a logo. The anthem, to the tune of your standard high school fight song, featured such double entendres as “We’ll work until we know / that toilets in America / Are free where-e’er we go / We’ll flush them out! / We’ll wipe them out! / We pledge, O CEPTIA!”
 
The quarterly newsletter, titled the Free Toilet Paper, reported on the group’s activities and included the odd anecdote about encountering pay toilets on vacations abroad. “We feel that pay toilets are unjust infringements on our basic human rights … elimination is an important body function that must take place, dime or no dime,” Michael wrote in the first issue, which reads very much like a product of the lighthearted movement the group was at the time. “The social action committee hopes to be able to present CEPTIA members with effective weapons of guerrilla warfare in the form of … bumper stickers.”
 
The logo, though, was the group’s tour de force, an emblem unique to its time and CEPTIA’s place in it: a fist, pulled from the New Left movement, grasping chains and rising out of a toilet bowl. Froiken came up with the idea after seeing an ad for laundry detergent in which a fist bursts out of a washing machine.
 
In early 1971, CEPTIA was bankrolled to the tune of $25.20, or, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, $148.30 in 2014 dollars. They used Ira and Michael’s father’s printing machines and kept costs low by staying up-to-date on postage increases.

The Velveteen Ocelot (38,003 posts)    Fri Sep 19, 2014, 08:20 PM

1. I remember quite well when we did.

And I also remember slithering under a stall door to avoid paying the potty fee. Pay toilets were the norm at airports and many other public places. It was nice to have them gone.

MerryBlooms (3,244 posts)    Fri Sep 19, 2014, 08:25 PM

5. Same here

Paying to use a ******* toilet is inhumane.

Curmudgeoness (14,935 posts)    Fri Sep 19, 2014, 08:47 PM

10. I remember them too.

I remember how everyone would cram a bunch of toilet paper in the locking mechanism so that it would not click shut. I remember how everyone would hold the door open for the next person, so that places with a lot of people in lines would get the first coin of the day and that was it. I remember that it cost a dime and you always kept a dime with you for either the phone or the pay toilet. Wow, a dime then would mean we would be paying about $.75 for a potty today. Wow. Ah, the good old days.

JVS (61,768 posts)    Fri Sep 19, 2014, 08:22 PM

2. Because Americans would vandalize the **** out of them to the point of unprofitability.

LibDemAlways (13,394 posts)    Fri Sep 19, 2014, 08:39 PM

8. Someday airlines will install them on planes.

No using the lav until you first swipe your credit card. It's the one potential profit center the airlines haven't yet explored.
 
And I distinctly recall a pay toilet situation at the Rainforest Cafe at Disney World back in the mid 90s. An attendant stood at the door and collected something like 50 cents. I was incensed, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

<<<always been in favor of pay toilets.

Restrooms don't maintain and clean themselves on their own, and the labor demanded on their upkeep isn't people working for free.

Somewhere along the line, somebody's paying for them.

And it's usually the hapless business owner, who finds that it's the non-customers, not the customers, who trash the restrooms.

But of course primitives don't worry about such niggling little shit; as long as it's not them paying for it, they don't care who it is.

[BattleHymn]

Good and decent people can afford to spend a dollar or two to spend a penny, but not so for the primitives.  I would pay money to use a clean restroom while out and about.  My reason is the same as that of truck stops that charge for their showers- it keeps out the vermin. 

And I also remember slithering under a stall door to avoid paying the potty fee.

On second thought, this is about as compelling a reason as any to just shit straight onto the floor right at the stall door.     

[franksolich]

Good and decent people can afford to spend a dollar or two to spend a penny, but not so for the primitives.  I would pay money to use a clean restroom while out and about.  My reason is the same as that of truck stops that charge for their showers- it keeps out the vermin.

The only modern pay toilets I've ever seen in my life were in Union Station in Chicago, when I was about ten years old.  There was a whole string of pay stalls, and at the end, a "free" one, apparently as required by law.

The "free" one was a fetid stinking mess.

I had to piss, but safely held it in until we got back to the LaSalle Street Hotel.

There were pay toilets in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, but I dunno what exactly one was paying for, as they were just holes dug into concrete, and workers and peasants had bad aims.

<<<never dared use one; just observed them.

There was always a fat old carbuncled babushka sitting in a booth at the door, who collected the fee.

[BattleHymn]

I had to piss, but safely held it in until we got back to the LaSalle Street Hotel.

That's an admirable talent- being able to just hold it in. 

I can't stand having to go and not being able to go, and so I've ended up in some pretty nasty bathrooms. 

Did the babushka give change? 
 

[miskie]

There is a shopping mall I used to frequent when I was younger that had pay toilets. Ten cents got you in. I haven't seen any since.

[Delmar]

I spent the last week of August down in Mexico on vacation and I had to spend a shitload of pesos just on going to the can.  You give the attendant the pesos and he gives you a handful of TP and lets you in.  It's an inconvenience, but like BattleHymn said it keeps out the vermin.

[Chris_]

I spent the last week of August down in Mexico on vacation and I had to spend a shitload of pesos just on going to the can.  You give the attendant the pesos and he gives you a handful of TP and lets you in.  It's an inconvenience, but like BattleHymn said it keeps out the vermin.

What if you need more?

From what I've heard from the "migrants" up here, the plumbing in Mexico isn't up to snuff so most of them drop their used TP in the trash can.  Some of them bring their traditions with them.

[Delmar]

What if you need more?

From what I've heard from the "migrants" up here, the plumbing in Mexico isn't up to snuff so most of them drop their used TP in the trash can.  Some of them bring their traditions with them.

You'll be throwing your underwear in the trash when you get back to your hotel, I guess.

[Chris_]

You'll be throwing your underwear in the trash when you get back to your hotel, I guess.

Viva la Mehico.