"I think we should have a facility, but not necessarily on one of the prime corners," says jewelry store owner Stephan Sternat, summing up the attitude of the majority of the shopkeepers in downtown Santa Cruz.
There aren't enough toilets in the downtown area -- but while none of the store owners are clambering to open their bathroom doors to shoppers in need, neither are any willing to volunteer the sidewalk in front of their store for the city to install a self-cleaning public toilet unit.
It's a debate we've seen over and over again in American cities, a problem caused by a lack of foresight in whatever zoning scheme has brought identical Baby Gaps and J. Crews to hundreds of city centers across the country: while shoppers have all the Cinnabons and Mrs. Fields they can handle, there are precious few locations for when the buns and cookies become too much to bear. And even when respite is provided, public toilets quickly become havens for drugs, prostitution, and other evils in which people like to partake behind doors nobody wants to open anyway.
Like Santa Cruz, a number of cities have considered those fancy self-cleaning robotic toilets, but the cost of those can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, aside from traditional bathrooms that janitors have to clean and cops have to monitor, there are only a few alternatives. China is catering to Beijing poopers through economies of scale with a new facility putting a thousand toilets under one roof. Unlike the deserted nighttime city center toilets in many American cities, this giant bathroom will have around-the-clock traffic, ensuring that too many eyeballs will be around for the kind of vices that thrive in deserted areas to crop up.
The city of Portland is trying a more progressive route: they're bringing the toilets under the watchful eye of the city government by opening City Hall's bathrooms to late-night users. These toilets will presumably be adequately monitored and staffed; better yet, there's probably some law banning turd terrorism on government property with a punishment stringent enough to discourage even the most dedicated shitman. With maintenance and cleaning, Portland's program will cost $46,500 over six months -- more expensive, in the long run, than Santa Cruz's robocrapper, which cashes in at $250,000 for the unit and $70,000 for the yearly maintenance. But why invest in a cyber facility when all you really need to ensure safe pooping are a few bored security guards and a few nearby mops?
Back in Santa Cruz, though, the city has turned down the high-tech fix for the age-old problem in favor of the age-old solution: no bathroom at all.
